Decide to believe

Discerning God’s voice in a difficult, delicate situation—or simply continuing to trust Him without being shaken—is not easy when God’s very calm and always peaceful voice is powerfully contradicted and drowned out by the clamor of our “rational” thoughts, our overheated emotions, or our pain.

Not rushing is a first key. Telling our soul: be quiet for a moment—you’re clouding my vision. Or waiting for it to calm down. Or distracting it so it calms down. In every case, it’s a sign that a deep work of reprogramming our thinking system needs to be considered. The Bible calls this “the renewing of the mind.”

We must be patient, not rush—because it would be wise to tackle the real source of the noise and of our indecision. Wait for the hurricane to settle. Saul (a figure of the flesh in the Old Testament) failed his test by letting the panic of his emotions dictate a bad decision and by not waiting for the fulfillment of God’s will, which always comes at the appropriate time for the one who knows how to wait (read in the Bible: 1 Samuel 10:8–9 (NIV) then 1 Samuel 13:5–14 (NIV)).

Here are first a few basic principles—eternal and unchanging principles for everyone, at all times:

God is faithful and practical. His kingdom rules over all things and he works everything according to the counsel of His will, making all things work together for our good. He directs us whether we are aware of it or not.

Jesus Christ, on the cross, reconciled every one of us definitively with the Father. Whoever has acknowledged and received Him as the Son of God and as the Savior sent by the Father into the world has been washed from every stain and has become—before His eyes—righteous, and therefore has free and continuous access to the throne of grace, from which flow in abundance the many blessings promised to the righteous.

Psalm 103:19 (NIV) — The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.

Psalm 31:15 (NIV) — My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me.

Lamentations 3:37 (NIV) — Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?

Romans 8:28 (NIV) — We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Psalm 31:19 (NIV) — How abundant are the good things that you have stored up for those who fear you…

2 Corinthians 5:19 (NIV) — God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them…

Hebrews 10:19 (NIV) — Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus…

Hebrews 4:16 (NIV) — Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence…

We know these things, don’t we? They should be enough to calm the confusion, to keep us from stumbling, or to enable us to pick up God’s gentle and powerful guidance.

But it’s as if our emotional system were totally disconnected from these truths—as if what we know had no impact on what we feel. As if? Yes, as if! Because our emotional system, on the contrary, works very well—too well. In fact, it translates faithfully, without cheating, what we truly believe deep down inside.

Luke 6:45 (NIV) — For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

We were educated; we got used to thinking and feeling according to certain patterns—and the world around us constantly pushes us to act and react based on what we feel. Our childhood, our education, our culture took years to build us a mental system, a way of thinking that now governs, on autopilot, all our emotional reactions.

Today, if Christ lives in us, the life He causes to flow in us has operating principles that are very different from all our learned models. Learning to think—or relearning to think—according to the principles of this new, hidden life that has now become our true life; stripping off, getting rid of the crust of an outdated and unsuitable thinking system—that is our whole apprenticeship: the apprenticeship, the earthly journey of the new creature as it waits for and prepares for its glorious destiny.

Romans 12:2 (NIV) — Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

John 8:32 (NIV) — Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

If you think you’re going to fail, you trigger fear—and fear triggers actions and words that significantly increase your chances of failing. If you truly think that with Christ you will do great things, you trigger confidence—and that confidence triggers the actions and words that can lead you to succeed.

A corrupt thinking system—because it is vulnerable to fear and used to failure, malaise, fatalism, curses, pain, lack, and the so-called omnipotence of external circumstances—seriously needs a good cleaning. Today we’d call it reprogramming. Does that word shock you?

Formatting the mind is exactly what the world does, even if it doesn’t call it that. At school, in the family and social environment, we absorb principles and ideas; we digest them; and over the years they become part of us and unconsciously influence all our reactions. It’s real programming—only nobody calls it that.

And what matters to us today is realizing, first, that we did not choose this “programming,” and second, that it is no longer suited to the new life Christ causes to flow in us. Much of what was built in our head is unsuited to our new life—so much so that it becomes a hindrance to walking freely—like Saul’s armor that people wanted to put on David to fight Goliath, and which was more a handicap than an advantage.

1 Samuel 17:38–39 (NIV) — Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.

“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.

Ephesians 5:14 (NIV) — “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Today, everyone is free to straighten and align their mind with the new principles that are in Christ, and thus prepare their extraordinary destiny. This is what the Bible calls transformation through the renewing of the mind.

