Hosanna Restoration Church

Faith is not effortless. It is not automatic. The man who wanted his son healed said to Jesus, “I believe, help my unbelief.” If we are honest, we can all say that we totally understand the father’s position. We say we believe, but doubt is always standing at the door! We all have plenty of work to do just believing Jesus.

We know what is right and true if we have read the Bible, just like the folks Jesus was talking to, we like to see some proof on occasion and we often miss it even though it is right before us.

Think of Job. Job was doing well. Even when things fell apart he did pretty well until his comforters became his accusers. Even though he did not accept much of what they said, he did fall into the trap of believing that God was the source of all his troubles. As a result, in his rebuke of his so called comforters he was rebuking God as well. Of course that all ended well, but reading it we can see just how easily we may fall into the same sort of trap.

This is where we have the opportunity to do our best and most important work. We must choose to believe the words and actions of Jesus above all thoughts, circumstances, and even what we may believe if it goes against the truth.

We have all been guilty of believing some things only to discover that they really had no biblical source they were just what someone said because they heard someone say it. In truth, that is much of what Job’s friends were going by in their accusations. They did not really know God, so they assumed God did the bad things. This tradition has carried on even unto today. It is difficult to get many people to look at what God really did for Job with the end of the whole situation proving what God is really like.

The scripture was given so that we could believe Jesus. We have this to show us not that God was behind the troubles but that the devil was, yet so often we see people describing hard times their Job experience that God has piled on, but He never piles on more that we can bear. We would do well to believe Jesus warning that the enemy is always desiring to take us apart. Then, instead of spending time wondering why God is attacking us, we would instead be declaring that this is not from God and God is busy fixing things.

I think most of us have been guilty of working at a lot of things harder that we have worked at believing Jesus. His word tells us that we wrestle; that takes effort. We are told to cast down everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God; that takes effort.
Everything that Jesus said and did requires effort in order to believe it. Of course it is easy as long as things are easy. If we put in the work in the smooth times we will be ready win when the battle begins.