ANB 55, You Must Believe

(We’re taking a short detour before we continue with the ‘be perfect series.’)

“If you will not believe, surely you will not be established.” (Isaiah 7:9)

What a powerful verse. In this passage God tells a king that he will deliver the king’s enemies
into his hands. Now despite the fact that God has just told the king this, the king had his part to
play. It was, at first, only a small part, but if he didn’t play it the Word of the Lord wouldn’t
come to pass.

Now is that a shocking statement. I even felt a bit odd writing it. Now God has shown me great
things for my own life. He has shown me pieces of my destiny. For example, I believe the Lord
will prosper me financially, not so I can just bless myself, but so that I can be a distribution
center for His purposes on the earth. Now God has told me this, but if I don’t believe what God
has said then it will never come to pass (I have much more to do, but this is the first ste). I have
a destiny, but if I am to walk in it, or be established in it, I must believe in it. No winner on the
earth sees himself as a loser. No winner started out thinking they were a loser either. You have
to see where you are going, then go. Praise God.

Today we are focusing on you believing what God has said to you. God’s book contains many
thousands of words and promises straight from God that you can directly apply to your own life.
God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). That means He won’t give joy or peace or
prosperity to Joe X but not to you. That means He is the same God for everyone, and He will
bless us all equally with all spiritual blessings. That means that Romans 8:32, which says that
God will give us all things in Christ, applies to every one of us. So if you see a promise in God’s
Word, or any statement in there that you would like applied to you, then you can obtain it, glory
to God.

But before you ever obtain any of it, you must learn to believe it. You must “believe it with your
heart.” Now this idea appears in Mark 11, Acts 8 and Romans 10. I encourage you to read those
verses, Jesus, Philip and Paul all spoke of believing with the heart.

“For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and
be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which
he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.” (Mark 11:23).

You must believe in your heart, not doubt. So how does one believe with the heart?

I believe the first thing we must realize is that God’s Word says that we must believe with our
heart, and not with our head. We understand now that there is a big difference between believing
with our head and with our hearts. Belief with one’s head is what the world lives by. Their
minds perceive the information their minds receive by the five physical senses. Every human
can believe what their minds can perceive. This is believing with the mind.

But believing with the heart is an entirely different operation. Believing with the heart entails
faith. “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7) If you are believing only what
you can see, you are not operating by faith. What the verse says is that there is a fundamental
disconnect between faith (or belief in God and His Word) and sight. Think about the king in
Isaiah 7. Why would God have to admonish him for not believing? He didn’t believe because
the armies looked too vast. His sense knowledge told him that everything God said was
impossible. God told Him that he better believe or he would never see the Word of God come to
pass and establish his kingdom. The Word of God will often, if not always, go against what you
can perceive in your sense knowledge realm.

The Word of God has already been spoken over you in so many situations. You have to read it
for yourself to figure out exactly what God has said. Then you must believe it.

What you must have, therefore, to believe with the heart, is belief in God’s Word. You must
believe God’s Word in your heart. Just like the king in Isaiah, you have to believe God’s Word.
If believing in your heart is opposite from believing in your mind, and believing with your mind
comes from sight which is the opposite of faith, then belief in your heart comes from faith.

“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” (Romans 10:17). It is the
Word of God that produces faith. With this faith you can believe in your heart. No other word
or situation in your life can have that effect. Think about it. The sum total of everything you
believe comes from what you have received from your five physical senses. Even books you
have read about things you have never seen, much like the Word of God.

But the Word of God is different. The Word of God is about the unseen. The Word of God is
about things we probably won’t ever see in this life. We walk by faith, not by sight. God knew
that our human minds, enslaved essentially by our five physical senses, would need some way to
believe His Word. If we could never see these things, how could we believe? To overcome this
situation God has given us faith.

Romans 12:3, “God has given to every man the measure of faith.” Does this mean every man in
the world? I don’t think so. We know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of
God. So what does that imply, if someone has never heard the Word of God they will have no
faith. We can leave aside those who haven’t heard, for you all have heard. You all have this
measure of faith now, because you have heard God’s Word. Now you must believe it. You must
believe it in the face of your sense knowledge which says the Word of God isn’t true.

This is the way all of faith works. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1). This is the only way it works. If you don’t believe God’s
Word, it will never produce for you.

I find myself coming back to this because I must get this in me. You see, I have this by
revelation now. I know this is how it works. But I still go through life with the same Word of
God knowledge vs. Sense knowledge battle every day. It will always be that way before we
meet Jesus Christ, you have to trust God more than what you can see. Without faith it is
impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Anything not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23). Why
would anything not of faith be sin? Because if you are trusting what you see more than God’s
Word you are rebelling to Him and denouncing His Word. We must believe. Praise God.

Here are two more verses where God helps our faith by assuring us His Word will come to pass.
(Isaiah 55:11, Numbers 23:19).

“But we had the answer [that would defeat the possibility of] death in ourselves, that we should
not trust in ourselves, but in God which raises the dead.” 2 Corinthians 1:9. The answer to any
of the situations you face is trust in God and His Word.

“You (God) will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusts in
thee.” (Isaiah 26:3) Trust in God’s Word and He will even keep you in perfect mental peace.
When your mind and its slavery to sense knowledge is fighting your faith, your trust in God will
hold your mind in check and keep you believing appropriately.

“(After Paul didn’t follow through on something he said) When I was so minded, did I use
lightness? Or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there
should be a ‘yes’ that means a ‘no.’ But as God is true, our word to you was not a ‘yes’ that
means ‘no.’ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you was not yes and no,
but in Him was yes. For all the promises of God in Him are yes, and in Him amen (so be it) unto
the glory of God by us.” 2 Corinthians 1:17-20.

GOD’S WORD IS ALWAYS YES, HE SAID IT AND HE MEANT IT AND IT WILL

SURELY COME TO PASS. GLORY TO GOD.