Intro Post - New Page for Imagine This Is it working? Your belief system . . . Is it really working? . . . With all due respect, how is life going for you?
In our First Place Bible study group, we are currently using Beth Moore's program, Believing God. We are taking a look at our lives to see how we measure up to believing God as proven through our fruit: living out his commands. Whew! What a challenge!
The suggested pledge of faith that encompasses what we are called to believe is:
- God is who He says He is.
- God can do what He says He can do.
- I am who God says I am.
- I can do all things through Christ.
- God's Word is alive and active in me.
We are committing this pledge of faith to memory to call upon in times of stress, temptation, ridicule, etc. These five statements sum up what I want to live: I'M BELIEVING GOD.
What's the difference? The proof of belief is in the DOING. What we DO proves what we believe. Are you demonstrating your belief ? Does your daily (moment by moment) life - all you do and say - show the fruit of the spirit and thus prove you believe God? There is the challenge!
How can we believe God if we don't even know what He says? To know God is to know --really KNOW -- what He says. If we need to have our faith strengthened, and so believe and trust God, we simply MUST know what God says.
This week, we will be committing His word to heart. We begin with Mark 9:24 and Romans 4:23-24. Don't let the sheer volume of the Bible text keep you from equipping yourself with the word of God. Just start with us today to memorize these two verses. You have a week -- how hard can it be? LOL, at my age? -- VERY hard -- but I can do all things through Christ!
If you take the challenge to memorize these two verses, comment to this post -- or -- email me. [email protected]
Mark 9:24 (NIV)
. . . "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"
Romans 4:23-24 (NIV)
The words "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.
I invite you to read all of chapter 4 in Romans to get a context for that second memory verse. It is a profound chapter (aren't they all?) It is especially touching in The Message version:
Romans 4 (The Message)
Trusting God
1-3 So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we're given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, "Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own."
4-5 If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.
6-9 David
confirms this way of looking at it, saying that the one who trusts God
to do the putting-everything-right without insisting on having a say in
it is one fortunate man:
Fortunate those whose crimes are carted off,
whose sins are wiped clean from the slate.
Fortunate the person against
whom the Lord does not keep score.
Do you think for a minute that this blessing is only pronounced over those of us who keep our religious ways and are circumcised? Or do you think it possible that the blessing could be given to those who never even heard of our ways, who were never brought up in the disciplines of God? We all agree, don't we, that it was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God?
10-11 Now think: Was that declaration made before or after he was marked by the covenant rite of circumcision? That's right, before he was marked. That means that he underwent circumcision as evidence and confirmation of what God had done long before to bring him into this acceptable standing with himself, an act of God he had embraced with his whole life.
12 And it means further that Abraham is father of all people who embrace what God does for them while they are still on the "outs" with God, as yet unidentified as God's, in an "uncircumcised" condition. It is precisely these people in this condition who are called "set right by God and with God"! Abraham is also, of course, father of those who have undergone the religious rite of circumcision not just because of the ritual but because they were willing to live in the risky faith-embrace of God's action for them, the way Abraham lived long before he was marked by circumcision.
13-15 That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God's decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That's not a holy promise; that's a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God's promise at that—you can't break it.
16 This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that's reading the story backward. He is our faith father.
17-18 We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!"
19-25 Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.
Sally- I am absolutely on board with memorizing those verses. Thanks for the challenge. :)
Posted by: Chelle' | September 23, 2007 at 11:28 AM
Terrific post! I am also doing a Beth Moore study -Breaking Free- which also addresses BELIEVING God (not just 'in' God). It has been eyeopening!
Posted by: Melissa | March 17, 2008 at 11:09 PM
memorizing and repeating mantras is not the same as knowing anything.
if you keep saying:
"santa claus is who he says he is. easter bunny can do what he says he can do. i am who tooth fairy says i am."
... will that make any of it true?
what will help you more in reality:
if the latter, how do you even know if you have the correct mythology?
why are you so sure about christian mythology instead of egyptian, hindu, japanese, chinese, aztec, zulu, greek / roman, mohican, norse, scientology, muslim, jewish, mormon, catholic, pentecostal, rastafarian, santeria, etc, etc, etc, etc?
(remember, "the bible/jesus said it" is not an answer to this question. all the religions have their own holy books, messiahs, and/or prophets which contradict yours.)
Posted by: sg | May 07, 2010 at 08:46 AM
My dear friend, sg (smellygrrl), it is EXACTLY the causes and effects that have occured in my reality as shown by actual evidence that I HAVE experienced myself -- this is EXACTLY what I'm speaking about. In the final analysis, all we have to go on is our own experience. I am SO SURE about Jesus precisely because I have experienced his influence in my life. He is alive and well and so am I - with Him. Try with an open mind to ask Him into your heart to answer these questions for you. Only then will you understand and know for sure. (forgive my tardy reply.) God's blessings to you.
Posted by: Sally Turlington | August 24, 2010 at 12:19 PM