Acting on the Word

Acting On the Word

The greatest battle that any child of God will ever fight is the battle of Faith. We often wonder why it is so hard to believe God. The reason is that we are surrounded by an antagonistic atmosphere that is presided over by the enemy of all righteous¬
ness; we live in his unreal world; we are surrounded by currents of unbelief so subtle that almost one does not realize them, and so resistless that only a few ever rise above them. To believe in God for finances is a continual struggle against the materialistic currents that buffet us.

To believe in Christ for victory over sin is a battle during every hour of consciousness, with the spiritual hosts of darkness. To believe in God for the physical body when one is ill is to put un a battle against the centuries of trust in medicine. So it is not at all strange that so many break down in their faith-life and we should not be harsh or censorious against those who fail.

Faith and Believing

Faith is a noun; Believe is a verb – an analysis of these two words may help you in trusting the Lord. Believing, being a verb, is an action word – it really means “taking”; to believe in a Biblical sense means “to take”, “to grasp. To believe Jesus means to take Jesus for all that the Scrip¬tures declare Him to be. To believe on Christ as a Saviour means to take Christ as a Saviour; to believe in Christ as a healer means to take Him as your healer and recognize Him as your healer.

Believing is an act of the will; when I believe, I have acted -having acted, I have reached what is called Faith. Faith is a noun. I take a step – having taken the step, I have arrived.
Arriving is Faith. To believe, then, is to act on the Word of God. Faith is action. Doubting is refusing to act on the Word.

There are two kinds of Unbelief: first, a refusal to act on the knowledge of the Word that we have. This can be called unpersuadableness – we refuse to be persuaded to act on what we know to be true; we refuse to act in the light of knowledge.

The other kind of Unbelief arises from a lack of knowledge of the Word. We do not know; hence, we cannot act. We do not understand; hence, we are afraid to act. We would act, but we do not know how to act. The cure for this is knowledge; the cure for the other is obedience.