On the Difference between Believing in God and Believing God

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Hebrews 3:12–13 (NIV) See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. CONSIDER Well friends, it's "Today" again. And you know what that means. It's time to encourage one another.  How about we reach back to our working definition of encouragement as we dive in today: To encourage in the biblical sense of the term is to stand in the stead and agency of Jesus, participating in the work of the Holy Spirit, to minister grace to human beings at the level of their inner person, communicating, conveying, and imparting life, love, courage, comfort, consolation, joy, peace, hope, faith, and other dispensations and manifestations of the kingdom of heaven as the moment invites or requires. How did I arrive at such a definition? Thanks for asking. It is so easy to reduce encouragement to speaking a positive word to another person. And let me be the first to say there's nothing wrong with that. As much as I love optimism and positive thinking, that is not what the Bible means when it uses this term "encouragement." The Holy Spirit whispered this word into the writer's ear and he wrote down what he heard in the Greek language. The Greek word is transliterated into English as "parakaleó" and pronounced  "pah-rah-kah-LEH-oh." Give that a try.  It means something like, "to come close beside another person and call or speak into the depths of their being."  This is what Jesus does. It is who he is. It is fascinating to consider some of his closing teaching to his disciples when he said this: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—John 14:16 The Greek word underneath that word "advocate" is "paraklétos." Are you seeing the connection. The Holy Spirit is the one who comes close alongside (inside) and advocates by encouraging, comforting, helping, (and see the working definition for more).  So as the Holy Spirit fills you and me with the presence of Jesus, he leads us to come close alongside each other to call or speak into the depths of one another's beings as he inspires us. We are standing in the stead and agency of Jesus, participating in the work of the Holy Spirit. It's why I ask you each day not who are you going to encourage but who Jesus wants to encourage through you today. Jesus is the Master Encourager, and if Jesus is in us, we become the servant encouragers.  It is so important for us to understand and begin to grasp this distinction. Speaking a good word is always a good thing. Speaking a God word is always a better thing. Yes, you can do both, but understand the difference. Why do we need God words of encouragement? Because it is our relationship with God that is ever under attack. Let's remember again our context: See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. It is easy to read this and think, “Of course I believe in God.” An unbelieving heart is a far more subtle thing, and it can be hard to see it coming. The assault of darkness, evil, and even suffering and hardship is not to get us to stop believing in God. It is to cause us to stop believing God. You see the difference, don’t you? It is an easy thing to believe in God. It is another thing entirely to believe God. The former is an affirmation of faith. The latter is faith itself. We don't need to know God is with us in principle. We must know it in reality. There are many souls who believe in God, and yet their hearts have slowly turned away from the living God. Now to the full text: But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. Encouragement is the work of Jesus in and through his witnesses (aka us), by the power of the Holy Spirit, to keep our hearts always and ever turning and returning to the living God.  PRAY Lord Jesus, encourage my heart to turn fully to you. You know I believe in you. Train me now to actually believe you; to get beyond an affirmation of faith and into the depths of a trusting faith. And in being encouraged, make me your encourager for others. Praying in your name, Jesus, amen.