Do You Believe . . . Or Do You Know?
There used to be a running debate in my head about when I became a Christian. When I walked the aisle in our little Baptist church at ten, I believed. But I also didn’t want to be the only 4th grader who hadn’t been dunked. Tommy Ford went up the previous Sunday . . . I was the only one left. So the Spirit moved on the 3rd verse of “Just As I Am and I was saved.
Or was I?
Oh, I believed . . . but I didn’t know. And there’s a difference.
We can believe lots of things. But we know what we’ve actually experienced. That’s why no one can argue with your testimony. People can argue with your beliefs, theology, sacraments, all of that. But no one can argue with what you’ve experienced. With what you know.
When I uttered a desperate prayer one night twenty-three years later and God answered in dramatic fashion, my believing became knowing. I finally gave it all up that night. My doubts. My ambition. My guilt and my shame. I experienced God that night. A supernatural peace came over me. God went from an idea to an identity. From conceptual God to personal God. From the Heavenly Father to my Heavenly Father.
This just happened for a friend of mine. He’s been a believer all his life, but he made some big mistakes years ago. Ended up divorced, remarried, and with two families. God’s forgiven him, but he’s struggled to forgive himself. He tried everything . . . counseling, prayer, built an altar and sacrificed the family cat. But he hadn’t been able to accept God’s forgiveness or forgive himself.
As he’s driving down the expressway last Saturday, he does something he rarely does. He puts in a CD and the song that plays was Phillips, Craig & Dean’s “When Grace Walks In.” The words . . .
You’re standing with your list of regrets that you can’t get past yourself
You wish so bad that you could make the mark
And all you want to do is turn back time
And redeem the days you lost
But shame keeps calling out your name
The chains refuse to fall
But it’s not over, it’s not over
This is the moment that grace walks in
With arms wide open, arms wide open
To tell you this is not the end
When doubt is strong and your will is weak to even believe again
That’s when grace, that’s when grace walks in
Seconds later, he’s crying his eyes out. He exits the freeway, pulls into a grocery store parking lot and bawls some more. God’s love flows over him. Grace walked in. He’s finally free.
I can’t make God show up like that. Neither can you.
What we can do is open our hands and let go. We can pray, “Lord, I’m letting go . . . I’m opening my clenched fists. I’m releasing my grip on the people in my life . . . on my demands for how they’re supposed to act . . . on the outcomes I expect. I’m giving you my guilt and shame. Please take it away and put your peace in its place. I trust you to put into these open hands whatever you want me to have. I’ll be satisfied with whatever it is because I know you’re all good and you love me extravagantly in my humanity!”
Then wait for His love to wash all over you. When it does, you’ll no longer believe.
You will know.
Question: Do you believe or do you know? Tell us how God went from your head to your heart here.
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Responses (2)
A.B. Simpson, in his book “Fourfold Gospel” delineated this dilemma as the difference between Salvation and Sanctification.
I had a full knowledge of sin and Scripture, that I was a sinner and in need of Salvation. I accepted Jesus as my Savior around age seven. For eleven years I walked in that Salvation, struggled with numerous life issues such as being personally abused as a child. I became angry with God for not stopping all the bad stuff that I thought He would shelter me from once I got saved. I became angrier as the Holy Spirit wrestled with me through these years as I studied all the major world religions and cults thinking that somehow I must have gotten it wrong – and yet every new sect I studied fell like so many dominoes as Holy Spirit guided me through the reasoning of these delusions and gently nurtured me toward the eventual understanding that God wasn’t DOING these things to me, He was allowing free will choices of gatekeepers and human beings around me… unfortunately those free will choices of others caused me damage. They also ran the natural course of causing me to act out in rebellious disobedience and anger.
A month before my 18th birthday, the fruits of my ways and the sin I had been raised in became ripe and fell from the branch. Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t in trouble for anything that had been done TO me by those who were supposed to have cared for me and protected me. No one was looking at what my biological or adopted parents had or had not done in my life. They were looking at MY behavior and I was in trouble for MY actions. I had sinned against God and man.
That was February 22, 1990. The day I entered my Sanctification, I surrendered all of me for all of Him. I accepted Jesus not only as my Savior, but my Lord. I repented of everything that I knew to repent of and admitted that I could no longer walk alone but that every day I would submit and walk with Him guiding and directing me.
He has since guided me through the wreckage that the enemy attempted to destroy my life with, and I have openly shared my story with those similarly affected. I have strived to fulfill 2Cor1:3-4 by guiding others as I have been. Comforting others as I have been comforted. Helping them to draw the evils that were done to them, and the evils they did by choice – into the Light where they can be addressed and healed. This is the nature of redemption, God turning that which others meant for harm to good.
This is what it means to me to overwhelmed by Grace and to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is faithful, that He will keep that which is entrusted to Him safe in the palm of His hand – that He is faithful when we cannot be.
Thanks for the blog.
Wow Blaze…thanks for sharing your story. You’re obviously someone who appreciates God’s love and grace.