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God's ultimate desire is to prosper you, and your experiences in life are meant to help and strengthen you—not hurt you. God's plan for you is to give you a life of expectation and a future, but what God needs from you is to believe Him and not let your doubts get in the way.
From Series: Life Lessons Learned from the Bible — Hebrews 11:1
Faith allows you to bring Heaven to earth. And when you have faith, you will lack nothing.
Faith is the key to protecting your destiny and to no longer be controlled by the world but control the world by mixing faith with God’s Word. When you understand the principles of faith and how to develop the fruit of faith you will live victoriously and in peace.
We are taught that we should figure things out on our own, be self-sufficient and independent, but life was never designed that way. We were designed to live life with God, through God, and for God; and we were designed to be prosperous and to have guaranteed success with His help (Galatians 1:10, Jeremiah 29:11).
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped [wished] for, the conviction [firmly held belief] of things not seen.
Assurance means a confident statement or announcement meant to help you believe or rely on God, and faith is a positive statement meant to help you believe God with expectation because you know it will happen.
For example, in Jeremiah 29:11 it says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
In this scripture God says He declares, which means He announces aloud over our life's what He wants for us. Whatever God says about us we need to be saying the same things about ourselves.
In Proverbs 18:21 it tells us that death and life is in the tongue. This is because your words have energy. When you speak negatively your words become your reality.
In the book of Genesis, God had to speak the Word before the Worlds that we now see became a visible reality (Hebrews 11:3, Psalm 33:6,9, John 1:3). This proves that Gods Word’s contains creativity and since we are made in His image and is one with Him, you too can speak God's Words into your life, and it too will become a visible reality.
The key to your success, power, and influence is your oneness with God (1 Corinthians 6:17, John 14:20).
God says His goal for you is to prosper you in Jeremiah 29:11. This means, your journeys in life are meant to help and strengthen you—not hurt you. God's goal for you is to give you expectations and a future but what God needs from you is to believe Him and not let your unbelief get in the way.
How does our unbelief get in the way?
In Mark 9:23 Jesus said, “Everything is possible for the one who believes." The requirement is, you have to believe. When you believe then everything becomes a possibility. The word for means in favor of and when you believe, things happen in your favor. Or in favor of the one who believes.
It's like having a judge rule in your favor in court. When a judge rules in your favor it means to award a decision to you or to render a decision favoring you. Basically, you get what you ask for.
Also, in Matthew 21:21 Jesus said, "if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but you can also say to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea, and it will be done."
The requirement remains unchanged: to have faith without doubt. The term 'and' signifies 'together with,' indicating that with faith, coupled with a strong belief in the truth even without evidence, you not only have the ability to perform miracles like Jesus did with the fig tree but also to command mountains to move.
Your unbelief can get in the way of God being able to help you and to answer your requests. An example of this is In Matthew 17:15-18 where a sick boy was not able to be healed from the disciples because of their disbelief.
Having unbelief will cause you to displease God (Hebrews 11:6). In Psalms 78:12-41, although God showed evidence of His faithfulness and abilities, the people still doubted Him. Their doubt caused God to be displeased, it put limitations on their lives, and caused them to suffer.
There are at least 60 verses in the Bible where the people of God doubted God even though He showed evidence of His abilities, power, and authority. God was constantly questioned to prove Himself. But why? Why was God constantly questioned after numerous evidence of His miracles, answers, sign, wonders, and more?
It was because of their hearts, customs, experiences, what they saw and heard, stubbornness, pride, impatience, deception, and not having a close relationship with God.
Why do we have unbelief
We struggle with unbelief because of what we see, hear, and experience. The enemy, Satan, is a master of using our experiences, current situation, or what we have been told against us.
If you are someone who constantly face disappointments in life and has not had your perception changed or mind renewed, then it will be difficult for you to see your life prosperous. Instead of seeing how God is using the bad experiences in your life to give you a better outcome, the enemy wants you to see your life as a failure.
With God things operate differently when you have a close relationship with Him, because with God your outcome and life will be different from others—it will always end up good (Psalm 23:6).
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 says, "For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond comparison. So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
This revelation given to Paul let us know that our bad experiences are temporary and can be used to produce success in our lives beyond what we could imagine (Ephesians 3:20).
If you cannot allow yourself to look beyond what you see, hear, and have experienced to seeing what God has waiting for you, then you'll struggle with unbelief. But there is a solution and that is to ask God to help you with your unbelief (Mark 9:24). This is the Holy Spirit's (who is God) role, to help you (Romans 8:26).
Jesus in His divine love and understanding the needs of humanity did not leave us to fend or figure it all out for ourselves. He sent us God's Spirit (the Holy Spirt) to guide, assist, teach, reveal, and support us along our life's journey (John 15:26).
The next solution is to read the Bible because God tells us that "faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word about Christ" — Romans 10:17.
By taking in God's Word, it will force out and drown out the lies that you tell yourself, what the enemy tells you, or what others say. When your mind is consumed with God’s Word, then there is no room for any other thought but Gods because God's Word becomes dominant (1Corinthians 2:16, Romans 12:2).
