Casting Out Unbelief

Written By: Emily Robinson

I sit here in a very difficult point in my life. A time full of transitions, planning for college, and countless dreams about the future. I am in that place where I am either in the calm between a storm, or caught within a whirlwind, and I cannot do anything about it. I confess that I have fallen into a dreadful pit and that it has felt like I cannot escape. I am speaking of the horrible pit of Unbelief.

I can say to just about anyone that I am suffering, and get away with it. Friends know that I am facing harder and more complex situations than the average person. I can look at myself and know that I am suffering. Yet somehow when I look at God, even with all of my problems, he doesn’t quite see it in the ways that I do. When I frantically say; “I am scared,” the Lord’s reply is simply; “Trust me.”

I am learning that even the person with the most difficult situations in the world cannot get away with moping around the house when God is in the picture.

Look at Hebrews 3:6. “ But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.”

The hope of which we boast. Have you ever rushed into witnessing to somebody about having hope, when inside you felt like you had no hope at all? I know that I have. It is like inviting a crowd of people over to dinner when you have no groceries, and no money to buy food. People might show up, but when they see that you have no resources to offer, you would find yourself embarrassed and ashamed.

Let’s move on to Hebrews 3, verses 7-19: 7 “So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, 9 where you fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did.10 That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’11 So I declared an oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving hear that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. 15 As it has just been said: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden you hearts as you did in the rebellion.’16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert?18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.”

Casting out unbelief is not easy, but it is very important. Look at what Moses’ people had to go through because of their unbelief and impatience with the Lord’s plans: Forty years in the desert. As I look at their story I somehow see myself. These are the same Israelites whom the Lord delivered from Egypt, why should they doubt God in path that would lead to their freedom? The Lord has also delivered me, so why should I doubt him when it comes to my path for the future?

Dear Lord,
I am so ashamed. Please help me cast out this hideous unbelief of mine. Let me accept your plans for my life and be glad. I long to trust in you always.
Love, Emily