Somewhere along the line you decided that your own conclusions, feelings and experiences held greater weight than the Word of God. Now when you feel something or conclude something, you are MUCH more likely to believe THAT than if you were to read or hear something in the Word of God.
Let me give you an example. You say:
"Why does God not help me believe in Him?"
The message here is clear—God is NOT helping you to believe and have faith. That is your conclusion BASED on your experience and your feelings. Therefore you assume those conclusions are 100% true. Here's another one:
"I'm seeking but I'm not finding."
This statement ASSUMES that you're doing everything you SHOULD be doing...but that God is not keeping up on His end of the deal. The inference of your conclusion is that God is either not being fair...or just doesn't care about you.
Jesus made it abundantly clear that whoever seeks WILL find! (Matthew 7:7) If you're not finding, it's not because God doesn't WANT to be found.
There is a great danger when we decide that our feelings and experiences provide a more trustworthy and authoritative source of truth than the Word of God. We then hear something from the Bible and instantly doubt the veracity of that Word because it seems to contradict what we have already determined to be true based on our feelings and experiences.
So, given the choice of believing the Bible or believing ourselves...we will choose ourselves almost every time. And that means we DO have faith—it's just in something other than God.
Isaiah 59:2
ReplyDeletebut your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
NIV84