The book of Job is a terrific book to read about showing how your faith grows when you read the Scriptures.
Stubbornness
Unbelief can stem from a lack of evidence or knowledge, but its theological use of the word says wilful opposition to the truth.
Based on Scripture, stubbornness causes us to have unbelief. We read in 2 King 17:14-20 how God's people willfully did not trust God because they turned down what God was saying and choose to do things their way. They chose to follow the customs, traditions, and ways of the people they were surrounded by instead of trusting God. This caused God's people to become disobedient.
When you habitually disobey God's instructions for your life you cause disobedience to be both something easy to do and a part of you.
Disobedience gets in the way of God, it hurts you, and it hurts those around you. It is so dangerous that it will cause you to walk out of the will of God and His Divine will for your life.
The danger of being stubborn is, if you continue to not listen, God will give you over to your stubborn desire (Psalm 81:11-12, 1 Samuel 15:23). Also, people who are stubborn usually are irrational and easily become prey to the enemy (1 Peter 5:8).
Pride
Pride, specifically arrogance (a trait of pride) can cause unbelief. When you believe what you want is better than what God wants or that you know more than God then you are prideful.
Pride causes you to become arrogant and stiff-necked causing you to listen to your own advice over the advice of the all-knowing God (Nehemiah 9:16, 1John 3:20, Psalm 147:5, Psalm 139:4).
Satan's pride made him think he was higher in wisdom, power, glory, etc., than God. It made him believe he could outsmart God, but he failed to recognize God was able to hear his thoughts (Isaiah 14:13-14). A servant is not greater than his master, and the creation will never be greater than its creator.
Unfamiliar with God
"The root of faith is the knowledge of a Person." - Oswald Chambers
We also have unbelief because we don't know God. We don't read the Scriptures or interact with God, and we don't make time to fellowship, talk, open up, and be intimate with Him.
In the Bible Moses had faith, and because of Moses's faith God was able to use him to fulfill God's plan for the nation of Israel.
Moses's faith came from spending a lot of time with God.
One time he went away for about 1 and a half month to spend time with God alone. The times Moses spent with God developed into a close relationship where God spoke to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend (Exodus 33:11).
Abraham too knew God intimately and trusted the Lord to guide him in every area of his life. His trust was so strong that God praised him as righteous (Romans 4:3).
Also, Noah acted on faith when he was told to build the ark because he had an intimate relationship with God.
The amount of your faith is in direct relationship to your experience and knowledge of God.
It is hard to trust someone when you don't know them and to know someone you need to spend time with them.
When you spend time with God you will get to know more about His character, abilities, strengths, and wisdom. Then it will become easy to trust Him, because you will see His intentions for you are always good and He does not make mistakes.
Having knowledge of the Scriptures will allow you to know the characteristics and the nature of God. You will see that God is kind, gentle, good, forgiving, patient, understanding, merciful, faithful, highly protective, humble, abundant with grace, gives you favor, and so much more. Most importantly, you will experience how deep His love for you is.
God's very nature and character is faithfulness and goodness. He is always constant, true, and so is His Word. Neither He or His Word will ever change.
Malachi 3:6 says, “I the Lord do not change…” and Isaiah 55:10-11 tells us that God watches over His Word to make sure what He says happens.
Psychology tells us the relationships we have had over the last five years will shape our personality; so spending time with God will shape your personality, influence your thought life, and influence your whole life.
When you live a life with God you will obey even when you don’t understand or when it’s uncomfortable, since you know that anything God does in your life is perfect, good for you, and cannot be done better any other way.
Being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised
There are other reasons we struggle with unbelief like impatience, deception, fear and more but whatever the reasons my be, to help maintain and increase your faith is to know what the Scripture is saying (Romans 10:17).
Your faith becomes stronger as you study the Bible. Something starts to happen inside of you as you notice yourself changing over time. It will allow you to see who God is, what He can do, how He has and can help you, what He is doing for you now, and more. Also the Scriptures are God's resume and proof of God being faithful.
You will realize that God can do everything and anything (Genesis 18:14); and no matter how bad the circumstance may be, in the end you will be victorious—you will overcome! Psalm 3:8.
It is important not to be influenced by your emotions when it comes to faith. When you are faced with a difficult situation you naturally will react in your usual way but remain joyful (James 1:2). If what God promises you wasn’t true, then the enemy wouldn't entice you.
Nehemiah 8:10 says, "...the Joy of the Lord is your strength." So, the next time the enemy tries to weaken your faith, rejoice instead of becoming sad or frustrated because your joy will be the strength needed to maintain your faith.
God wants you to have a full understanding of faith so you will have the power needed in every area of your life, and your faith will give you that power because faith allows you to become all that God desires for you to become.
Remember, faith is not only believing in God. It is believing God and living by every Word that comes from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:4).
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen"
— Hebrews 11:1.
You may not see what you're hoping for now, but allow faith to help your eyes become opened.
From Series: Life Lessons Learned from the Bible — Hebrews 11:1
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