Unbelief Limits God

The question I would like to explore is, are we doing things, or believing things that are keeping us from experiencing the fullness of God's presence?

I reckon we do believe things that keep us from experiencing the fullness of God's presence - it's called unbelief - which is wrong belief.

Consider this: when Jesus was talking about seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness - what did He say that we should not do? That's right - do not worry about what you shall eat and what you shall wear. In other words, a mindset of insecurity which is unable to trust God to meet the basic needs of life. I believe this could be one of the things that keeps us from knowing that we are right with God. If we are worrying about basic provision - it means we don't believe that God accepts us as we are. Think about that one for a moment.

When Jesus spoke about the type of heart that does not receive the Gospel - what did He say prevents the Word from bearing fruit - and it is fruit because we're talking about seeds here.  Matthew 13:22.  There we have it - security issues yet again.

The Greek verb translated "to believe" actually means "to trust". Perhaps our wrong thinking simply constitutes a lack of trusting in God?

What's the first commandment in the Law of Moses?  Exodus 20:3.

We read in Ephesians 5:5 that idolatry and covetousness are one and the same thing:

When this verse talks about inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God - it is talking about knowing the righteousness of God in Christ and the peace that comes from that (See Romans 14:17).

So, if we worry about getting our needs met and if we covet - does it mean that we don't believe we are right with God as we are? Or, if we don't believe that we are right with God - is that the result of worrying about what we shall eat and what we shall wear?

Trust as an Antidote to Fear

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. 7 Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the LORD and depart from evil.
Proverbs 3:5-7

Implicit within trust is the belief that God will never leave us nor forsake us, that He loves us more than we can ever know and that He will protect us and meet all of our needs. We should make ourselves aware of the fact that God has a plan for our life and that worry is one of the biggest hindrances to that plan being actualised in our life. God is for us and not against us.

If we can just learn to trust God, no matter what is happening around us, then we are in a good position to be able to allow the Holy Spirit to guide us and to meet all of our needs.

In the Lord’s Prayer, the Lord Jesus Christ said, “Thy will be done…” He did not reel-off a whole list of demands and wants. Sure, Jesus also said, “Give us thy daily bread…” But again, there is an element of trust in this statement: we trust that God will meet our needs in His method and timing – not ours.

A prayer from an anxious mind will say something like this: “Lord, I’ve got to get that job! Lord, I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get it – I’ll be so disappointed if I don’t. Please Lord; please give me the strength and wisdom to impress those people at the interview so that I get it.” The truth of the matter is that we don’t even know if its God will that we get that job. We tend to think that prayer is about demanding what we want – when we want.

When we pray, it would usually do us better to say, “Lord, I know you love me and I know from your Word that you will supply all my needs. Therefore Lord I am trusting you in this situation and I trust that your will be done according to Your will.” Most of the time when you pray to God, rather than seeking to ask for something, you should use the time to express your trust towards God. This brings us back to what Kenneth E. Hagin once said in that we ought to substitute praise for prayer a lot of the time.

It is not really about believing God for specific things – it is more to do with trusting the broad-based concepts, promises and principles laid-out in His Word. It is more to do with trusting in God that your needs will be met and His will be done – more than anything else.

It is believing that God’s Word is true and that God Himself is faithful. Believing that God can do awesome things is not for the purpose of encouraging believers to fantasise about specific wants.

I am convinced that the reason we read about God performing miracles in the Bible is so that God can take the ceiling off our expectations. When we are anxious, we often seek to ascertain the boundaries of something, including our own limitations or the limitations of other people. Our beliefs and expectations are then controlled by those imaginary boundaries.

God knows this and He saw to it that the Bible we read and base our lives upon, shows us that we serve a God that is not limited or restricted in any way. Fear seeks to determine a person’s limitations and faults. But with God, He has no limitations and faults and the miracles we read about in the Bible testify to this fact.

