The Battle To Believe

What do you believe about believing? Here were two blind men who came to Jesus for help. Jesus could have just touched them, or better still, simply spoke the word, and they could have been healed of their blindness. But instead, He asked them the question, “Do you believe I can do this?” He also could have added for people in our day, “Do you believe I will do this?”

How much blessing does God want you to have? How abundant does He want your life to be? According to the way many people tend to think, God is going to get more glory out of His children’s life if they are sick, poverty stricken, and under a mountain of trouble. But is this really what the Bible teaches, or is it simply a cop out to keep from taking a stand of faith concerning your situation? If you are a parent, how good do you want your children to have it? Are you concerned with their physical needs? If you can help them when they are sick, are you willing to do it? If they are in trouble, are you willing to help them? If the answer is, “Yes,” is it because you love them? Does it even make sense that God loved you so much, that He sent the Lord Jesus to die in your place, and He saved you to be His prized possession for eternity, but He doesn’t deliver you from the things that constantly oppress you in this life?

I want you to think about how God delivers. First, it is by the power of His Spirit. Make no mistake about it, any deliverance from God, whether it be salvation of the soul or healing of the body, is by the power His might, through the working of the Holy Spirit. Then, it is according to your faith. When these blind men affirmed that they believed Jesus was able to give them their sight, verse 29 says, “Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith let it be to you.” I submit to you that we get according to our faith.

Now, think about the way you think, and think about the way you pray. The greatest battles of history have not been fought on the beaches of Normandy, the jungles of Viet Nam, or the dessert sands of Iraq, but in the human heart in the battle to believe. The devil is described in the Bible as the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. He is only has two opportunities to do that: 1) if God gives him permission for a specific purpose, as in the life of Job; 2) if you give him permission through confessing unbelief. The devil wants to steal your faith in the promise of God’s word, kill your effectiveness and productiveness for God, and destroy your life in every way possible.

Think about the reason God permitted Satan to touch Job’s life with pain and misery: It was to prove him the liar that he is. But, have you ever thought about Job’s first response? He started confessing how miserable he was. You say, “That’s a normal reaction.” It is normal, but Job went for a long time, 37 chapters, wallowing in his misery. It was not until chapter 42, that he started making positive confession of faith. In Job 42:3, Job said, “I’ve been saying stuff, when I didn’t know what I was talking about.” Now, I’m paraphrasing that, but that’s what he was saying. I don’t believe he had to go through all the misery he went through. He could have been delivered a whole lot earlier, if he had done what he finally did. God wasn’t trying to make Job suffer. All He was after to was to prove the devil a liar. Job’s confession of his faith set the time that it took to do that.

There are times when we give the devil permission to bring misery into our lives by our confession of unbelief. God is Omniscient, He knows everything, including our most secret thoughts. There is nowhere in the Bible that we are told that the devil has that ability. He is supernatural, but he is not omniscient. What he knows is what we tell him, and he is a good listener! We only have to say it one time, and he jumps on it with both feet. When we speak words of doubt and defeat, he gets all over it and magnifies it, and if we do it enough, he will build up a strong hold in our life. God has given us the authority to pull down strong holds, if we have the faith to operate in that authority. Second Corinthians 10:3-5 says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;” The devil doesn’t read our thoughts, but our thoughts are the first stage of our words and actions. When the Bible speaks of our heart, it is most often speaking of the place where our thoughts originate. It is from that place that the mouth gets its inspiration, so God equips us to be able to fix it there, at its most basic level.