Doubting Thomas

(Edmond Sanganyado asked me how I think one can overcome unbelief when I commented on one of his posts. So, dear Edmond, I’ve made some addition to what I posted on your blog site and hoping you’ll see this. Thanks for asking me to do this. It’s the 1st part.)

It is the opposite of saving faith, and by this same faith, we understand, God perfected creationism (Hebrews 11:3). God, therefore is the first to exercise faith. If God is love (1John 4:8) it then follows that true faith must be found in ‘Love’ i.e. God. Unbelief is not only the absence of faith, it is an unfortunate rejection of the Lord God of salvation.

In a stealthy creep unbelief does advance its bid to strike a devastating punch. Unbelief is always the enemy’s approach. Not once has unbelief uttered the beneficial, “peace be unto you”, because it has always run a destructive errand for its author – Lucifer. Unbelief is Satanic set up. It comes to steal, and to kill, and to destroy [John 10:10]. It has been missioned to disarm you – of your shield faith (Ephesians 6:16, 17) so that you cannot use the sword of the word – in order to weaken your spiritual business relationship with the Author of faith (Hebrews 12:2) to subdue and to shipwreck you. The Luciferian spirit of unbelief is sadistic, relishing every second of your plunge into the slavery of faithlessness.

Unbelief blindfolds (John 12:40). It delists you from the partakers of joyous mood of accomplishment. By it we disappoint God (Mark 6:6). It makes us losers (Mark 9:24); and by which we stumble (Romans 4:20). Dejection is its sole terminus. Thank God, however, that there is a way out for an unbelieving heart.

Matthew 13:58, “And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief”. This is the first time ‘unbelief’ is used in the entire Bible which the Greek calls apistia (ap-is-tee’-ah): ‘faithlessness, that is, (negatively) disbelief (want of Christian faith), or (positively) unfaithfulness (disobedience)’. Jesus, even Jesus, in His native Nazareth, could not perform great miracles which all Israel had hitherto witnessed. Unbelief is nothing but one of the games Satan plays to outwit humans. To beat the enemy the first thing is to uphold the God given, Joshua 1:8, formula. The word ‘depart’, muwsh (moosh), means ‘to withdraw’. Joshua was directed never to allow the positive word of God to ‘muwsh’ from his mouth. Joshua learned that one of the secrets of the success of Moses was to have shunned negativity. Positively, Joshua was to ‘meditate’ which in Hebrew, is hagah (daw-gaw’): ‘to murmur (in pleasure or anger); by implication to ponder’. ‘Ponder’, from Collin’s Dictionary, is ‘to give thorough or deep consideration (to)’.

When one fills one’s whole being with God’s rhema it will definitely purge one of the negating impurity of the enemy’s words of unbelief. Like He informed Joshua, God assures us of ‘good success’. The clause ‘have good success’ is śakal (saw-kal’): ‘to be (causatively, make or act) circumspect and hence, intelligent’. You would have, on account of depending on God’s word or promises, acted intelligently in your ‘way’. ‘Way’ is derek (deh’-rek) from BDB Definition: ‘way, road, distance, journey, manner a. road, way, path b. journey c. direction d. manner, habit, way e. of course of life (figuratively)’. ‘Prosperous’: tsalach or tsaleach (tsaw-lakh’): ‘to advance, push, prosper’. Unbelief will hinder your positive push in your course of life.

After you have learnt the word of God or better still the promises in God’s word, you must guard it as your treasure. You guard the word of God like the pugilist holds his fists and arms to guard his chest and ribs (or else one heavy punch lays him flat even till the count of twenty) by doing Hebrews 12:2, “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith…”. It is all about Jesus. The word ‘looking’ is aphoraō (af-or-ah’-o) Thayer Definition: ‘to turn the eyes away from other things and fix them on something’.

Strong’s Definition: ‘to consider attentively’. Looking, grammatically, is a present continuous verb. Yea, it is all about Jesus, all the time, so do not stop, for a second, in your continuous ‘looking’. ‘Author’ is archēgos (ar-khay-gos’) ‘the chief leader, prince’; while ‘finisher’ is teleiōtēs (tel-i-o-tace’) Thayer Definition: 1. a perfecter 2. one who has in his own person raised faith to its perfection and so set before us the highest example of faith’. Strong’s Definition: ‘a completer, that is, consummator’.

…to be continued…

Read the 2nd part here

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