Do You Believe?
Written by Ben Dismukes
Still, I am not ashamed; for I know Him [and I am personally acquainted with Him] whom I have believed [with absolute trust and confidence in Him and in the truth of His deity], and I am persuaded [beyond any doubt] that He is able to guard that which I have entrusted to Him until that day [when I stand before Him]. - 2 Timothy 1:12
Belief is a funny thing. We all think we know what it means, yet I’m confident it would do us some good to redefine it, establishing it on the firm foundation of the scriptures. Too many, even within what calls itself “the church,” approach belief from a natural understanding, but for the disciple of Christ, it should take on a whole new meaning.
Most dictionaries define the word “believe” by pointing to a function of the mind – i.e. “a state of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing,” (Merriam-Websters). Yet the Bible points to a different organ entirely. John the beloved wrote, “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved,” (John 10:9-10 NLT). In the same way, the writer of Hebrews warns, “Make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God,” (Hebrews 3:12 NLT).
We can conclude, then, that true belief has little to nothing to do with the mind of man and everything to do with the position of his heart.
This is not to suggest that it’s permissible to claim to believe one thing in the heart, while thinking, speaking and acting in an entirely other than manner, according to the whims of the intellect. This sort of dualism is scripturally referred to as “double mindedness,” and is indicative of a man who is unstable and tossed about by every wind of doctrine. Such a man is highly vulnerable to the deceitful schemes of the enemy. It is, rather, to suggest that we were never meant to be led by the natural mind in the first place. Instead, we were meant to be directed by a heart that is in fellowship with Christ. That heart, in turn, is meant to dictate to our mind what is and isn’t to be believed. Heart-belief must lead the way, and the mind must learn to follow. The reverse should never be true!
This should come as no surprise to us, as it was precisely what happened when we were born again. The Holy Spirit touched our hearts and not our minds. He influenced us at a heart level, inducing us to a decision to believe. He did not present a well-reasoned, convincing argument to the mind. That is not to suggest that the gospel is illogical or unsound, in any way. Quite the opposite! The more we allow the heart, being led by the Holy Spirit, to teach the mind, the more reasonable and convincing we find the truth of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, to be!
And just as we need a realigned, scriptural understanding of the concept of “belief,” we also need greater clarity as to what exactly we’re exhorted to believe in. Again, the answer may seem obvious to many – and therein lies the problem. Our assumptions and pre-conceived ideas, both of which are born in the mind, will all too easily lead us into a ditch, if we’re not careful.
Paul hits the root of the issue in his second letter to Timothy:
“Still, I am not ashamed; for I know Him [and I am personally acquainted with Him] whom I have believed [with absolute trust and confidence in Him and in the truth of His deity], and I am persuaded [beyond any doubt] that He is able to guard that which I have entrusted to Him until that day [when I stand before Him],” (2 Timothy 1:12 Amplified).
Notice that Christ is the object of belief – not a teaching that Christ espoused, or a doctrine He established, or an outcome He has promised. Paul had become convinced of a Person, and not the things on the periphery. It is Christ that can save, not Christianity or the Bible or a set of “truths” to which one should mentally ascend. He is a Person, not an idea. It is the Person that we are coming to gain, relationally speaking, as we progress down the narrow path of faith, not an outcome in the temporal realm. It is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ that is being revealed to us at a heart level, not a codified set of principles or a guaranteed result if we’ll do x, y and z!
Knowing Christ is a matter of life and not head knowledge. In the garden, Adam was put to the test. “You may eat of the tree of life,” God told him. “But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is forbidden!” I fear we have allowed the serpent once again to ensnare us, having exchanged the beauty and simplicity of believing in a Person at a heart level, for a handful of magic beans disguised as “good knowledge.” Such knowledge takes on the form of mental assent to teachings, rationalization of the scriptures, and information about God, so that we can somehow convince ourselves that we truly know Him or manipulate Him for our personal benefit. Such statements will hit some readers squarely on the mouth in a way that is both offensive and difficult to receive. But the Truth is unapologetically blunt, and He will set us free… if we allow Him!
And He has every right to make it clear when we’ve missed the mark as it pertains to the purpose for which He created us.
Information is destroying the testimony of Christ in the present-day church. Our lust for it has led us into every wind of doctrine that has come down the pipe, and because we rely on the mind for discernment, we have none. We are riddled with unbelief in our hearts, while we compile and process data points we so cavalierly refer to as “truths” in the fallen, unredeemed computer known as the mind of man, and we’ve become a ship tossed about on a stormy sea. Make no mistake, the deceiver is behind the waves and the wind! We’ve lost sight of the Person, if ever we had our eyes on Him in the first place, and we’re in need of serious repentance. Not the kind of repentance that has us slobbering on the floor as we weep and wail and thrash about, but the kind that would cause us to renounce our current course – a course that pursues knowledge about the Holy One – and embrace the call to sit at His feet and experience Him face to face.
There is a wisdom the confounds and frustrates the intellectual prowess of the scholar, and it lies in this bold claim: “I don’t have all the answers, but I know Jesus and am deeply satisfied in that fact.” There is a beauty in childlike faith, which arises in the midst of difficulty, boldly professing along with the three Hebrew men who were tossed into a Babylonian fire, “I don’t know if God will save me, but I am His. And I will never stop trusting in Him.” There is something that threatens the Pharisaical spirit which is so prevalent in the western church of our day and is guaranteed to incur its wrath, as it did in the days of the Apostles, and it is this declaration: “I would gladly toss the entirety of my well-established religious beliefs onto the trash heap for the sake of communion with the One my heart desires.”
God lead us back to the simplicity of heart-belief in Christ alone!
