The Work of Believing

 "Jesus answered and said to them, this is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent." (John 6:29)

I was thinking about God and suffering and our thoughts and life in general. What are we here for? What is the point to all this suffering? Some sufferings we can't control but there are other sufferings that we fall into with our choices. One thing I've seen is how we can so easily believe a lie, or just simply ignore Gods truths. When Kenny was first diagnosed with cancer I was in shock! My mind was a big giant target for lies from the enemy, I hadn't had much field experience with trusting God yet. The biggest lie I was hit with will take some back story so bear with me.

I was so proud of myself for working so hard at being a good and godly wife to my husband for an entire year! My tutor had instructed me in the truth that, 'The only person you can change is yourself, so stop praying for God to change your husband and except him the way he is and pray that God would change your heart instead.' If only I had listened and worked at believing that, I could have saved myself from the gut wrenching lie that stuck with me for too long.

On the night of Kenny's Papa's memorial service, after a day of sadness and confusion, I was emotionally exhausted! I needed to talk to Kenny about the day and things that had happened. I just needed some refreshing and my mind told me the only one who could do that for me right then and there was my husband. Well that night, which I will never forget, was the night I decided to IGNORE God's truth that He is enough for me. I went into our bed room and asked Kenny, who was already laying down, if he would please talk to me. He said sure and propped himself up a little, but as I talked he shut his eyes and fell asleep. I was so mad! I thought how selfish of him to value sleep over talking to his emotional wife. I yelled something at him and walked out of the room. I took my pillow with me to the couch and thought to myself, if he cares he will come out here and apologize and talk to me. I lay there for quite a while talking to God about all the hard work I had put into rebuilding our fragile marriage. I thought, "this is how I am rewarded for doing what is right?" "WHY GOD! Why have you given me this difficult husband who doesn't care about me? Why am I here? I know I am not supposed to pray to You to fix my husband but, FIX MY HUSBAND!" The very next day Kenny had a grand mal seizure and we learned about the cancer.

Right then and there, out of my choice to not believe the truth, to put down my shield of faith, came the attack by the enemy, the lie that was shot directly at me and hit me and sunk in, deeply wounding me. This was my fault! I prayed for God to fix my husband and now I am being punished. I was ungrateful and now Kenny was going to die because of me! Looking back I can't believe I believed that! Why did I believe that obvious lie from the enemy? Because, though I had done a lot of good works in the previous year, I lacked one very important work, "the work of believing!" To do a good work is as simple as breathing, we just do it. In James 2:26 it says, "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." I had the opposite problem, I could do works but my faith was dead. I was a stubborn stiff necked 'do-good-er.' A pharisee to the core! I believed I could be good enough for God. I believed that there was partiality and I could be loved by God more than someone else. I didn't even know that yucky belief was rooted in me!  Lets face it in this land of abundance doing good is not the problem, the problem we have is "believing in Him whom He sent."

Lies are so easy to believe! Have you seen Madagascar 2? OK don't laugh but I have a tendency to relate spiritual truths to cartoons. So in the movie the animals are all in this plane when one of the pilot's (a penguin)  notifies the captain about a blinking red light. They decide to ignore the warning signals and smash the blinking red light and call the problem solved. But that doesn't stop the plane from going down. My point, ignorance is not bliss! There are many warning signs in life that warn us we are all going down! Sicknesses and deaths bring that reality to the front of our minds. We will all die and all of us have to give an account before God. You wont be able to say, "but God wasn't I good enough?" You can't say, "Wait I didn't know my time was going to be up." You can't say, "You didn't warn me about hell." You can't say, "God I always believed in you," when you did nothing to work at believing. Remember James 2:26 from the last paragraph? Faith without works is dead! And if that's not convincing enough for you James 2:19, "You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demon's believe- and tremble!" God gives us all, especially here in the United States of America, plenty of warnings and chances to repent. Then once we do our work is to believe in Him whom He sent! How? By reading His word, by being apart of a bible teaching church, by praying to Him daily, by working out our own salvation with fear and trembling as it states in Philippians chapter 2 at the end of verse 12.


What are we striving for any ways, the next pay check, the next promotion, that boat we've been saving for? All those things wont save us! All those things wont go with us when we die. God lets us have good things to enjoy while we are here but lets not mix up our priorities! A wise friend once told me the only thing you take with you when you go is your faith! How much faith have you been working on?


Romans 3:23 says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." How freeing it is to know that God sees us all the same! We have all sinned and therefore all deserve condemnation. But in His great love and mercy He sent His perfect and Holy blameless Son to die in our place. He so loves the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. The believing part is the hard work! But God gives us a life time to figure it out. We don't know how long "a life time" will be for us so lets not role the dice!

God is good! He taught me how to live. Then He told me to trust Him, which took me a lot longer to do (issues). Then He showed me His love for me, which was with me all along I just wasn't paying attention. As I look back now I see how personal and caring God is towards me. He is that way with everyone, but only those who WORK at believing in Him whom He sent will see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the living.

Jesus Paid It All