Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – the powerful stand off between faith and doubt, and the deep shaping impact doubt can have on my experience of the life God intends.
Hebrews 4:2-3 TPT
[2] For we have heard the good news of deliverance just as they did, yet they didn’t join their faith with the Word. Instead, what they heard didn’t affect them deeply, for they doubted. [3] For those of us who believe, faith activates the promise and we experience the realm of confident rest!
Observation
It is easy to hear the promises and life that God offers and not join your faith to what you hear. To enter into the life of God, the rest He promises, it’s not by hearing but by faith. Faith engages what has been heard with a heart and spirit reception of “yes, let it be as you have said in my life.”
“Faith activates the promise and we experience the realm of confident rest.” Faith takes the promises of God and rests confidently in them as truth. Faith is the powerful activator of all that God has intended for my life. Now faith is not something I have to work at, or in my strength produce, faith is a gift God generously and joyously gives. When I hear His promises I ask that He would release in me the faith to join to the promise so as it can be activated in my life. God doesn’t want me to read His ways and then run off, He gives me Himself as the one who enables His life to become my life. God desires intimacy and faith is released in intimacy. Faith hears and says “Dad will you unwrap and release that in my life, I want what you have promised.”
Faith allows Gods promises to be move from intellect to revelation, from head to heart and spirit. From nice words, to my words for life. From interesting, to passionately desired. “What they heard didn’t affect them deeply, for they doubted.” Doubt stops the transfer of Gods truth from head to heart/spirit. Doubt keeps me inspecting it intellectually and weighing it up with the other voices given permission to present their cases. Other voices like, my circumstances, My feelings, worldly culture and systems, family stories, my pain, darkness. Doubt invites their voices to speak to Gods promises and give their evidence and opinion. Faith grabs the hand of unbelief and leads it to the table of God and sits at the table feasting upon His promises. Faith does not ignore doubt, it just does not allow it to have the final say, it brings its witness and makes it submit to Gods truth. “Yet”, “and,” “but” at the end of the evidence of doubt opens the door to experience all that God has to say about my life. It says “you have been heard, but there is a more reliable witness.”
Faith is critical to my experience of God because freedom is essential to the way God treats me. He gives me complete freedom to reject or receive all that He offers me. Faith is how I exercise my freedom to say “yes.” The beauty of faith is that it does not rely on evidence, it is a confidence in the one who makes the promise, not a statement based on the evidence of the likelihood of it being able to happen for me. Faith says “yes,” and opens the door of my life to receive the promise, based on my confidence in the one who offers the promise. Doubt wants the evidence to be inspected and takes my eyes off God himself.
Application
I will join my faith with Gods words of life, and deliverance and rest, and I will experience deeply and activate the promises in my life. Doubt will always be allowed to speak just never to shape my life. I will live in the “realm of confident rest” and shape my days from here. No more hearing without faith, no more wasted promises laying at end of the bed unopened by faith. I will not follow the stories of doubt for they have one goal to lead me away from Gods deliverance and rest.
Response
Thank you for the gift of faith. Thank you for the promises of deliverance and rest and life in you. Thank you that you do not give me a treasure map and send me on my way to try and discover life on my own. You share with me your promises and then gift me with faith to experience their fullness released in my life. I love that you adore intimacy with me and want to be the giver and enabler of life in you. I don’t know why, but I will join my faith with your promise and experience you deeply . I am a blessed man.
Meditation
What promises of God are not actively shaping your life because you have not joined faith to the word?
Are there areas where the testimony of doubt has stopped the truth from affecting you deeply?
JOURNEY DEEPER
merrilyn
very encouraging ,thank you
merrilyn
I am a child of God