Unbelieving Believers

Unbelieving Believers

Scripture: John 20:24-27; Luke 10:38-42; John 11:1-40

Good morning Strangers Rest. I want to open this message with a familiar story recorded in John 20:24-27. It is the story of Thomas doubting Jesus’ resurrection and it says, “(24) Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. (25) The other disciples therefore said to him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ So he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.’ (26) And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, ‘Peace to you!’ (27) Then He said to Thomas, ‘Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.’” No one doubts that Thomas believed in Jesus, he was a believer. However, in this instance, in this moment, in this situation, he struggled to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. Although Thomas was a believer in Jesus, he was an unbeliever in His resurrection until he saw for himself that Jesus was alive. When Jesus addressed Thomas and corrected him, He told him, “Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” The title of my message this morning is “Unbelieving Believers.”

Last week I told you that there will be times when we must stand alone for the truth of God’s word. There will be times when the majority might be walking the wrong path, and we must stand up and say that we cannot follow. To be able to stand alone for God we must know and understand His word. But here is the key, once we know and understand it, we must shift to believing it. Just because you know and understand something does not mean you believe it. Atheists know about and understand what we believe about God, but they do not believe in Him. With our understanding of God’s word, we must choose to believe it without modifying it to fit what we already believe. This morning, I want to encourage you to ask yourself the same question I find myself asking, “Do I truly believe God in all things, most things, or just some things?” So, let us pause for a minute and talk about what it means to believe something.

Belief is defined as the “acceptance by the mind that something is true or real, often supported (or fortified) by an emotional or spiritual sense of certainty.” When the mind accepts something as true and then it is fortified by an emotional or spiritual sense of certainty, that “something” becomes a belief. Sometimes beliefs can change when challenged with new information and/or argument, but some beliefs never change. When you have a strong belief, or what I refer to as a “stronghold belief,” it is a belief that will not change. That word strong in this sense means “able to withstand great force or pressure.” In other words, this belief will hold fast even when faced with intense pressure and/or force for it to be changed. This strong belief is represented by an internal power or fortitude. Thomas held a strong belief in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and that did not change when Jesus died. However, Thomas’ was not able to extend this belief when it came to Jesus being resurrected from the dead. My point is this; we can rightly believe something so strongly that we will not bulge from it when pressured to do so, but believing in that one thing does not mean we will also believe something else that is associated with it. I will explain this more shortly.

For a belief to start developing, something must be presented and accepted as real. The National Institute of Health (NIH) says this about the development of beliefs: “beliefs of individuals are created by mental processes that involve perception, attention, valuation, and storage as well as up-dating of information.” Those mental processes – how we think and reach conclusions about something create beliefs. Those processes involve our perception of something, our attention to something, our valuation of something and then lastly our storing it. Everything you have a strong belief about is stored in your memory so that you will not forget it. This is why some men treat women as beneath them – and not just their spouse, all women. They lived it growing up and eventually those ideas were implanted and adopted by them. Now those thoughts, after years of being stored in their memory, have become beliefs – they honestly believe that women are not on the same level as them. Please listen to this, unless you are suffering with a medical condition that affects the brain, what you genuinely believe about something is not forgotten. So why is this important? I have shared with you before that Hosea 4:6 says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…..” Gaining knowledge is the first step for creating strong beliefs and this is especially true when it comes to our walk with Christ.