“They are not just idle words for you—they are your life.”
Have you ever read something in the Bible and said to yourself, “That can’t be right!” Or have you ever read one of God’s promises and thought, “Yeah, sure. That might sound great, but it just isn’t true”?
I have, and it always alerts me to a pocket (or chasm) of unbelief in my life. I try to pay attention to those times when I don’t believe God because often the point where the verse and my unbelief intersect is a place where I’ve been wounded. I have let the wound produce a thought that fights against the true knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5), and I end up believing a lie about God and what He says. And so might you, dear woman.
What are the things that your heart refuses to believe about God? That He is faithful? That He loves you? That He is your Father? That He longs to care for you? Your unbelief might be oozing from an old wound, or you might believe that your circumstances are telling the truth about God–that your circumstances are more truthful than God is.
At a time in Jesus’ earthly ministry when many of His disciples were abandoning Him, He asked His twelve disciples if they wanted to leave, too. Peter blurted out, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). And for once, Jesus didn’t rebuke the guy; Peter happened to be right this time.
God considers His Word to have great power. “He sent forth His Word and healed them; He rescued them from the grave” (Psalm 107:20). Jesus understood this to be part of His mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19, quoting from Isaiah 61:1-2a). The words in the Scriptures Jesus read had power, and He knew it!
What words of eternal life are you missing out on? What do you read in God’s Word but refuse to believe because an old wound is screaming at you louder than God’s truth? Take a few moments to write out those things that you have read in the Bible but don’t believe. Then pray over the list. God wants to visit those intersections where your unbelief and His truth meet. And He wants to heal the wound that is lying to you.
This a page from the book When God Roared. Each page will be published, one per day, on this website. We pray that God uses it mightily in your life to swaddle you in His love and heal your precious heart.