Faith and Trust As A Primary Step

1 Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,
Hebrews 6:1 NKJV

1 Let us stop going over the same old ground again and again, always teaching those first lessons about Christ. Let us go on instead to other things and become mature in our understanding, as strong Christians ought to be. Surely we don't need to speak further about the foolishness of trying to be saved by being good, or about the necessity of faith in God;
Hebrews 6:1 TLB

1 So come on, let's leave the preschool fingerpainting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. The basic foundational truths are in place: turning your back on "salvation by self-help" and turning in trust toward God;
Hebrews 6:1 MSG

We know that to have faith toward God is the same as believing His Word and trusting in His faithfulness. Hebrews 6:1 suggests that a Christian ought to move beyond the basic, primary principles of repentance of past conduct and of faith in God. Faith in this context, I believe, is more founded in a broad-based trust towards God. Basically, one of the primary steps that a Christian needs to make is the decision to trust in God no matter what.

Paul was warning Christians in Hebrews 6:1, to make sure that they do not get caught in the trap of missing the fundamental basics by trying to get saved by their own efforts, as The Living Bible emphasises in this verse, and the need to have faith in God.

The Message Bible recognises the context of faith in this verse in relation to trust and therefore gives it due emphasis with the phrase: and turning in trust toward God. A first step is something that is so utterly vital that a person cannot afford to miss it and continue without it.

The necessity of trusting God and not trying to please Him through our own good works is something that all Christians should embrace as the first step. But because Christians fail to trust God as they ought to, they suffer the consequences and have to be reminded to trust in God.

The Apostle Paul is definitely not saying that the subject of faith should not be preached. Faith is based on an understanding of the Word of God, particularly the finished work of the cross. It would be foolish therefore to suggest that teaching on the development, and application, of Biblical faith was something that should be taught as a initial step in Christianity, before moving on to other, more important subjects.

Biblical faith is the substance of Biblical teaching – a Christian cannot achieve much without it. Without faith teaching, we would be left with religious rule-keeping and nothing that can transform people’s lives. This argument further supports the belief that the necessity of faith in God in Hebrews 6:1 is a generalised trust in God.

Faith and Trust

We cannot escape the fact that faith works by love, and as such, faith requires a trust in God in order for it to work. Without trust, our faith in God will be nothing more than an anxious attempt to implement a formula; or we end-up treating faith as if it was a chance thing, a gamble, that might just work, so it’s worth giving it a shot.

Faith should always be approached with the attitude that if we get it right, if we have the right understanding and right motive, then it will work every time. But without hope you will not have the positive expectation that is faith; without trust, you will not be able to trust the One who hears your prayers and meets your needs.

Without trust in God you just end-up putting your faith in other people and things. It is incredible how some believers can develop a faith in tithing as a means of getting their needs met, but they are still reluctant to trust in God. This de-personalises the concept of a loving Father giving good gifts to His children and turns tithing into a formula that will never work.

Trust is vital in obtaining intimacy with God. In the natural sphere, you could not obtain intimacy with your spouse if you did not trust him or her – it is the same with God. The Holy Spirit lives in us – you can’t get more intimate than that! But we can grieve Him and desensitise ourselves to His leading.

We cannot just sudy the Bible, keep rules or even implement faith formuals. No matter how much revelation we gain from God’s Word, we need love, which includes trust, in order to be able to have faith for anything. We could gain an amazing depth of revelation from God’s Word, yet without love, we will not be able to be led by the Holy Spirit, and therefore, will be unable to practically apply that knowledge.

Intimacy with God makes us sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Intimacy with God comes through love. The Bible tells us that we can understand all mysteries and all knowledge, but without love, we are nothing. We are nothing because without love, we will be unable to be guided effectively by the Holy Spirit. See 1 Corinthians 13:2.

Trust as a Remedy for Past Hurts

I think the reason why we don’t want to trust God is because we still adopt the attitude that we have been hurt by other people and by God and that we are the innocent victims of an injustice. Some bad things might have happened to us and we might feel bad about it – but blaming God, ourselves and other people is not going to help us and is not going to allow us to cooperate with God.

