The biggest obstacle hindering faith in the church is unbelief

Welcome to episode 335. In this episode, I'm going to talk about the elephant in the room with the church, and it's called unbelief. It's one of the two things that I believe stops faith in its tracks. But before we get started, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, if you remember, we started talking about faith way back when, and it's a huge subject, and it's 10 minutes, and it's tough to get it all into, packed in. But I just want to do these bite-sized episodes so that we can be thinking about something. We just don't overload our brains or our world with the word of God because some people just don't— are not in the word as much as I'm in the word. And I'm okay with that. I think you ought to get in the word. This is my soapbox moment. And allow the word to get inside of you. That's why I'm here. I'm here to just help encourage, empower, and inspire you to get into the word of God. One of the reasons that I'm talking about faith in Luke 18:8, when Jesus was talking about the end times which I think we're real close. We're at the end of the end. So I don't know if that's 5 years from now, 5 minutes from now, 50 years from now. I don't know. But it's been going on for thousands of years, and we're coming to an end. I think we're one day closer today, Jesus' return, than we were yesterday. That's the only date that I'm gonna set, is we're one day closer. I think there's a date out there. I have no idea. God hadn't told me what that date is. He said no man's gonna know. So why are we wringing our hands worrying about it? Let's just keep doing. He said to occupy until I return, do business until I return. That's what we're doing here. But he said in Luke 18:8, and let's read it, nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth? And that is a great question, and that's what's got me thinking, and that's what got me talking about faith. I want when Jesus comes back, I want him to say, hey, Greg was walking in faith. He was doing the best he could. He took a couple steps, fell down a lot, but he was at least trying. And it says the just shall live by faith. We've gone over those things. This is something that stops faith. Unbelief will stop it in its tracks. And if you don't believe it, we've got scripture to prove it. Let's go to Matthew 13:58. Now he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. Now this was God, and this was in his own hometown, that he could not do many mighty works because of their unbelief. And we're going to see in Mark, it's the same story, the same time period. He comes at it from a different angle, but I want to stay in Matthew. Matthew 17:20. So Jesus said to them, because of your unbelief. For assuredly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. And that reminded me of Philippians 4:13. That's a very popular scripture. You see that a lot on t-shirts. You see that on walls and houses. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So you see that correlation? If you have faith, nothing will be impossible for you. And Jesus— and Paul was saying in Philippians 4:13, for I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me. And the two of them are mutually inclusive. I don't know if that's a word. When we think about the vine, Jesus said that apart from me you can do nothing. Jesus called himself the vine and we are the branches. So we've got to picture these things. We got to see how all this works together. But unbelief stops faith. You can do all things with faith, but if you have unbelief— and that's why I call it the elephant in the room. Nobody talks about— I hear very few people in the body of Christ talking about unbelief. In fact, the disciples, they asked Jesus— they didn't say, get rid of our unbelief. They said, we need more faith. Everybody thinks you need more faith. Jesus said, if you have a mustard seed of faith, you can say to that mountain, be removed, and it's got to happen. So it's not faith. Everybody has the measure. We've all been given that measure. But it's the unbelief that we've got to deal with. It's one of the two limiting things. In fact, the name of my podcast, No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe— the no doubt is unbelief. And we talked about fear in the previous episode, but let's go into Mark. This is the same time period that we just talked about in Matthew, but in Mark 6:5-6, now he could do no mighty work there except that he lay his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. Then he went about the villages in a circuit teaching. And I want to stop there. When I read this, I was reminded that there's only two times when Jesus, or God, when he was here on earth that he marveled. And he marveled at the centurion. Remember when the centurion said, Jesus, don't come to my house, just say the word. And it'll happen. And Jesus stopped. In fact, let's read it. It's in Matthew 8:10. When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to those who followed, assuredly I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel. So Jesus marveled at this man's great faith, and he marveled at these— this great unbelief that all these miracles were happening all in all these other cities. Well, when he comes back to his hometown, he couldn't do it. It didn't say he wouldn't do it. I want you to see, words have power. And when it says he couldn't do, that just tells me that unbelief stops the power of God. And I believe that is a huge deal in the church today. I believe that is what's stopping the power of God from moving in the church. And I think that's why one of the biggest reasons and why I'm here is the apathy, is that the apostasy, the falling away, the people that just— they just throw their hands up and they quit following Jesus— is because we're not expecting anything. It says signs and wonders will follow them that believe. If you're not believing for signs and wonders, guess what? Signs and wonders aren't going to follow you. They're going to follow them that believe. And we need to be here, we need to be here believing, and we've got to get out the unbelief. You can't have belief and unbelief at the same time. It's like a coin, it's heads or tails. So we need to walk in belief or in faith, and that's why I'm here. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. And I want to go to Hebrews to finish this up. Again, the author's talking about unbelief, and he's tying it back to when the children of Israel— remember in Numbers when they had to wander around for 40 years because they said, "Oh, we were like grasshoppers." Moses told those people just to go see and scout out. He didn't tell them to see if we can conquer because God is the one that was going to have that victory. But these people got this all twisted up. They fell into unbelief, and we're going to read that in Hebrews 3:12 and 19. Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief and departing from the living God. Then down to 19, so we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. And I believe those are the key words, they could not enter in. We cannot enter into faith if we're walking around in unbelief. And if all you're taking in is CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC, I I've heard it called the 10 Spies Network. This is where you get all this unbelief poured out on you. Now you've got to fight all this unbelief, and you don't get in the Word. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. So you get all this unbelief, you don't counter it at all with the faith and the Word. So that's why we're here. We're to get into the Word of God, allow the Word of God to get into us. We're going to talk a little more about unbelief because it's such a huge deal. We have got to believe. And if we truly believe that, I'm telling you, I walk around, it's okay to fail. And I'm just going to go into this right now instead of doing another episode. In John 14:12, that changed my life, where Jesus said, for assuredly I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also and greater works than these. Because I go to my Father. And if we truly believed the word of God and had no unbelief, we would do every single thing that Jesus did. I think that's what John 14:12 is telling us. It says that, hey, everything you see me doing, you can do also if you believe in me. But the problem is we've got so much unbelief, and this natural world gives us unbelief. I know If you're a fanatic, you've heard me talk about walking on water, and the first thing that floods you before you get wet is your unbelief. If you don't think you have any unbelief, if you don't think you suffer from this unbelief disease, go walk on water. Jesus said you could do it. If you see Jesus doing it in the Word of God, that means you and I can do it. That's what John 14:12 says to me. And what shows me that I am still loaded down with unbelief is I get wet every time I take a step on water because unbelief— I just have all these doubts and all this unbelief, and it ties you up. It does not allow the power of God to flow through you like it should. And I want to stop there because I can feel myself going on, but this is a huge, huge topic. Unbelief— we need to attack it, we need to fight it, we need to quit worrying about it. We just need to believe and receive. And it sounds simple, and it is, but it's not easy. And we've got to pull all this garbage, all this crap out of our head, and we need to replace it with the word of God. And that's— again, let's pray. God, I thank you so much for your word. God, I thank you that you sent your Holy Spirit here to help lead and guide and direct us into all truth. God, help us as we walk in your word, as we walk in your truths. Lord, as we learn to walk by faith and not by sight, God, help us to take the next step. And if we fall, God, help us, lift us up, help us to get it, get up off the ground and take another step. Lord, help us to be doers of the word and not hearers only. Lord, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.