Everything begins with learning God’s point of view about things—and about us—then making a decision to believe what He says rather than what we have learned and think we know today.

It takes time to undo and redo—just as it took time to build and firmly root our current thinking system. The Lord will violate no principle of the human soul, and certainly not the principle of time at work. It takes time, just as it took time to form the person you are today. It takes desire and consistency to establish and root the new mindset, connected to the invisible realities of God’s kingdom. Desire and decision—at the start—that’s all we have. Perfect: it’s exactly all we need!

Proverbs 4:7 (NIV) — The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

Give yourself time to understand the divine point of view and to let the Holy Spirit renew your mind in His Word, day after day, through sound instruction aligned with the new covenant in Jesus Christ—with Christ’s overflowing grace.

Here is good news: the work of transformation does not have to be finished for us to begin living our privileges as children of God.

There is something everyone can do right now: DECIDE to believe God and hold firmly to that decision.

Faith overcomes everything, and God begins to act there—in the invisible—the moment we decide to trust Him. Don’t wait to feel something—especially not to feel that you’re capable. Your emotions keep you from listening, hearing, and seeing for now. The soul is still under the influence of the first programming.

Decide to trust in Christ who lives in you, if you have invited and received Him. Christ—our shepherd and our instructor through the Holy Spirit! This is how reasoned self-reprogramming begins (forgive me for this modern, deliberately not-very-religious word); this is how the renewing of the mind begins. The words Jesus left us and the teachings of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament—both in Scripture and in our heart—become the foundation that will reshape our distorted thinking system, just as school or our upbringing shaped it without us realizing.

What is new this time is that we decide what must be imprinted in the deepest part of us. The human soul still works, for everyone, according to the same mechanisms. Understand something, then practice it often; repeated things become part of you. Put simply, we take back control of what must and will steer our life by deciding what parameters enter our head and by giving them time to integrate—until our outer being matches the true person we have become inwardly, the hidden person, the one the Father recreated in Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) — Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation

2 Corinthians 4:13 (NIV) — “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak…

I decide to believe what God says, despite the emotions that keep stirring. I begin—and persist—in affirming, against all logic, what I do not yet see, because I am convinced that what God says is true and because I understand this powerful mechanism of the human soul: my words fix deep inside me what I have decided to believe. My words have the power to strengthen—or to tear down—what I am relearning.

Galatians 2:20 (NIV) — I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me…

Jesus Christ is there, by the Spirit—He is truly there—in me, with me, and for me—in perfect control, putting everything into action for deliverance and direction.

This is not autosuggestion. It is a foundational truth of God’s Word in the New Testament, and the Holy Spirit who lives in me bears witness to it. If I live, it is no longer I who live; it is Christ who lives in me. His spirit and mine are so closely fused that it takes knowledge and practice to discern what truly has its source in Him and what comes purely from me.

1 Corinthians 6:17 (NIV) — Whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

By verbalizing this true hidden life and all its riches—which we do not yet see—we find ourselves in a strange situation. One part of us, the part that has decided to be confident, proclaims a reasoned confidence, while our emotions try to convince it of the exact opposite of what it believes or has decided to believe.

For the other part of us—hypnotized, as usual, by the reality of circumstances—is assaulted by thunderous emotions and assorted thoughts: anxious, supposedly rational, and totally unbelieving toward the hidden life. The goal is to convince you that you do not have faith and therefore you will not be answered.

A great show of illusion! A skillful sleight of hand—an unmistakable demonstration that emotion is not a good leader in walking with God. Emotion is, in fact, a very changeable little sheep—influenceable, easily fooled, and easily frightened.

Here is a major key for standing firm and beginning to win the battles fought in our thoughts and emotions, until we have relearned to think rightly, like the son or daughter of God we have become in Jesus Christ:

what God sees and takes into account is our decision to believe—not our sensation of faith or unbelief.

We give too much weight to the emotional noise in our head and draw wrong conclusions. The Lord looks at the decision to believe a promise or a word—even in great weakness. The Savior calls this trembling decision a mustard seed. Even if we have weakly decided to trust Him, we have, despite appearances, the little mustard seed of faith required. We have it. We just need to persist and not be fooled by emotions that will scream the opposite until they have been re-educated and until we stop giving them so much attention.

Our impressions of faith or lack of faith are deceptive. The decision is enough. It is our signature on the contract despite the storm of emotions—the mustard seed in this deafening noise we do not control.

