Do We Really Believe?

DO WE REALLY BELIEVE?
Take an empty cola bottle sometime and fill it half full of water. Then, take some vegetable oil and fill it the rest of the way. Then try to shake it with all your might so it will become all mixed up. What happens? The moment you stop shaking, it begins to separate from one another, doesn’t it? What is the moral? The moral is that, by their very nature, oil and water do not mix.

The same is true with Godliness and worldliness. Unfortunately, today there is too much world in the church. But if that is true, it is true because there is too much world in each of us. You might say that we live here and we need to be in the world. We might need to be in the world, but does the world have to be in us?

2 CORINTHIANS 5:20 tells us where we stand in relation to the world. “So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” In Ephesians 2:19, Paul writes “So now you Gentiles (This would be all people that are not Jews) are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family.”
And since we belong to God; since we are citizens of heaven working as ambassadors here on earth; we need to focus more on God and less on the world, but to do so, we need to make sure that we really believe in God, and not just think we do.

A physics professor was teaching about the law of the pendulum. We all know what a pendulum is, right? It swings from side to side, and the distance it swings is always shorter each time it comes back. The professor had nailed a rope to the wall just above the blackboard. To this rope, he had attached a baseball. He asked how many in the class really believed in the law of the pendulum and all raised their hands..

With that, he pulled the rope to one side and marked where it was on the board. Then he let go of it and every time it swung back to his side, he put another mark where it stopped. The end result was he had many marks, all closer to the center than the one before, proving the law was true. He asked again how many really believed in the law, and all raised their hands again.

Then he took the class into an auditorium, where he had hung on a rope from the rafters just above the stage. Attached to this rope was a 100-pound weight. He asked for a volunteer. He had a chair sitting on the side of the stage and he had the student who volunteered sit in it. He then took the weight, which was hanging in the middle of the stage and carried it over to a few inches from the student’s face. He asked him if he believed in the law of the pendulum, and the boy, starting to get a little worried by now, said he did.

With that, the professor let go of the weight and it swung clear to the other side of the stage, and then began to come back. The young man came out of the chair in a hurry! Did he believe, or did he just think he believed?

The first thing we need is...
1. A BELIEVING HEART
In John 1:6-7, we read that “John the Baptist, (came) to tell about the light (Jesus) so that everyone might believe …..” This is how we believe; through Jesus Christ. Without Jesus there is no belief.

That is confirmed in John 20:31, “But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life by the power of his name.”
In order to be a real Christian, and in order to receive eternal life, we must be real believers. We must have a burning in our hearts to be with Jesus; to know more about Him; and to know Him more.

Remember the story about the young man who sat on the chair waiting for the 100-pound weight to come back towards his face? There are many Christians who have the same type of faith in their belief in Jesus. They think they believe, and they say they believe, but when push comes to shove, they get out of the way as fast as they can.

Remember when Peter told Jesus that he would follow him into death if necessary? Just a few hours later Peter denied Jesus three times. Peter was like that young man on stage, too. He thought he believed, but when he was pushed, he collapsed like a house of cards. (See Matthew 26:69-75) We cannot have faith unless we really believe.
Everybody believes in something. What is it that you believe in? And how much do you really believe in it? It is very easy to think you believe when there is no risk involved. It is more difficult to truly believe when you risk losing something very important.

Just like the student, we need to know the basics of what is offered to us. He needed to know what the law of the pendulum was, and we need to know what the law of salvation is. It is eternal life in heaven, with God the creator.

2. WHAT IT IS WE REALLY BELIEVE IN

USA Today took a survey several years ago and asked Americans in the top 1% income bracket how much they would spend for three things: Great intellect, true love, and a place in heaven. Those wealthy people said they would be willing to spend an average of $407K for great intellect, $487K for true love, $640K for a place in heaven!

So, some people think they can buy their way into heaven. That falls right in line with people like that great theologian, Sophia Loren. She said, and I quote, “I should go to heaven; otherwise it’s not nice. I haven’t done anything wrong. My conscience is very clean. My soul is as white as orchids, and I should go straight, straight to heaven.”

George Barna conducted his own survey, and 51% of those surveyed said they believe that if a person is good, or does good things for other people, they will get their spot in heaven. So we see that Ms. Loren’s beliefs have been around as long as there have been people on the earth.

We see the fallacy of this in Romans 9:30-32 – “…. the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.”

The Israelites had a believing heart, but what they believed in wasn’t helping them. They believed they had to follow all the laws of the Old Testament to get to heaven. They were just like the people today; good and earnest people who have it all wrong when thinking about their relationship to heaven.

Those who believe in works or some other way of getting to heaven besides believing in Jesus are not bad people. They are wonderful people who have the right heart, but their heart is misdirected.

The Bible is very clear in what we should believe in. It does not mince words. Pure and simple, we need to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, sent to be our ONLY way to heaven. He is our Redeemer and our Savior. He is THE path, not ONE OF THE paths.

So, we need a believing heart, and we need to realize just what we really believe in. Once we have these down pat, we are then ready to …


3. STOP RUNNING AWAY

The student sat in the chair, and when the weight started swinging back his way, he quickly jumped out of his chair and ran away. He believed, but he believed only until he had to risk losing something, like his head. Many Christians are the same way, too. They go to church and do all the things, and they will continue to do that until a serious challenge comes along.
In Mark 9, we read where Jesus healed a demon-possessed boy and then the boy’s father came up and said, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief.” We are much like that boy’s father. We all believe, but we also sometimes … don’t believe. In other words, we believe with our intellect, but we do not believe with our heart. We need to do like the boy’s father did and ask Jesus to help us have more belief.
The author of Hebrews says: “Be careful then, dear brothers and sisters. Make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God. …… And then says of the Israelites that were not allowed to enter the Promise Land: “…So we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter his rest.” (Hebrews 3:12-19)
We have a natural tendency to run away before we commit. We see that all the time with people who say they are Christians, but will not go to anybody and tell them about Jesus. I truly believe that being non-committal towards Jesus is a sin. If we don’t know Him here, He has promised to not know us there.

Many people freeze up when asked to state their relationship to Jesus. Many people would actually rather deny Him than take the risk of having somebody mock them by confessing Jesus. Isn’t that what Peter did on the night they arrested Jesus?

The young man who sat in the chair on the stage had a decision to make. He could trust the truth, or he could run when it got uncomfortable. We have that same choice to make today.

We can choose to have a believing heart; then ponder and study what it is we actually believe; and then stop running long enough to cement our relationship with Christ, or we can run away.

The problem with running, is that one day you will have no other place to run to, and you will find yourself in that long line, waiting to be judged one-on-one with the Lord. When you find yourself standing there, what are you going to feel like when He looks directly at you and says, “NEXT”?