Podcast Blog – Season 2, Episode 8
Trying to believe something is not the same as knowing it.
Most committed Christians can tell you what they believe and why they believe it. From the time I first came to know Jesus personally, He began to change me on the inside as He opened up to me a whole new world. I listened to preachers and teachers, studied the Bible, and joined with other believers in sharing about our various experiences with God. I knew in my heart that so much of what I was hearing, reading and experiencing was true. There’s something very reassuring about getting together with others who share the same beliefs. “Do you believe this Bible verse?” “Sure do!” “Do you believe this doctrine?” Yep, it’s the truth!” “Do you believe it’s OK for a Christian to do this … or that?” “Well, the Bible says…”
But true belief – the belief God looks for in our lives – is what Jesus was referring to when He said: “… when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” He was not speculating about whether or not He would find any people who believe biblical or doctrinal truths when He returns to this earth – but whether He would find faith.
Faith is not something you have. It is something you do in response to God. Like Abraham who believed God, and God credited it to him as righteousness. But you cannot exercise that kind of faith unless you absolutely, unequivocally know!
You can be a genuinely born-again Christian. You can know that you know Jesus, and that He has changed you from within. And you can also know that certain things are true – not because someone has convinced you about them, but because your heart tells you so. You can know what it is to read something in the Bible, or to hear someone preaching, or to talk about those things with others and agree they are true. Even so, knowing that something is fundamentally true is not necessarily the same as believing God.
Many today prefer to put their faith in science than to believe that God even exists. “I believe the science,” they say. “I am satisfied that this thing has been proven to be true and that’s what I believe!” They will take a stand on it, and sometimes even stake their lives on it.
Believing God can only come from knowing Him. It is an expression of something that exists between you and Him. Something that is feeding your innermost being, so that you are not only believing an inherent truth – but you hold that truth so powerfully in your heart that you are motivated to live by it. Not on the basis of “I'm a Christian, and this is what Christians believe,” but because that truth so lives in your heart that it is natural to live by it.
Coming to know Jesus at the age of 17, I moved into adulthood still discovering the extent of my relationship with Him. At 21 I left my job to begin full-time study at a residential Bible College that specialised in training young adults for missionary work. I attended lectures on the Bible and aspects of Christian belief, ministry and theology, and was taught how to preach and evangelise. All aimed at equipping me and my fellow-students to carry out the ‘Great Commission’ which Jesus gave to His disciples: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”
Yet I have to tell you – that is man’s way. Not God’s!
Which brings us back to the stark difference between trying to believe something and knowing the truth in a way that transforms you, making you effective in impacting and transforming the lives of others. Jesus said that rivers of living water will flow out from the innermost being of those who believe in Him. He also said that the source of that living water is God’s Spirit within that person.
None of that has anything to do with how much you learn, how many scriptures you can quote, or even how much you believe to be true. But it has everything to do with living your life in a belief-relationship with Jesus Himself. And what does that mean? It means knowing by personal experience that Jesus is everything He says He is, and that His Spirit is poured into, and flows out of, those who believe in Him.
This is the wonder of a living relationship with the Living God here and now – in this present world, in these perishable human bodies with all their limitations, and with all the character-traits that mark each of us as individual human beings … and yet be true sons of God!
God’s sons are those who are led by God’s Spirit. And that’s not a gender-based statement! Sonship with God is not about male or female. It is about the privileged position occupied by those who, by their response to God, can truly call Him ‘Father’.
Yes, Jesus was the only begotten Son of God, but He also came into this world to bring many sons to glory (Hebrews 9:10). He was ‘the second Adam’ – God expressed in human flesh. He did not come as a one-off but as the forerunner of a whole new race of people like you and me – through whom God can be seen, known and glorified in this world. It’s not about us imitating Jesus – nor even emulating Him. It is about us being a true expression of God in this world just as Jesus was. He came as a man to express God as a man, and to also glorify God as a man. So that we also would be the same as Him and do the same as Him!
Beautiful though that is, it can only be true of you if He is the desire of your heart, and your life is surrendered to Him. Otherwise, how can you expect to know Him for who He really is … let alone glorify Him in this world?
But what about that time you first opened your heart to Jesus and were ‘born-again’? Wasn’t that when you came to know Him? Well, yes … in a sense.
To be born-again by the Spirit of God is a beautiful thing. But as with any natural birth, it is only the beginning of a new life. Make it an end in itself and you are left with a situation like a baby being born, yet neither growing nor developing into an adult. In the natural world that would be considered un-natural, and a cause for great concern. So why is it that many Christians remain in their spiritual infancy long after their spiritual re-birth? All too often, after being gladly received into a church they are kept on an undemanding diet of ‘milk’ rather than being led into spiritual maturity.
“Anyone who lives on milk,” wrote the apostle Paul, “being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Hebrews 11:13 & 14). Yet these perpetual infants are simply incorporated into some part of the religious system, usually a church, not to be matured into Spirit-led sons of God, but to contribute to the success of the system!
Read the accounts of the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles and marvel at those God-glorifying people – scattered throughout the Roman Empire, many from pagan backgrounds – who had so recently believed in Jesus. Far from it being only the Apostles, or even those who had been with them on the Day of Pentecost, there were many more recent converts who were scattered far and wide by persecution and who now “preached the word wherever they went”.
They were not baby believers, but people who knew the truths of God because they knew the God of those truths. They were not trying to believe God’s words, they knew them … and they preached them!
That’s real Christianity. It is all about Jesus, the Christ – literally Jesus the Anointed One of God – and all that He is. Christianity is not belief about Jesus. It is the true expression of Him, through a living body of flesh-and-blood people like you and me. On the face of it, very ordinary people. Yet in reality, the living expression of God in this world. That's what the Early Church was from Day One!
Living for God is very simple. Yet it is also very total. It is about knowing beyond any doubt that every word God speaks to you personally is the truth by which you must live. Nothing else can substitute for that. Not trying to believe by studying the Bible. Not trying to believe what someone else has told you. Not even trying to believe because you have been inspired by some wonderful truth. None of these can take you beyond trying to believe and into knowing.
Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” He did not say proceeded (past tense). He said proceeds, as in the present continuous tense. We are to live by what God says to us in the continual now!
If you will yield your life to God and make Him your focus, He will speak to you – showing you things you would not otherwise be able to see, and revealing His truth to your heart.
Then, instead of trying to believe, you will know the truth that transforms you and will make the reality of Jesus in you evident to others. Not because you are trying to convert them, or convince them, but because you are fulfilling the words of Jesus: “You are the salt of the earth … You are the light of the world.”
So, from my heart, I say to you: Don't try to believe it ... Know it!