If we choose to see ourselves as victims, we see other people, and perhaps even God, as our enemies who cannot be trusted because they might hurt us again. The best thing we can do, therefore, is to forgive them. Foregiveness means that we no longer choose to blame other people for hurting us and that we longer hold onto grudges and we allow ourselves to trust God and other people, as the love of God allows us to.

Forgiveness hands over the reigns of control from our own fear-filled and insecure minds - to God. Forgiveness is about surrender, as we choose to let God deal with the situation, with the understanding that we might still be hurt again. But even if we do get hurt again, we can choose to feel hurt or to rise above it in peace, but only if we accept God.

Faith Without Trust

Galatians 6:15 says that faith works by love. But it is not just the hope aspect of love that faith works by. The Greek word translated faith in the Bible is actually the noun form of the word believes or believeth in 1 Corinthians 13:7. Some Bible versions actually use the noun faith in 1 Corinthians 13:7, proceeded by a verb or preposition, instead of just using a verb. For instance, The New Living Translation says that love never loses faith.

Various modern translations, such as the New International Version, use the word trusts in this verse instead of believes. Faith works by believing and by trusting. Belief is often attributed to a thing such as a product or the circumstances of a situation. Whereas, trust in more personal in that it relates to a person or to God.

Jesus gave us one commandment in the New Testament. But that one commandment is actually divided into two commandments that work together:

34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
John 13:34
37 Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 "This is the first and great commandment. 39 "And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
Matthew 22:37-40

In a similar vein, faith works by believing and trusting. I would say that trust is a personal thing: we trust in a person or in God. Whereas belief is more attributed to God’s Word: we believe that God’s Word is true.

Prosperity teaching can become inbalanced to the point whereby it de-personalises the subject of prosperity by emphasising the believer’s efforts to confess scriptures that pertain to prosperity, rather than just simply trusting God. In a sense, this causes people to use Bible verses as a formula for prosperity. We really ought to consider using Psalms 84:11-12 as a formula for prosperity.

If you want to be blessed, instead of just confessing scriptures all the time, it would be better to take some responsibility and do what the Bible says we ought to do: walk uprightly and trust in God.

Anyone can read the Bible out loud, regardless of what his real beleifs and motives are. We should not expect to be blessed by God if our believing, thinking and expecting is not right.

Hope Facilitates Trust

I believe that the Biblical concept of hope, as an aspect of love, is a generic, broad-based expectation of good. It is only a state of despair, an absence of hope, which leads a person to insist on specific outcomes, and thereby, entertain fantasies.

This kind of hope comes out of peace and joy. When you have peace and joy you cannot help but expect good things to happen to you. It is only when a person lacks peace and joy that they will have a sense of foreboding about everything.
When a person has this kind of hope, they are more prone to just leaving things to fate. Hope will lead to a que sera sera kind of attitude, because although you might not know exactly what will happen in the future, you know that things will work out well for you in the end. This complies with what 1 Corinthians 13:8 has to say about love: Love never fails...

Faith Works by Trust and Hope

I am convinced that faith will not work without love, because faith requires the two vital ingredients of love that we have just studied: belief (or trust) and hope. According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the word hope means:

1 A feeling of expectation and desire. A cause or source of hope. Grounds for hoping.
2 Archaic: a feeling of trust.

Again, we are directed towards trust, as hope is a feeling of trust in archaic terms. The modern sense of hope is an expectation and desire. We often say thing like, “I hope things will go well at my job interview next week.” Kenneth E. Hagin and E.W. Kenyon have both written about the difference between faith and hope. Hope says, “I’ll have the promise someday.” Whereas, faith says, “I have it now.”

Belief and Trust

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
1 Corinthians 13:7 KJV

7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:7 NIV

7 If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him.
1 Corinthians 13:7 TLB

We can see from the New International Version that the word believeth in the King James Version can be attributed to trust as well, because it says always trusts instead of believes or believeth in 1 Corinthians 7.

The Message expresses that love trusts God always. The Amplified version says that love is ever ready to believe the best of every person. The Weymouth translation says she is full of trust. It would therefore be useful to study the meaning of this Greek word as well.

