BE GONE UNBELIEF

“Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an EVIL HEART of UNBELIEF in departing from the living God” – Hebrews 3:12

God’s Command Today, to the shivering soul and fainting heart is BE GONE UNBELIEF: “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God” (Heb.3:12). UNBELIEF is a lack of faith, inconsistency in faith or believing something other than what God has said about a situation. You can believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, that He is your Lord, and that He is coming soon; but if you don’t believe and do what He says in the now, you are operating in unbelief. It is possible to be an Unbelieving Believer: believing IN Him, but still not believing what He says. The Bible calls this “an evil heart” – a hardened heart (v.12). Such a heart grieves God. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb.11:6). Faith pleases God. Unbelief offends Him. You must banish unbelief!

Unbelief is the reason why many people are not seeing God’s miracle-working power as they ought (Mt.17:20). It is the cause of so much defeat in the lives of believers. Jesus could not do many mighty works in His hometown “because of their unbelief” (Mt.13:54-58). The man with the demon-possessed child cried out to the Lord for help: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk. 9:24). God wants you to be consistent and dynamic, not lukewarm, in faith: “If you can believe, ALL things are possible” (Mk. 9:23). That’s how important it is to banish unbelief! And that’s where God wants us to live – in the realm of what is possible through Him and Him alone. This is what sets believers apart from a lost and dying world.

When the Israelites left Egypt for Canaan, they were happy and believed God was with them only until the smallest problems arose. They immediately lost their faith (Exo. 14:11, 17:3). It is so easy to confess faith when life is going great. But when a challenge rears its head, faith plummets. We must guard our hearts and faith from the influences of the flesh, the world and the devil. A regenerated spirit and renewed mind will remember God’s promises. In the highs and lows, you have to make a choice to believe or not to believe. Whatever may come, Faith says, “God is in control”!

Beloved, please join me to sing through these storms, another Hymn of Faith and Victory:

“Begone unbelief, My Savior is near, and for my relief will surely appear: by prayer let me wrestle, and He will perform, with Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm.

Though dark be my way, since He is my guide, ’tis mine to obey, ’tis His to provide; though cisterns be broken, and creatures all fail, The Word He has spoken shall surely prevail.

His love in time past forbids me to think He’ll leave me at last in trouble to sink; each sweet Ebenezer I have in review confirms His good pleasure to help me quite through.

Determined to save, He watched o’er my path, when Satan’s blind slave, I sported with death; and can He have taught me
to trust in His name, and thus far have brought me, to put me to shame?

Why should I complain of want or distress, temptation or pain? He told me no less: the heirs of salvation, I know from His Word, through much tribulation must follow their Lord.

How bitter that cup, no heart can conceive, which He drank quite up, that sinners might live! His way was much rougher, and darker than mine; did Jesus thus suffer, and shall I repine?

Since all that I meet shall work for my good, the bitter is sweet, the medicine is food; though painful at present, ‘twill cease before long, and then, O! how pleasant, the conqueror’s song!”

Beloved, be assured that the dark days that humanity is passing through shall soon give way to a brighter dawn. Though the times look dark and drea­ry, let us be in­spired with fresh hope and con­fi­dence, as we sing “the Conqueror’s song!”