What and How to Believe

He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18)

"She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21)

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. (John 3:17)

Part of the fog in my mind I have struggled against for years involves the words and symbols used in religion and the Bible. I can distinctly remember my repeated frustration with comments insisting on things like our need to “give our hearts to Jesus”, being “washed in the blood” and other such terms. In these verses is yet another one that constantly eluded explanation in ways that made sense and clarity – “believing in the name of Jesus.”

Now, the last thing I am interested in is settling for typical platitudes in response to these kinds of questions. I have resented those platitudes all of my life and continue to do so, maybe too much. But it is the very use of so many platitudes and clichés that has kept me quite literally in spiritual darkness and it has been the persistent challenging of those things that has resulted in much of my awakening over the past few years. I am unwilling to simply be satisfied with stringing together nice-sounding phrases and going through religious-looking motions repeatedly without any real life-changing significance. If religion is not transforming one into the beauty and maturity of genuine God-likeness in its true nature, then it must be a counterfeit and a useless religion as far as heaven is concerned.

Again, that is one of the reasons I am spending so much time trying to really understand particularly this chapter of the Bible. Somehow I sense that if I could decode some of the real meanings of these verses through the revelations shared by the Spirit who inspired them in the first place, then my heart can become more alive and my perceptions will be empowered to much more clearly see many other revelations of God throughout the rest of Scriptures. I need heart understanding as much or more than just head knowledge.

This chapter along with the whole book of John is full of references to the need for believing. It is also chock full of narration about the need for love in the heart in order to truly connect with God effectively. Both of these terms have been shrouded in darkness for me most of my life when I look inside with brutal honesty. I really want to know what it means to believe. I really want to be filled with the kind of love inside of me that I am just beginning to perceive exists in the heart of God. But transferring much of my increasing understanding of these things into actual heart beliefs and experience is a whole different project, at least it seems so at times.

This is where the cliché effect has frustrated me for so long. People say things like, we love God because He first loved us. You have to love God to go to heaven. You must believe to be saved, etc. Now, while all of these things may be technically true, just throwing the words around doesn't make them happen in my heart. That reminds me of another typical platitude answer – faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. It seems that the answers always tended to lead back to an intellectual knowledge of the Bible as the basis for any relationship I might have with God in order to be saved. While I have been pursuing faith and love all of my life I have sensed that much of the time my efforts have been at least somewhat misdirected.

The last couple days have seen an atmosphere of fear trying to press itself over me. I find myself fighting consciously and repeatedly intense internal pressure to give in to depression and a sense of foreboding. I have to repeatedly remind myself to focus on the truth about God, to talk with God honestly and openly about my feelings and to force my mind and imagination to turn away from the frightening scenarios playing tapes in my head and instead focus my imagination on the real truth about God that I have been learning for a number of years now.

As I have been doing so I am forced to see that although many of the things I have been learning with my head are all wonderful, true and desperately needed by me, my heart's readiness to absorb and really believe many of these things is all too often lagging far behind. I even find frustration within myself at my inability to effectively convey to others how to deeply connect with God when they ask me repeatedly how one goes about doing this. I wonder if maybe I am on the verge of breaking through to a much deeper level of conversion than I have ever experienced before.

I have been praying for several days for God to really convert me much more deeply. I have given Him unlimited permission to do whatever it takes to transform me into the person that He designed me to be in Christ. That sometimes has resulted in very frightening events in my life that make me feel extremely vulnerable and out of control. But that should not be surprising in the least. Nevertheless they can be terribly upsetting and fear-inducing at times. This time I seem to be having similar feelings.

So I keep coming back to this passage day after day and seeking to perceive true reality within the context of the Word of God and the personal tutoring of the Holy Spirit. I pray that the Light talked about here will in fact begin to penetrate the very real darkness that presses over my own heart and mind and will create new life, hope, joy and peace within my soul. I am not satisfied with being religious, I want to live in vital heart connection with my Savior and God. I want to become a channel of life to others around me, not a source of confusion or discouragement.