And the Lord gives life to that mustard seed, which becomes—often suddenly—the unlikely and powerful answer. He is the life in everything and for everything in the new creation, as in the old.

By this path of deciding to believe God’s unlikely promise, Abraham became the father of believers—the somewhat technical example of faith, even though it was not a technique for him.

The Bible tells us he did not consider the testimony of his reason and emotions, which rightly told him he was old and his wife was barren. It was true; he was humanly aware of it. But he held to what God said, which was so opposed to all reason. He stood firm, decided to believe the impossible promise, and gave glory to God—against all hope—despite, we can be sure, the storm in his thoughts, because he was a man of the same nature as we are.

Romans 4:18–19 (NIV)
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.

And since we must translate our decision to believe into something concrete, the only concrete thing within our reach is our mouth—the words by which we affirm and proclaim an as-yet invisible truth we have decided to believe. Our decision becomes concrete through the most irrational-looking (in appearance) action: by confessing out loud what is not yet visible. We proclaim out loud the promise—the Word of God—without taking into account the so-called reality, or our apparent unbelief, which is only an emotional illusion, an old skin from our former thinking system. We speak to the mountain:

Mark 11:23 (NIV) — Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain… and does not doubt in their heart but believes… it will be done for them.

Faith begins in our decision, not in the sensations that misaligned thoughts trigger uncontrollably. Emotions and “rational” thoughts can still be there, unbelieving toward the invisible truth of God’s kingdom—reacting only to what is visible and to what they learned to believe. Don’t be angry with them. That’s how they learned to operate for a long time. They do their job well. We must relearn to think according to the laws of the hidden kingdom, because we have now become citizens of another kingdom. And yes, it’s invisible—sorry, emotions! You can’t see it or feel it!

Ephesians 2:19 (NIV) — Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household

It is in the chaos, in the uproar, that true faith creates the answer—without support, without any security other than what God affirms in His Word, with nothing concrete. That is how God created our world and created us in His image. It is within darkness—in the darkest, thickest darkness—that the word of faith, the creative word, is spoken and creates the universe:

Genesis 1:2–3 (NIV) — Darkness was over the surface of the deep… And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

In the image of our Creator, in the darkest darkness, we decide to believe—then to say and to keep saying what God says: “Let there be light,” while there is still only darkness!

We give “material” to the Spirit of God who is with us, in us, and for us. And that material is the Word of God, confessed by our mouth declaring the invisible truths of God’s kingdom. We believe, we decide to believe, and we speak and keep speaking. Decision is capable of doing that. And by doing so, we carry out our reasoned, chosen reprogramming. We learn—like Abraham—to function differently.

2 Corinthians 4:13 (NIV) — …“I believed; therefore I have spoken.” …we also believe and therefore speak…

Let’s give material to the Creator Holy Spirit so He can create. Our decision to believe becomes concrete through words that seem humanly irrational because they follow this divine principle expressed in Hebrews:

Hebrews 11:3 (NIV) — By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

Our spirit—strengthened by God’s Spirit, by the eternal certainties His Word brings, and by our “crazy” decision to believe them—redirects our thoughts toward God’s faithfulness rather than toward circumstances; toward the invisible, which is real and eternal, rather than toward the visible, which is temporary.

Knowing that our heavenly Father created by His Word and not from visible things pushes us, like Him, to verbalize what is not yet visible on earth. Like Father, like child.

And our words anchor the new principles we have recognized as reliable and true.

2 Corinthians 4:18 (NIV) — So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

You are not your emotions. You are what you decide! Decide to believe what God says about you, then say it with Him—anchor it with your mouth because here is another key: we are co-workers with God.

We work with Him by being on earth the mouth that speaks His creative Word. The Bible and the promises in it are not meant only to be read but also to be proclaimed. By saying and repeating what we have decided to believe—like we do in any learning—we participate in building and establishing on earth our true hidden life in Jesus Christ: already fully restored, abundantly blessed—a beautiful, wise, prosperous, fruitful, successful life. We are co-workers with God!!!

1 Corinthians 3:9 (NIV) — For we are co-workers in God’s service…

By the confession of our mouth, we build with Him—or we destroy ourselves. So let us decide to believe what He says about us, say it, and keep saying it.

