We Believe What We Want To Believe

I would like to start out this message and share some of my heartache for my fellow man. Ever since God has placed the Word of God in me, I have been writing about God and His Word. The Word of God that has been placed in my heart has motivated me out of love for all my fellow man. This Word of God that is inside me has shown me how deficit and lost I was before I was born again and I realize that most people are lacking this born again experience - like I was before the Truth of God came to me. It is this very Truth of God that motivates me, because my spiritual eyes have been opened to the real truth and I know most are still on that wide and fast road to hell, because they are still letting themselves be deceived by the devil. I tell you this, because I want to let you know how I hurt deeply for the lost. Sometimes I hurt so much that almost all my energy is taken up by this passion that God has put in me.

Through this passion and sharing of God’s Word with other people, I have realized that a lot of people won’t believe the Truth, mainly because they don’t want to believe it. Of course there are the people that believe there is no God, no heaven, and no hell. My mother is one of these new age thinking people and no matter what I say, she will not believe. Why won’t she believe – because she doesn’t want to believe. My mother knows that if she were to believe what I was saying, she would then have to change her lifestyle and that is not something she is willing to do. So she has found some other books that her lifestyle agrees with – so she can have some contentment that she is OK.

Another group of believers is where they believe there is a God, but might believe that there are no consequences for sin, no judgment to hell, and no rewarding of heaven. These people also might believe that there is more than one God and Creator. They also might believe that there are many ways to get to heaven. They believe that if there is a God, that He is a loving God and will allow everyone into heaven. They say - how could a loving God send anyone to hell – if there is a hell. These people are imagining up their own idea of what God is like. The God they make up is a God that serves them and He will be a God that suites what they want to believe a God is. Again, why do people believe this way – because it is what they want to believe. This kind of god allows them to live what ever selfish lifestyle they choose without the worry of eternal consequences. These people can usually have temporary contentment in acting out their selfish lifestyle and have no remorse about their actions. A person with this belief can feel they are OK with the world and God because they are of the world and see most people acting just like them – so they must be OK too.

Still, there is another big group of believers that call themselves Christians. Even though they call themselves Christians, they have not yet become Christ like or a slave to Christ, as the name “Christian” implies. They are not yet true followers of Christ, since they have not yet picked up their cross (they have not yet died to all their selfishness). Of some of these people, you could say that they are on their salvation path, but until they put away all their own wants and human beliefs and believe in God’s Word alone, they cannot be a disciple of Christ. This group of believers believes the Bible only in part. Most of this group might listen to the Sunday Church message and take some of it to heart, but they don’t get serious and read God’s Word for themselves. They will spend part of their time for God on Sunday, but will live like the rest of the world all the other days of the week. A lot of these people say they don’t understand the Bible. That they would rather hear it interpreted from someone else. The reason they don’t understand the Bible is because the Bible is Spiritual and they are not. God’s ways are not like man’s ways, so when they read the Bible, they cannot understand it because they are trying to accept it and reason it out with man’s selfish way of thinking. Some of these people will accept some verses of the Bible, but will reject other verses of the Bible. They end up believing the Bible verses they want to believe and leave the rest of the Bible verses in the dust, because they seem to conflict with the verses they believe or they just can’t bring themselves to believe in those verses – because their selfish thinking will not allow them to believe the truth.

Then there is the smaller group of believers that believes that every Word of the Bible is true, inspired by God, and that there are no conflicts within God’s Word. These believers have surrendered their lives to the power of God’s Word and they live by it’s every Word. They have laid down their lives in faith of God’s Word, even before God has gave them the total understanding of His Word. I have found that when people act on this faith (hope) in God’s Word, it is after this act of obedience - that God usually opens up His Truth and reasoning of His Word to that person. We usually receive the understanding of God’s Truth after we have been obedient to that truth in faith. We receive the understanding of God’s Truth by the acts of our faith, but after we receive the knowledge of the Truth, we are then acting on Truth and not just something we hope to be Truth. These believers also know that there are no conflicts in God’s Word. If they seem to find a conflict between certain verses of God’s Word, then they know that they must have a misunderstanding of one or both of the conflicting verses. I said in the beginning of this letter that I had received the Truth of God (the Spirit of Truth) and I can attest that there are no conflicts in God’s Word.

Most people will only partially believe or not believe in God’s Word at all, because their selfishness blocks them from believing. This is what is meant when the Bible says the lost are blinded and walking in the dark. They are blinded by their own selfish wants. They can’t see the truth, because they don’t want to see the truth. If they would take the blinders of selfishness off of their spiritual eyes, then they would see the truth and the truth would set them free.

So, as I am ending this letter, I am pleading with you to search out God’s Truth (if you haven’t already). It is for your own eternal benefit. Are you going to choose to believe what your selfishness wants you to believe or overrule your selfishness in favor of God’s Truth. It is for God’s glory that you be born again of His Holy Spirit and that you in turn receive the benefits of being His eternal son. When you have made the choice to leave all your selfish wants behind and act in faith and obedience to God’s love – then you will be born again of His Holy Spirit and all of heaven will rejoice – and I will be one of those rejoicing with the angels.


Michael Reid