During a recent sermon, I heard my pastor say, “Unbelief is a bad choice.”
I immediately looked inside myself and thought ‘Wow”, that would be true.
Every word of God we hear we are going to have an immediate choice as to whether we accept it, believe it, and put it into practice or not!
While I was pondering this profound statement and keeping it at the forefront of my mind, I did my daily Bible reading; I would read the Word of God then challenge myself as to whether I really believed it.
You see, we will be judged by God on our personal acceptance and belief in the written Word and how we line ourselves up with what it says.
While looking at John 6:28-29, this passage about Jesus being the Bread of Life, I saw Jesus’ answer to a question that was asked by what the Bible calls a crowd; here is the question: What must we do to do the works God requires? Jesus answered, “the work of God is this: to believe in the One He sent.”
As we look at His answer, we see the exact representation of how we are to do the works of God – by receiving His Son, Jesus. This actually lines up with the total gist of the Gospel message and the goal of salvation for all who believe. Amen!
With this fresh in my heart, it caused 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17 to ring out louder to me than it ever has. In verse 13, the apostle Paul says, “We are thankful that God chose you to be among the first to experience salvation, a salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy and by your belief in the truth.” Amen!
So we are chosen to experience salvation through the Holy Spirit, and by our belief in the truth!
I will explain this last sentence, which is really self-explanatory, “the Holy Spirit makes us Holy”, and by our belief in or choice of the truth, we are set apart for God, by and through the Holy Spirit.
In John 16:13, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth; “but when He the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” Amen!
Now let’s take all of this back to our title that says, “Unbelief is a bad choice.” We received our salvation by choosing to believe in our heart that Jesus is the Christ, and also believing that God raised Him from the dead, and by doing so we overrode the unbelief that would have held us back.
Everything after choosing Jesus to be our Lord and Savior should be easier to believe, we won the debate about Jesus being our salvation, and now we are on a journey of belief as we read and hear the Word of God.
We should watch what we say in regards to believing. I have heard people say, “I can’t believe that.” First, that is an untrue statement, we choose not to believe, and second, “unbelief is a bad choice.”
By receiving salvation, we received a special gift from God, and He gave it to us when we heard the Good News, the Gospel, about the Christ, Who He sent so that we can have, and enjoy, life here on earth as well as eternal life with the Father in glory. Amen!
Our salvation is a gift to be unwrapped from faith to faith; we experience more of our gift by believing more of God’s Word.
If at some point we stop believing, then our unbelief will keep us from un-wrapping the gift. I don’t know about you but I have never half opened a present, and spent the rest of my life wondering what was inside!
The Bible says in James 1:22-24, that if we don’t put what we believe into practice, we will forget about the gift we received, as in looking at ourselves in a mirror and then forgetting what we looked like. Let us hold fast to our ever-loving, ever-giving Gift. Amen!
The Gift that gives us not only salvation but also healing, prosperity, joy, peace, hope, long life, and all the other good things that choosing to believe will provide.
We choose to believe because “Unbelief is a bad choice.”
I will end with this wonderful blessing found in 2 Thessalonians 2:15-17; “With these things in mind brothers and sisters, may our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father, who loved us and in His special favor gave us everlasting comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and give you strength in every good thing you do and say.” Amen!
If you need a faith boost today, please leave a comment and I will prayerfully respond.
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Scriptures of encouragement and content: Mark 9:17-24, John 6:28-29, 1 John 3:23, 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17, John 16:13, Romans 10:8-11, Romans 1:16-17,
James 1:21-25 TPT, “So this is why we abandoned everything morally impure and all forms of wicked conduct, instead with a sensitive spirit we absorb God’s Word, which has been implanted within our nature, for the Word of Life has power to continually deliver us. Don’t just listen to the Word of Truth and not respond to it, for that is the essence of self-deception. So always let His Word become like poetry written and fulfilled by your life! If you listen to the Word and don’t live out the message you hear, you become like the person who looks in the mirror of the Word to discover the reflection of his face in the beginning. You perceive how God sees you in the mirror of the Word, but then you go out and forget your divine origin. But those who set their gaze deeply into the perfect law of liberty are fascinated by and respond to the truth they hear and are strengthened by it–they experience God’s blessing in all they do!”