The MONSTER of unbelief

(Numbers 14:11) “How long will it be ere they believe me?”

How often in my Christian walk am I tempted to walk in unbelief, far too often I would suggest. Training is needed to grow in faith and with the journey for each Christian we are taught from our beginnings to walk by faith. In order for faith to make its mark in a believer’s life we must be in neediness. Firstly we need to understand our requisite and then we will become more vigilant in searching out God’s graces to meet those necessities. How will we ever walk by faith if we have no experiences to fall back on? For this to become a way of life we will need to walk through the “valley of the shadow of death”. King David is a great example of a man who trusted in His God, He walked by faith and we can learn much from him.

We must understand who the shepherd is; our shepherd is the Lord Jesus! Not one of His lambs shall be plucked from His hand, the bear and the lion may come but our God will always come to our rescue. He is the greatest of shepherds and our minds must rest on this fact; “… If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31) – With that understood we need to clasp it with both hands and hang on tightly to that reality. The enemy with all his chariots and horsemen may drive us into a corner and it may appear as if our end is near but when we fall to our knees and cry out unto our God who is unseen to the naked eye, “save me even now”, we will see the sea parting allowing us to escape our pursues. The irony of it all; the means used for our escape brings death to the enemies of God. God’s foolishness is far greater than the wisdom of men. Jesus Christ dying to pay the price for sinners and setting some free and yet those who reject the gospel find that the very thing we have been pardoned of, our sin is the penalty that will send them to the Lake of Fire for all eternity, their own sin condemning them!

Gods children will never need to beg bread, our God shall supply all our needs, this was David’s motto! Total reliance on God’s provision, and yet for a time he needed to hide and live in caves with very little provisions on hand. I wonder how many valuable lessons were learnt during that time of his life.

Independence does not teach us to walk by faith, all it teaches us is to depend on our own abilities, and it is a lie! Do not believe it for a second. Life will be our training ground as we learn to walk by faith; we must not shirk our responsibility to learn from it as we look for more independence. Unbelief will look to rob us of bringing glory to our God, but of this I am certain, if we stay the course, it will be well with our souls! Yes there must be times when we will be tested to see what our faith is made of; it’s easy to say we have faith when all is well but quite another veracity altogether when the pressure is on. It’s typically in these times when we will learn the most valuable of lessons, becoming more dependent upon our God. Spurgeon’s understanding of unbelief will stand us in good stead if we make it our own. God help us to honour Him the way we ort in this area of our lives, remember Job!

“Strive with all diligence to keep out that monster unbelief. It so dishonours Christ, that he will withdraw his visible presence if we insult him by indulging it. It is true it is a weed, the seeds of which we can never entirely extract from the soil, but we must aim at its root with zeal and perseverance. Among hateful things it is the most to be abhorred. Its injurious nature is so venomous that he that exerciseth it and he upon whom it is exercised are both hurt thereby. In thy case, O believer! it is most wicked, for the mercies of thy Lord in the past, increase thy guilt in doubting him now. When thou dost distrust the Lord Jesus, he may well cry out, “Behold I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves.” This is crowning his head with thorns of the sharpest kind. It is very cruel for a well-beloved wife to mistrust a kind and faithful husband. The sin is needless, foolish, and unwarranted. Jesus has never given the slightest ground for suspicion, and it is hard to be doubted by those to whom our conduct is uniformly affectionate and true. Jesus is the Son of the Highest, and has unbounded wealth; it is shameful to doubt Omnipotence and distrust all-sufficiency. The cattle on a thousand hills will suffice for our most hungry feeding, and the granaries of heaven are not likely to be emptied by our eating. If Christ were only a cistern, we might soon exhaust his fulness, but who can drain a fountain? Myriads of spirits have drawn their supplies from him, and not one of them has murmured at the scantiness of his resources. Away, then, with this lying traitor unbelief, for his only errand is to cut the bonds of communion and make us mourn an absent Saviour. Bunyan tells us that unbelief has “as many lives as a cat:” if so, let us kill one life now, and continue the work till the whole nine are gone. Down with thee, thou traitor, my heart abhors thee.” (Charles Spurgeon)

Signing off

Tyrone