What do you believe in? Belief is a funny thing. If you have a conversation with an acquaintance, you may find it weird what he or she believes in. For example, I know a lady who believes she will die when she turns 87 years old because her parents and her grandparents died at that age. Imagine this…on the day she dies at the age of 87, she will be thinking ‘I told you so’ because what she believed became truth. The reality is that she didn’t have to die at that age. In fact, as a believer in Christ, she could have given this to the Lord and said I will go when you’re ready to take me home; and remember, believers in Christ are promised long life.

Psalm 91:16 NKJV
16 With [a]long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation.”

Belief is the foundation of everything. I know, that’s a broad statement but let’s look at this in scripture.

Romans 10:9 NKJV
9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

‘Believe in your heart’: there’s the key. Do you believe God raised Jesus from the dead? Every time you pray, you pray in this belief because you’re believing that Jesus hears your prayers because He’s alive. By the way, that’s faith.

James 2:19-20 NKJV
19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is [h]dead?

You need faith to pray to God whom you cannot see. Notice something else that James brings to our attention: ‘even the demons believe – and tremble’. Can you imagine that? Yes, the demons believe because they know that they have to obey and since they’re spirits as God, they can see that God is real. Even that should cause you to believe.

So, the big questions here are what do you believe in? What is your foundation you rely on? And can you change your belief, and if so, how?

If you ask yourself what you believe in, and if you’re honest with yourself, you will find that you may believe in a hodgepodge of things put together. For example, you could be someone who believes in Christ and evolution at the same time. You could also believe in Christ and hate President Donald J. Trump at the same time. By the way, believing in evolution or even hating someone doesn’t mean you will go to hell if you believe in Christ.

The foundation is that you believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

1 John 4:1-3 NKJV
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess [a]that Jesus [b]Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

Remember earlier in Romans 10:9 ‘believe that God raised Him from the dead’ is equivalent to believing that Jesus is the Son of God who descended into this world, and died for our sins as a sinless man; fulfilling the law. That’s the foundation in believing on Jesus. You need to believe that He was real and that He was raised from the dead. If you believe that, you’re saved.

There are a lot of churches, theologians, pastors, etc. that say you also need to be water baptized to be saved, but that’s not true. Remember the thief on the cross.

Luke 23:39-43 NKJV
39 Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, [j]“If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.”
40 But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” 42 Then he said [k]to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”
43 And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
Jesus is compassionate and will meet a person when he or she decides to talk to Him, which I demonstrated earlier was an act of faith.

Now, if you do believe in evolution and/or hate someone, these are things that you need to measure. No where in the bible does the bible say evolution is the means of how God created this world. In fact, the bible tells us that the heavens and the earth was created in six days and He rested on the seventh.

And we know what the bible says about hate. Hate is the opposite of love and the fruit of the Holy Sprit begins with love.

Galatians 5:22-23 NKJV
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 [a]gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

I get it. Without thinking of the bible, it’s convincing to believe in evolution or other things because it makes sense it our minds. And the reality is that we sometimes just don’t get the bible. Same with hating a person. It’s like I just can’t help it. He or she is just simply wrong and there’s got to be another way.

Would it surprise you if I told you that God loved Hitler just as much as He loves you? He hates the sin but He loves all of us, the world equally.

John 3:16 NKJV
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

And you wanna hear something crazy that could be true? What if Hitler asked God to forgive him before he died? God forgives all who ask. Take a moment to pause here and let that sink in.

This is good news because it means that God will forgive you too. And by the way, who are we to judge? We don’t know what goes on inside of the heart of a person…only God does. This should be humbling and we should take this moment to bow our knees and thank the Lord for His salvation.

Which brings me to this: how can we change what we believe so that we can stand in faith on the bible even if we don’t understand it? I thought of this a lot the other day and had read John 9, regarding the blind man.

John 9:1-4 NKJV
Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. 2 And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. 4 I[a] must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.

The disciples believed that sin causes sickness. The bible demonstrates this over, and over again, but here God did something different. I just released a teaching called Some Healings Are a Journey, which is based on John 9. I was to expand on that and focus on what the disciples believed. They believed sin caused sickness and that is foundational in scripture, but God intervened here saying He did it.

Does this mean sin doesn’t cause sickness or death? No, the bible tells us it does.

Romans 6:23 NKJV
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the [a]gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It simply means that God wanted to reveal His works in this situation, and He did. Does this mean you stop believing in the Word of God? Nope. It simply means that you are getting the idea that the bible, Jesus can do anything. By keeping an opened mind, you begin to see how the bible is true and foundational.
Jesus is the Word of God that became flesh.

John 1:14 NKJV
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Here we go back to the foundation of belief in Jesus as the Son of God, which I discussed above.

How do you change your belief? Humble yourself before God and pray – Romans 10:9. Confess out loud with your mouth that you want to believe in everything about Jesus. Not in someone else’s ‘interpretation’ of scripture but in Jesus Himself. Ask Him to help you with your belief so that you can believe in the entirety of God’s word.

Same thing for hate. If you hate someone, ask Jesus to come into your heart and ask the Holy Spirit to fill your heart with love. Forgive yourself as God forgives you and let it go.

Another way to think of this is become blind to ‘man’s interpretation’ of scripture and ask Jesus to open your own spiritual eyes so that you believe and understand His Word. The helper will reveal to you what you need to see and remember.

John 14:26 NKJV
26 But the [a]Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

Dear Jesus, I want to believe in Your Word in its entirety. Help me do that and not to be deceived or misled by the world. Your Word is powerful and I need it as the foundation of my belief. I choose You and You are the Son of God. In Jesus’ Name Amen!