Doubt and Fear Unbelief and a Hard Heart

Welcome to episode 85. In the beginning was the Word. Amen.

The Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 85. We're going to continue our talk on doubt and unbelief and what the Bible has to say about it, but I kind of want to make a little bit of a turn because with doubt and unbelief, we talked about the, the different pulling. The doubt is pulling, or the unbelief and the belief, if you've got them on two separate teams of a tug of war, we got the little flag in the, in the middle over the mud pile. Or the mud pit. I don't know if you ever did that. I used to love the tug of war. I was so small, I don't think I ever really helped anybody. I graduated high school 155 pounds soaking wet, so you can imagine in middle school and elementary when I'm on the tug of war team, I, I'm not the person that you wanted on your tug of war team. Now, I was wiry in my opinion, and I, I was mean. I loved sports and all that stuff, but as far as the strength and the weight behind it. And that's what I wanna take you to is the weight and the authority that the word of God has over everything else. If you're picking somebody on a tug-of-war team, you have got to pick somebody that's got some weight behind them. And if you're gonna win the battle of the tug-of-war, you need to have somebody as an anchor and some big old bigo of the back of the rope pulling and anchored into the ground. And that is the Bible. That is the Word of God. And remember in Psalm 138:2 where it says that he— that God elevated his word above his name. And at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord. I mean, it's going to happen, and it's better if you bow on this side than in heaven. But it— you're going to bow one way or the other to the name of Jesus. But I'm here to tell you that the Word of God is the anchor. And if you've ever done any kind of boating, and if you've ever done any kind of, any kind of activity that's on the water, you'll know the importance of an anchor. And I think we've gotten so— and again, with the drift, and I know this doesn't have anything to do with water, but you know those little bumps on the side of the road that the interstate puts on there, those little bumps on the right and left side? Of the road, that is, I think those save, they told me, someone told me that those have saved countless of thousands of lives because people used to just go to sleep and drift, almost a hypnotic state as they're driving, and they wouldn't even realize that they were drifted over into the shoulder until it was too late and they were off in the middle of the shoulder hitting a tree or hitting a fence or something. Someone come up with, and I think whoever did that was incredible. I can't stand 'em when I hit 'em, but I thank, you know, if you think about it, you gotta be thankful that they're there because in life we tend to drift. It's hard to stay between the lines in life, and that's why the Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And we all drift. Whether you like it or not, you're gonna make mistakes. The goal is not perfection. But the goal is to— is reflection, really. But you know, as we go through life, we're going to make mistakes, and so we drift over. And you hear those little— I want you to hear those little bumps that you're—

you— whoa, whoa, whoa!

