Believing That He Is

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:06, NKJV).

In the Western world, for generations, families have gone to great lengths to convince children to believe in all kinds of myths, like King Arthur, Merlin, Magic, Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Christmas Elves, the Easter Bunny, Evolution and the Tooth Fairy.

The primary danger in this is that when the inevitable awakening to the truth occurs, and these cherished beliefs are determined to be false, the child learns to equate all such believing in things not seen as equivalently false, and the integrity and truthfulness of the caregivers in the family are rightly called into question.

As quaint traditions to enliven Holidays and family get-togethers, or to celebrate rites of passage or exercise the imagination, these myths, if presented as myths, can either be benign or serve a greater purpose as a contrast to Biblical reality, but there is a grave peril in teaching children to falsely believe something that isn't true.

It can inoculate them against faith, poisoning the well of what C.S. Lewis has termed, Mere Christianity. Recall this ancient text:

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, (1 Peter 1:6-8, NKJV).

Children have an inherent ability for faith. It's built-in, part of their original equipment. Don't be fooled into thinking this innate ability is something evolution magically concocted to enhance survival. From the physical perspective, belief itself has very little survival value.

In fact, the young of all "higher" species get by pretty well without the ability to believe things that cannot be seen, for as far as we know, human children, constructed in the image of God, are the only ones who are born with the capability to perceive 3-dimensional reality and superimpose on it another qualitatively different reality. Call it what you will - the Spiritual Realm, the Supernatural, the World of the Imagination - its only earthly pioneers and explorers are human.

And human children are its most stalwart adventurers. That is part of the reason Jesus tells us that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Now, entering the Kingdom of Heaven is synonymous with coming to God. To do either, you must first believe that He is, and further, that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

According to the latest global surveys, more than 75% of the world's adult population believe in some Higher Power or Supreme Being. But that percentage is shrinking yearly, especially in Europe. Indeed, some countries, Denmark and Sweden, for instance, boast that between 46% and 80% of its residents are either agnostic or atheistic.

What is surprising, however, is that the percentage of belief in God remains so high, given the almost constant barrage of negativity in the world's news, opinion, higher education and entertainment media regarding religion. 

This persistence of belief is intensely frustrating to the increasingly aggressive proponents of humanism. But these men and women willfully forget that arrayed against the Ivy League, New York, Hollywood, Europe and all the other realms of worldly humanistic propaganda and intellectual elitism, is the God of the Bible. 

The God who is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. The God who has bridged the gap between Fallen man and holy Creator by declaring that faith in His Risen Son will achieve what no amount of human performance can achieve - access to His throne of grace. 

He can, and does, ensure that the avenue of faith remains open. At least for now.

Coming to God entails believing that He is, even in the face of propaganda and popular opinion to the contrary. Or more precisely, especially in the face of such global misinformation, for that makes the exercise of faith that much more significant.

Further it entails believing, as a necessary subsequent step, that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Why else come to Him in the first place?

But what does diligent seeking involve, exactly? 

Most importantly it means seeking Him as He has revealed Himself to be in His Word. Who knows what God the 75-percenters believe in? Is it the God of the Bible, or the God of their own vain and futile imaginings?

You cannot diligently seek Someone of whom you have no clue or information.

Fortunately - providentially - He has left us with all the clues we need, written down and preserved for millennia so that His light shines in the darkness, illuminating the path to His throne, His grace, and Himself.

Our task is to find and follow that roadmap, something He empowers and assists us to do if only we ask.

If you seek Him with your whole heart, mind and soul, He will be found. He guarantees it.

And He will reward your diligence in ways impossible to anticipate or comprehend, both in this life and in the life to come.

First you will get God Himself, as inconceivable as that may sound, for that is exactly what He promised Abraham so long ago.

And in getting Him you will get everything else, for …as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9, NKJV).

Pleasing God

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:06, NKJV).

…for whatever is not from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23, NKJV).

For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV).

If it were not for faith, there would be no hope for human beings. None.

We would be born in this fallen world, live a life chasing futile satisfactions, involved in ephemeral relationships doomed for separation, either before or at death, and facing an inevitable demise only to discover that the worst of earthly life was heaven itself compared to what awaits in the torments of Hell.

Make no mistake, though, it is not merely faith itself, but faith in Christ that saves us from our otherwise default destiny.

And it is not faith in the Christ of our own imagination or convenience. It is the resurrected Christ who came first as the Suffering Servant, but who will return as the Executor of Judgment.

It is the Christ of the Bible that saves, not some New Age avatar or Ascended Master, not some Cosmic Consciousness or Pantheistic Force, not some red-headed, long-tressed, broad-shouldered Shepherd that could just as easily adorn the cover of some pulp Romance Novel.

It is He who was from the beginning.

It is the Captain of the Lord's Host.

It is He who treads the winepress of God's wrath, who will execute judgment on an ungodly world, who will slay the wicked with a word, and will shed their blood, bridle-height, in the Valley of Armageddon.

It is a fearful thing to fall in the hands of the Living God, best by far to become His by faith, so that rather than fall, as a unbelieving rebel, He embrace you in His arms as a beloved child.

There are two fatal errors - and I mean eternally fatal errors - about faith.

The first is that it is yours to grit your teeth and drum up, like its the result of some spiritual pep rally. It is not that at all. It is first a gift of God, dealt to each one by measure, and can be left to languish like a vestigial organ, or exercised by volitional and humble dependence on God as who He is, not as you might like Him to be. 

It is mostly private and always individual, meaning that it cannot be inherited or passed down by tradition or practice. It must be activated by a sincere decision of a person's will and mind. 

The second fatal error is to view faith along the lines of this ancient and deceitful cliche: God helps those who help themselves.

This is a subtle and brilliantly effective lie from the pit of Hell itself. It is a statement that appears Biblical, but is, in fact, its antithesis. It is the essence of human-centric legalism, and is quite close to denying the existence of God itself. Or at least implying that He should allow room on His throne for you.

Until you realize that there is nothing good in you, that you have no intrinsic value to God in and of yourself, you are helplessly mired in your trespasses and sins. You may be a shining example of the best that human beings can offer, but you are nonetheless fodder for the fires of Hades.

This is because you are not intrinsically good, but the opposite. You are defective goods. You were born that way, conceived in sin and brought forth to die in sin.

Unless you are remade, you are far worse than useless. You are worthy of judgment.

Harsh but true.

That is why faith is so, so important. It changes all of that. Faith in Christ remakes you. It regenerates you. It kills you on His Cross and makes you alive again in Him.

It is your only hope.

And by exercising that faith in a momentous act of acknowledged helplessness, you enter from death into life.

God has decreed faith to effect your pardon. It pleased Him to do so.

But for that pardon, He had to send His Son to die in your place. He who knew sin became sin for us, and propitiated God's wrath against sin forever by making Himself a substitutionary sacrifice.

For you and for me.

But there is only one way to have that sacrifice credited to your account: faith. It is the currency of salvation. Nothing else will do.

By believing, you take full receipt of that unspeakable gift. Otherwise, Christ's death was of no effect for you, and you trample it under your feet and put Him to an open shame.

Thus you can see why faith is the only way to earn God's pleasure. He enables it in you so that you can give it back.

He has decreed what saves, and then provided you with the very thing that meets the single requirement.

When you acquiesce humbly to His gracious way of escape, He rewards you as if you were someone completely new and sinless. He sees in you His precious Son.

And that pleases Him, indeed.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10, NKJV).