Step Up Your Believing

Step Up Your Believing

    I have a picture of our daughter from a family vacation that I enjoy looking at because I can see she was having the time of her life. God desires for us to have the time of our lives every day by manifesting His abundance in every way—body, soul, and spirit. He wants us to enjoy the benefits of a healthy body, a sound mind, and a walk of spiritual power: we need never settle for less! We can appropriate God’s abundance in our lives every day by operating the law of believing.
    When we are believing, we will act accordingly. And if our believing is not at the point where we act on God’s promises, we can step up our believing! God has lovingly and graciously provided in His Word steps that we can take to build our believing.
    As we study the law of believing in God’s Word, we’ll see the importance of taking action when we believe. Jesus Christ always required believing from those coming to him for help. Sometimes he did not even need to ask if they believed: he could see their believing in their actions.
Mark 2:3-5:
And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four.
And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken
it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.
When Jesus saw their faith
[believing], he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.
    Jesus Christ didn’t have to ask if the man believed he was able to help him; Jesus could see the believing actions of the man and his friends. And they received the desired results.
    Recently I talked with a faithful disciple in my area who is a great example of taking action on her believing. She told me about believing God for a spouse and the events that led to her marriage. She really didn’t have to tell me or anyone else that she was believing to get married: her believing was evident in the actions she took.
    This disciple started by praying daily for her husband, even though she didn’t know who he was. She made a list of qualities that were important to her to find in a spouse, and she studied Proverbs 31, endeavoring to manifest the qualities of a virtuous woman in her own life. Having registered for a major ministry event, she believed to talk with each single gentleman she knew of there. During the event she also ran into another gentleman to whom she had been previously introduced at a wedding. They had a couple of meals together and then stayed in touch by phone and e-mail. After a brief courtship, they decided to marry.
    Does this mean that if someone wants to get married, he or she must take the same actions this woman did? Well, if I am in need of healing, must I break up the roof of the nearest minister’s home I can find? No, the point is to build my believing so that I am taking action on what God has promised in His Word. In fact, if we are not taking action on what we’re believing for, the Word declares we are not believing.
James 2:17,18,20,26:
Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.
But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

    “Faith” here would be better translated “believing”—they are two different usages of the same Greek word. Faith is the spiritual ability we receive on the inside when we are born again of God’s spirit, while believing is an action of the human mind. We can direct our minds to believe what we want to believe rather than to passively allow circumstances to direct our believing. As we direct our minds to believe what the Word says, our actions will follow accordingly. Believing is active, and building our believing requires work at times. Jesus Christ taught his disciples that the work of God is believing on him whom He sent.
John 6:28 and 29:
Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?
Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

    Our work is to believe on all that Jesus Christ accomplished for us. We put forth effort to know what the Word says, and then we believe and act on it.
    To say we believe and then not act is simply mental assent. To mentally assent to the Word is to agree with it yet not walk out on it. Believing brings results while mental assent simply gets the consequences of unbelief. A trick of the adversary is to mentally assent but not act….

This is an excerpt from the January/February 2011 issue of The Way Magazine.
Copyright© 2011 by The Way International. All rights reserved.
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