That's the Bible. If you read the Bible, that's the Bible saying, hey, you're offline, you're off center, you've come back over here. And so with that in mind, the anchor in the boat— we tend— if you don't put an anchor on your boat, if you stop the motor and you stop moving, and if you don't put an anchor, then you're, you're just subject to the drift. Wherever the current takes you, wherever life is taking you, if you don't have an anchor, you are going to be in trouble. It may not start off trouble, but there is a waterfall somewhere down in the path. And if we don't anchor, if we don't sit where we're supposed to be sitting, if we've stopped our engine, we're in trouble. And, and I don't even know— this wasn't in my notes, but this is where I'm going with it— that if we go and we, we stop, and I think a lot of us are just— we're hearers and not doers as well— that we have stopped our boat. We have put in— we're in this water, we're in this sea, and it's kind of— maybe you, you kind of get the feeling that there may be a little there may be some turmoil and there may be some waves and the seas of life are getting a little bit crazy. And if we don't have, if we're not anchored to something and we've stopped our boat, we are in big trouble. The sea will take us over. So the anchor that I wanna encourage you to anchor into is the Word of God. When we look at the Word, we're talking about the Bible. We're talking about the spoken word that the Holy Spirit has put on paper and put into this book so that we can carry it and do more than carry it. We can consume it, we can eat it, we can plant it, we can use it against our enemy. There's so much we can do with this word, but we have got to, we've gotta bring it out and we've got to learn how to deal with it. And one of the things that I wanted to talk about is this hardness of heart. And when Jesus talked about the hardness of heart, it was just because people— and I think that's maybe where we're at sometimes, and you don't want to— I mean, no one wants to say, well, yeah, I'm kind of hard-hearted. And I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about your heart waxing cold, as the Bible would say, is, is that we just continue to let life kind of dip us in that wax, and we get— the more we get dipped into that wax of life and then just letting life have its way with us. Every time we get dipped— if you've ever seen a candle being made, you know, they take that wick, they take the wick, the old time, and they dip it into the candle and they pull it out, let it cool, and they dip it again and pull it out, and they dip it in. And that's your, that's your heart getting— if, if you take that analogy and that's waxing, you know, you get a hard-hearted, is that you just you kind of get used to everything, and your heart gets hard. When I got saved— before I was saved, I was thin-skinned and hard-hearted. And when I got saved, at salvation, something changed, and I became more thick-skinned and soft-hearted. Things affected me totally different after salvation, and I knew something was changed. But if you don't protect your heart— and we're going to talk about that in the next episode— but if you don't protect your heart, things are going to go bad for you. And, and I'm— I want you to picture that dipping of the wax every time. If you're not in the word and you're not, you're not repenting and you're drifting, if you will, and just doing your own thing, and the, the more you stay out of the word of God the more you have the ability to kind of drift and go into the other lane, or to be on the open seas and have it just mill around and go take you wherever the ocean, or take you wherever the river is wanting to take you. And we need to anchor in, and we need to sit on the word of God, and we need to be strong because it will hold. And, and if you just stay on the word and you put your anchor on the word of God and your life is anchored on the rock, you're still going to have the storm, but you will have some place to where you know you're not being— you're not drifting, and you're not— you, you have some, some control over the things that is affecting you. And it's, it's done by getting into the word. I want to give a scripture on this hardness of heart and just kind of give you an idea of what I'm talking about. And he's walking on the water in Mark 6:49. 43:26 And when they saw him walking on the sea, they supposed it was a ghost, and cried out: 43:27 For they all saw him, and were troubled. 43:28 But immediately he talked with them, and said to them, Be of good cheer; it is I: do not be afraid. 43:29 Then he went up into the boat to them: and the wind ceased. 43:30 And they were greatly amazed in themselves beyond measure, and marvelled: 43:31 For they had not understood about the loaves, because their heart was hardened. Now I want you to picture this. These are disciples. These are not the world. You know, you hear of people having a hard heart, but like what I was talking about, your, your heart is waxed. They, they just didn't appreciate. They didn't let God soften their heart. And we go back to humility, and we gotta go back to humbling yourselves.

You—

this is a constant effort that you constantly have to dig the soil of your heart because it'll get hard. It— this world will harden your heart. And Jesus had just fed 5,000 people, and they had not considered the loaves. It says they had not considered the loaves because their hearts were hardened. And that is just amazing when you think about how amazed and awestruck— I mean, I think I would have been in the same spot. But what we should do is we should get used to the miraculous. I think that's one of the biggest problems in the church today, and you and I being in the church, is that we're shying away from the things of God in favor of technology. Well, I mean, I would much rather speak to something and have it happen than to have some doctor cut it out of me. So I, I mean, and, and that's just a side note, but we are so bent on doing the natural that we forget about the supernatural, or we don't believe it. Again, it's the hardness of heart. These people, they— these disciples, they did not consider. They marveled. And hang on, let's see what the word said. And they were greatly amazed in themselves beyond measure and marveled, for they had not understood about the loaves because their heart was hardened. So they, they were just marveling at Jesus. They were just awestruck. They couldn't believe it. That's unbelief, the hardness of heart. And that's kind of— I just want to tie all this together in a bow if we can, because we got to— we're talking about doubt and fear. And when we talk about doubt, we're talking about unbelief. And part of the unbelief is you don't read the Bible— you're reading the Bible and not believing. And when we start seeing all these miracles that Jesus did We need to just think that that's not abnormal, but that is normal for a Christian. And I, sadly to say, none of us, me included, believe that blind eyes opening, deaf ears opening, people getting up out of wheelchair, all of that stuff, it would just be normal. That should— that happened all the time when Jesus was around, but now we've got the Holy Spirit everywhere. And it's not happening. And I believe the disconnect is the hardness of our hearts. Well, I'm having a harder time keeping this under 10 minutes, and I apologize for that, but there's a lot to be said, and I don't want to leave some of these stones unturned. We got to kind of dig this out. And I just want to pray real quick before we end this episode. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for the person listening to this. Lord, I thank you that we have the ability to to get into your word every day. Lord, you are the bread of life. Give us this day our daily bread. And so we will take of you when we get spiritually hungry. And I pray in Jesus' name that you would give us that hunger for your word, Lord. And I pray that you would open up these truths into our hearts and into our minds so we can learn to apply these truths to our lives. Lord, I thank you. We love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this episode, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next one.

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