Daily Rhythm
Fixing Unbelief
All the time I see Christians trying to believe the Lord for healing, or for the salvation of a family member, or to move a mountain. Praise God for this! We need to learn to believe God for great things. I refer to these dear people as trying to believe the Lord because, by their own admission, their faith is often far from perfect. Why? And how can faith be perfected?
The bottom line in this struggle (and often the end of this struggle) is God's imputed righteousness. Many of these struggling Christians aren't actually appropriating the Gospel itself, and thus their faith is failing in other areas as well.
No doubt you have wrestled with this problem yourself from time to time. The most commonly recommended remedy for unbelief these days, especially in faith teaching, is to pump your faith through quoting, verbalizing, and repeating Bible verses. Okay, there is truth to that. But if you have a problem with unbelief, does God call you first to try to hype up your faith by repeating Bible verses? No, not first. Why not? Because quoting Bible verses can't take away sin. And unbelief is sin! Jesus identified unbelief as sin when He said that the Holy Spirit would convict the world of, "sin, because they do not believe in Me." (John 16:9) So first, take your sin of unbelief to the finished work of Calvary. That is God's only provision for sin. Confess it, and be totally cleansed and forgiven. Unbelief is a horrible sin. Don't add insult to injury by trying to fix it yourself through merely quoting Bible verses and trying to hype up your faith.
Put all your confidence in grace, in the gift of God's righteousness. Be reckoned righteous by His work alone. Believe this. You see, when the Lord imputes righteousness to you, faith is part of that package. And, since imputed righteousness through Christ is nothing less than God's righteousness, the faith you receive as a gift is God's faith, imputed to you, whether you feel it or not.
Now, faith for anything else will come much more easily because of your faith in Jesus' righteousness. You can go back to quoting verses and building faith as a vital aspect of your walk in the Spirit (assuming that you bear in mind that such Bible knowledge does not give you manipulative control over the Lord). See how it works.
The bottom line in this struggle (and often the end of this struggle) is God's imputed righteousness. Many of these struggling Christians aren't actually appropriating the Gospel itself, and thus their faith is failing in other areas as well.
No doubt you have wrestled with this problem yourself from time to time. The most commonly recommended remedy for unbelief these days, especially in faith teaching, is to pump your faith through quoting, verbalizing, and repeating Bible verses. Okay, there is truth to that. But if you have a problem with unbelief, does God call you first to try to hype up your faith by repeating Bible verses? No, not first. Why not? Because quoting Bible verses can't take away sin. And unbelief is sin! Jesus identified unbelief as sin when He said that the Holy Spirit would convict the world of, "sin, because they do not believe in Me." (John 16:9) So first, take your sin of unbelief to the finished work of Calvary. That is God's only provision for sin. Confess it, and be totally cleansed and forgiven. Unbelief is a horrible sin. Don't add insult to injury by trying to fix it yourself through merely quoting Bible verses and trying to hype up your faith.
Put all your confidence in grace, in the gift of God's righteousness. Be reckoned righteous by His work alone. Believe this. You see, when the Lord imputes righteousness to you, faith is part of that package. And, since imputed righteousness through Christ is nothing less than God's righteousness, the faith you receive as a gift is God's faith, imputed to you, whether you feel it or not.
Now, faith for anything else will come much more easily because of your faith in Jesus' righteousness. You can go back to quoting verses and building faith as a vital aspect of your walk in the Spirit (assuming that you bear in mind that such Bible knowledge does not give you manipulative control over the Lord). See how it works.
Jeff Harkin
2 comments:
Outstanding Wayne! And outstanding Michael Eaton! It's good to hear things like this. God is smoking out the legalists!!!
Thanks Bro...
One of the biggest, and most damaging teaching out there at the moment is that were saved by grace, noew its up to us to proove/maintain/work out that. The way to do it is with the law and commandments. This will put us back under the law, undo grace..and destroy the very think the theology was created to preserve..namely..fruit unto God. Law actually kills fruit.Well there is some fruit from law...the fruit of death and condemnation.
Wayno
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