Proverbs 18:21 (NIV) — The tongue has the power of life and death…

Here are a few truths revealed in the Word—truths we will need to decide to believe and confess until our outer being, our soul, has deeply integrated them:

• I was already chosen before the foundation of the world. Today I am an adopted child, enjoying the same privileges as my big Brother, who is also my Savior and my Lord.

Ephesians 1:4–5 (NIV) — …he chose us in him before the creation of the world… he predestined us for adoption…

Hebrews 2:11 (NIV) — …Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

• God is never angry with me anymore because I entrusted my upbringing to Him and placed myself under His protection. He is my shepherd. He is transforming me durably by His Word and His Spirit, and during this learning time He no longer condemns any of my faults. He knows where I come from, and His Son who lives in me now leads me on the path of His perfection.

Romans 5:1 (NIV) — Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God…

Romans 8:1 (NIV) — Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…

Philippians 1:6 (NIV) — …he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion…

Psalm 103:8–10 (NIV) — The LORD is compassionate and gracious… he will not always accuse… he does not treat us as our sins deserve…

• At this very moment I am a child of God, heir of the kingdom, citizen of heaven, possessor of the resources of the kingdom.

I am so—not by my efforts, my merit, or my righteousness—but by grace in Jesus Christ, according to the Father’s good pleasure… because I have been loved forever, predestined to be a child of Almighty God, the Father of glory.

I am a fellow citizen with the saints; my true address is the household of God—which everyone knows is prosperous, joyful, and protected. Everything that is there is mine.

Ephesians 2:19 (NIV) — …fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household.

1 Corinthians 3:23 (NIV) — …you are of Christ, and Christ is of God. (And in context: “all things are yours.”)

• The weakness of my human condition will never be able to stop me from accomplishing anything, for I can do all things THROUGH the One who strengthens me, and His power is made perfect in weakness.

Philippians 4:13 (NIV) — I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV) — …my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…

• By the wounds of Jesus, I am healed. He heals all my diseases as much as He forgives all my sins. Any sickness or pain is illegal in the house of God and has no right to reside there. It has no legal right to remain in my body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Isaiah 53:5 (NIV) — …by his wounds we are healed.

Psalm 103:3 (NIV) — …who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases…

1 Corinthians 6:19 (NIV) — Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit…?

1 Corinthians 6:15 (NIV) — Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ…?

• Our Lord Jesus Christ, for us, became poor though he was rich, so that through his poverty we might become rich… Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil.

2 Corinthians 8:9 (NIV) — …though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor…

1 John 3:8 (NIV) — …The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

• I am not destined to live in lack or insufficiency, for the Lord’s will is to make all grace abound to me so that, having all I need at all times in every way, I will abound in every good work.

2 Corinthians 9:8 (NIV) — And God is able to bless you abundantly… so that… you will abound in every good work.
(See also 2 Corinthians 9:10 (NIV) for the continuation about seed and bread.)

• By the new covenant, I have become a righteous person who loves God’s commands. God established in Jesus Christ a new covenant by which He credits me with the perfect righteousness of His Son. It is He who produces—and will produce—the willing and the doing in me. The promises made to the righteous are therefore now all for me, because I am righteous in Jesus Christ:

Proverbs 21:15 (NIV) — When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous…

Psalm 112:1–3 (NIV) — Blessed are those who fear the LORD… Wealth and riches are in their houses…

Proverbs 10:30 (NIV) — The righteous will never be uprooted…

Proverbs 10:6 (NIV) — Blessings crown the head of the righteous…

• What I feel capable or incapable of does not matter.
  It is what I decide in my inner being—and will confess and keep confessing—that first renews my mind, then transforms my mentality, and finally makes me reign in life through Jesus Christ, for God gives all ability at the appropriate time.

Romans 5:17 (NIV) — …those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace… will reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Let us not doubt God’s faithfulness. Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of faith, is transforming you by His Holy Spirit who lives in you.

Let’s not put our faith in our faith!

Christ’s power is made perfect in human weakness, so human weakness is not an obstacle. Faith overcomes everything and moves, supernaturally, the mighty arm of God in every situation. And the answer comes suddenly—unexpectedly, often surprisingly. It strengthens faith, and we walk from progress to progress.

Let us begin to confess God’s invisible truths about us—and never stop again. Let us direct our gaze toward our wonderful Savior who lives in us and leads us in his triumphal procession.

By his Holy Spirit—the Spirit of Christ in us—He renews and strengthens our decision to trust Him. It is never too late to begin walking on the shining path of the righteous!