What the Holy Spirit taught me about unbelief and trust during one of the hardest seasons of my life.
Transcript
Today, we are going to take a “Posture of Peace” by uprooting unbelief.
Posture is a short, audible fist bump to remind you, God is with you in everything. Together, we’re going to be emboldened to take a daily Posture of perfect peace.
John 16:33, I know that it is a scripture I’ve mentioned many times before in past episodes. This is a truth that I planted deep, deep in my heart a few years ago during one of the hardest seasons of my life. And at that time, it was not a truth that I trusted, but I believe that in His goodness and in His faithfulness Holy Spirit led me to that particular truth during that particularly hard time of my life not to taunt me with it, not to chastise me with it, but so that He could lead me in it and teach me to trust it. So today I’m reading that scripture, John 16:33, and I’m reading it from the Passion Translation today. Jesus said, “And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in me will be in you and we’ll give you great confidence as you rest in me, for in this unbelieving world, you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous for I have conquered the world.” I know that some of you today are experiencing those sorrows, that trouble that Jesus mentioned here. And because of it, you may be wrestling with doubt, unbelief, maybe fear and you may be tempted to believe that the trouble and the sorrow you’re facing right now is proof that God doesn’t love you or that He doesn’t care for you. And that kind of belief, it may be very obvious to you. Like you might be like, “Yeah, that’s totally what I’m struggling with right now. Like, I don’t believe God cares about me.” Or for some of you, it may be more subtle. It may be buried deep under feelings of anxiety or anger or disappointment, or despair, things that you feel very deeply but you don’t know how to articulate. And I was more of the latter.
I was feeling all the feels in that hard season, not knowing, really not being willing to admit that I didn’t believe God cared about me. Because what good Christian in her right mind wants to admit that she doesn’t believe God is telling the truth about His unfailing love, that she doesn’t believe He is who He says He is. I mean, I didn’t want to admit that. But the reality was the very root of all of my angst in that hard season was unbelief. And specifically, God does not care. And it’s so important to acknowledge and uproot unbelief, not bury it, not live unaware of it, not ignore it. Because unbelief always disempowers us. Unbelief keeps us stuck. It keeps us in the dark and it keeps us blinded to the truth. I mean, look all throughout scripture and see what unbelief did to people. It kept an entire generation out of the promised land. It kept nations in bondage, it forfeited birthrights and inheritances. It blinded people to the Messiah. Jesus Christ even though He stood right in front of them fulfilling every single prophecy and performing miracles that no human could ever pull off. Unbelief is a big deal. So we have to expose it. We have to uproot it from our hearts and minds and we have to guard against unbelief. So I wanna ask you a question, and take your time answering it, like, think about this today, ’cause I want you to answer it honestly.
Do you believe God cares about you? I’m not asking if you know it. Like I knew what the Bible said. I’m asking if you believe it. Do you believe God cares about you? Do you believe that God will care for you? Do you believe that He loves you? I wanna share this truth today not to pep you up, but to set you free. Jesus said, “Everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in me will be in you, and we’ll give you great confidence as you rest in me.” He said, “In this unbelieving world, you will experience troubles and sorrows, but you must be courageous.” He said, “I have conquered the world.” And you might be tempted to say in your own hurt and pain right now, “Well, that proves nothing.” And I’m here to tell you friend, it proves everything. God owed us nothing, and yet He gave us everything. He gave us himself. He gave us His victory. Sorrows and troubles are not proof that God does not care. They’re just proof that we live in an imperfect world and they prove our deep longing for perfection. And that’s a longing, only a perfect God can satisfy it. And He knew it and He decided to come and give us himself.
Troubles and sorrows are the perfect proving ground for God’s care. And they are the perfect proving ground for our trust in God’s care, because it’s here and the troubles and sorrows where we can practice our peace, where we can practice our confidence in Him, where we can practice our joy, our courage. It’s here in the midst of troubles and sorrows where we can be empowered and emboldened and equipped by experiencing Jesus’s perfect victory over this imperfect world.
The promise of perfect peace is found in Isaiah 26:3. In Hebrew, it is “shalom, shalom”, meaning complete wholeness. Nothing missing, nothing broken. This is who you are in Jesus. Because of Jesus, you are a living testimony of Jesus’s ultimate win. With every step you take today you’re putting Jesus’s victory on display and satan’s defeat on replay.