One thing I have concluded over the years is that believing in the name of Jesus has very little to do with just the label we give to a person as humans use a “name.” But that thinking always seems to try to insinuate itself back into the perception no matter how many times it is exposed. I was taught many years ago that the name has to do with character, so believing in a name really means believing the truth about what a person is really like on the inside. This makes much more sense to me but again is more difficult to believe with my heart than with my head.

As I looked at these verses this morning I noticed that the context may offer definition to what is meant by believing or not believing in the name of the Son of God. It looks to me like it is referring directly back to what was just said about both the Father and the Son in verses 16 and 17. It is the motives and desires of God towards us that is being revealed here and that seems to be embedded in the very idea of the name. It is full of the idea of God wanting to save us along with the Son desiring the very same thing. It is also the truth that the Godhead is not interested in using condemnation to attract us to their love for us but wants to reveal the real truth about God to our hearts in any way possible to attract us to turn away from the lies about them that have kept us in darkness and fear for so long.

This pressure toward making a decision about what I am going to believe at the deepest level about what God is like and how He relates to me will inevitably cause what is called judgment. Judgment is not something forced on us by God but is something that inevitably happens whenever light comes into a dark place. The hidden things can hide no longer and people are forced by circumstances to make some kind of choice for one direction or the other. They will either confess and agree with the reality and truthfulness of the real nature of beliefs inside of them, the things they have felt about God that are inaccurate and create resistance against Him, or they will try to hide even further from the Light, deny its truthfulness or do anything to avoid coming into agreement with the convictions of the Spirit that always accompanies that Light.

The real truths about God focused on here is that God and Jesus want to save us from our sins – not in our sin. But it is also the truth that God is not the one trying to make us feel condemned – that is just a side-effect produced by our own resistance to Him.

Another truth that I see here is the exposure of the real object of our love, what our hearts want to fixate on and where we look to receive life for ourselves. Sin has caused us to look to all kinds of sources and people to make ourselves feel more alive or to feel good within ourselves. But when the true Light comes it exposes the reality that all of these things are in fact false gods that we look to for life instead of trusting fully our own true Creator.

When I find myself trying to justify my feelings and desires to get life from some other source than from God, the Light exposing that will always produce fear in my heart because my justification is really resistance. Fear is always the result of sin/lies in my heart and will prevent me from experiencing the true love that comes only from God. The greater the presence of fear in my heart the more obvious is the fact that I am resisting Light in some way or another. It is often not clear to me just how I am resisting the Light, but I am trying to train myself to notice these symptoms and choose responses to them that will allow God to more effectively expose the lies embedded inside of me. Then I can allow the Spirit of God to address, identify and replace those lies with truths that I have not believed before, at least at the heart level.

My head may be full of all sorts of wonderful truths that I have been learning for years. But I am sensing more intently my need to somehow have my heart get on board and believe at a much deeper level the truths about God and about myself that I have been learning intellectually. It is not that learning these things with my head is at all wrong or bad. But the way the heart learns is radically different than the way the head learns. That involves having it mentored by someone with a more mature heart that can use the methods of communication that the heart uses in order to absorb what it needs to grow up into Christ and into truth.

The discrepancies begin to show up when my head says that I believe that God wants to save me and not condemn me but my feelings scream just the opposite as I find myself in terrifying circumstances. That is when a trial or situation becomes a means of shining light onto the lies in my heart that are not in agreement with the truths in my head. The resulting disagreement and tension created by this huge discrepancy is called guilt or condemnation and can produce incredible amounts of fear as a result.

Since perfect love casts out fear, it becomes obvious that I need a great deal more love in my heart along with real truth that so far has gotten more to the left side of my brain than the right. It is much easier to say this than to experience it, but I am aware that this is what needs to happen. It almost always involves a level of discomfort that is never very welcome but that is natural when one is forced to move from one perception of reality to a completely different one. That is the process of sanctification as some people refer to it.

Father, I feel very uneasy lately and sometimes downright terrified. I know many things about You with my head but I have to trust You to somehow plant those truths much deeper into my heart and soul if they are to really make a transforming difference in my life. I trust myself into Your hands and I trust Your heart. I remind myself of the words You spoke to me through Psalm 37. Trust in the LORD and do good; Dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness. (verse 3 margin) I choose to feed on Your faithfulness and trust You to finish the work You are doing in me.