September 26th, 2012

What are you most afraid of in your life?  Growing old?  Death?  Getting sick or disabled?  Being bankrupt or financially bereft? How about being all alone, or even abandoned?  Betrayal?  These are all very understandable answers.  I share many of them, yet tonight, I want us to look past these common “fears” that we all share, and dig a bit deeper into  to what I contend should be all of our biggest fear.  “Disbelief,”  the inability or refusal to believe or accept something as true.  You see unlike a dreaded disease, or the red ink on a spreadsheet, even an empty fridge, this is much less obvious!  Disbelief sneaks into our life if we let it, the seeds get planted any number of ways, it crawls in and whispers little doubts into our ear.  Maybe you will recognize the voice?  Sounds like this: “don’t even bother, it won’t do any good anyway.”  Or maybe, “that’s just an old story written from a long time ago, you can’t take it literal,” or “that wasn’t a miracle, that was just coincidental.”  This little “harmless whisper” can quickly spread into a widespread virus of disbelief.  Before long we become doubters of God’s power and even relevance in our life.  More and more doses of doubt and before long we become cynical, and pessimistic.  Oh yes we still claim to believe in God, yet we have so marginalized Him and even relegated Him to nothing more than an old “story” that has no context or power for our life right now!  2nd Timoth 3:5 says we have a form of Godliness yet deny its power,” which I contend is worse than not believing altogether.  We can look in the Gospels or Old Testament and see time and time again- where doubt snuck in, it often led to a forfeiture of God’s blessing!- You see when we doubt and disbelieve, we disempower God’s work in our life.  When Peter took his eyes off of Jesus he no longer could walk on water.  When King ASA of Judah ( even after trusting God and dedicating his life to follow God) turned away from God and instead made his own peace treaty (out of fear) he messed up the blessing of peace for his life.  I wonder if I am circumventing blessings in my life, or hindering a breakthrough because I simply don’t believe?  Hebrews 11:6 says- “without faith it is impossible to please God.”- Thanks for letting me share.  Randy Young