The Greek word pisteuō (G4100) appears a total of 250 times in the King James Version of the Bible. It is translated as believe 114 times, believed 78 times, believeth 33 times, believest 8 times, believing 6 times, committed 5 times, trust 3 times, commit 2 times, believers 1 time.

According to Strong’s Dictionary of Greek Words, the Greek word pisteuō translated believeth in the King James Version, means:

From G4102; to have faith (in, upon, or with respect to, a person or thing), that is, credit; by implication to entrust (especially one’s spiritual well being to Christ): - believe (-r), commit (to trust), put in trust with.

According to Thayer’s Greek Definitions, this Greek word means:

1) to think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit, place confidence in
1a) of the thing believed
1a1) to credit, have confidence
1b) in a moral or religious reference
1b1) used in the NT of the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain inner and higher prerogative and law of soul
1b2) to trust in Jesus or God as able to aid either in obtaining or in doing something: saving faith
2) to entrust a thing to one, i.e. his fidelity
2a) to be intrusted with a thing

We can see, therefore, that the same word used for believing in 1 Corinthians 13:7 is also translated elsewhere in the King James Version, as trust – although only three times. This word is used in the trust context with reference to something being committed to a person’s trust.

Thayer’s Greek Definitions describes this Greek word as: to entrust a thing to one and to be intrusted with a thing. 1 Timothy 1:11 provides an example of this.

11 According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.
1 Timothy 1:11 KJV

James Strong says that the believing aspect of love includes: to have faith (in, upon, or with respect to, a person or thing.

Albert Barnes on the Hope Aspect of Love

Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible says the following about hopes all things in 1 Corinthians 13:7.

Hopeth all things - Hopes that all will turn out well. This must also refer to the conduct of others; and it means, that however dark may be appearances; how much soever there may be to produce the fear that others are actuated by improper motives or are bad people, yet that there is a “hope” that matters may be explained and made clear; that the difficulties may he made to vanish; and that the conduct of others may be made to “appear” to be fair and pure. Love will “hold on to this hope” until all possibility of such a result has vanished and it is compelled to believe that the conduct is not susceptible of a fair explanation. This hope will extend to “all things” - to words and actions, and plans; to public and to private contact; to what is said and done in our own presence, and to what is said and done in our absence. Love will do this, because it delights in the virtue and happiness of others, and will not credit anything to the contrary unless compelled to do so.

Hope In Relation To Belief and Trust

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
1 Corinthians 13:7 KJV

7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:7 NIV

7 If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him.
1 Corinthians 13:7 TLB

The Greek word elpizō (G1679) appears a total of 32 times in the King James Version of the Bible. It is translated as trust 15 times, hope 7 times, hoped 4 times, trusted 2 times and hope’s, hopeth, hoping and trusteth all once.

According to Strong’s Dictionary of Greek Words, the Greek word elpizō (G1679) translated hopes in the King James Version, means:
From G1680; to expect or confide: - (have, thing) hope (-d) (for), trust.

According to Thayer’s Greek Definitions, this Greek word means:
1) to hope
1a) in a religious sense, to wait for salvation with joy and full confidence
2) hopefully to trust in

As you can see, this Greek word which represents the hope aspect of love in 1 Corinthians 13, is actually used to convey trust in the King James Version of the Bible, more than it is used to convey hope.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary emphasizes the trust aspect of hope in its description of this verse:
hopeth — what is good of another, even when others have ceased to hope.

The Living Bible interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13:7 attempts to personalise the message of love by expressing it in the form of trusting and believing in a person. Although, I would say that love is also to be expressed towards situations, groups of individuals and to God. I suppose we can also trust an institution or group of people, as if they were collectively an individual.

God is not a person, as such, but we can personalise love towards God as if He was a person. The concept of God as our loving Heavenly Father and we as His children, personilzes our relationship with God. Jesus represents the Son of Man aspect of God; Jesus was made incarnate and came to earth as a man. Jesus represents both our great High Priest and our sacrificial Lamb. We can therefore approach God as if He was a person through Jesus.