It Matters What You Believe!
This past Friday, I stopped by Costco to talk to an AT&T agent about my cell phone. The agent I met was a young gal in her early twenties who was very sweet and helpful. As I conversed with her about her life and upbringing, she told me she had left home at age 18 (from the Seattle area) to follow her boyfriend to the Midwest where all her dreams and hopes dwindled away when their relationship ended after a few years of great disappointment. She returned to Seattle to be closer to her family and shared she was putting the pieces of her life back together.
In our casual conversation I asked her if she had a belief in her life that gave her strength and hope to find meaning and purpose that would lift her beyond the daily challenges and setbacks of life. She looked surprised by my question and then said she was personally seeking spirituality. I asked if she had any kind of faith background and she indicated that her family had a Christian background but neither she nor her family practiced it in any serious or meaningful way. So I asked her if she had investigated the Person and claims of Jesus Christ, and her response was that her pursuit of spirituality didn’t focus on any one religion or one god, but just a belief in spirituality. When I asked her what the pursuit of spirituality meant in her life, she struggled to describe what that pursuit entailed and focused on personal internal feelings as a way to center herself. Then I asked her if she thought it was significant that Jesus Christ was the only religious leader who ever lived who bodily rose from the dead. She struggled to deny that it wasn’t compelling and seemed to wonder about its potential significance. However, she clung to her belief that spirituality brought some meaning to her life even though she couldn’t articulate what that meaning was. In the end, I invited her to Christ’s Church and told her about the Young Adults ministry and she said she would think about it.
I share this to say that one of the most popular personal beliefs today is thinking that it is important to believe in something (e.g., spirituality), but it doesn’t matter what it is as long as you believe it helps center your life. This sounds appealing, practical, and helpful, but it is deadly, deceptive, and dangerous. It’s one thing to believe, but what if what you believe is false?
Someone said “Conviction is no substitute for competence.” Bingo. You wouldn’t jump out of a plane if you weren’t sure whether your backpack held a parachute or a sack lunch. Wise people commit to what they know, not to what they do not know. It seems that God is the only topic where people assume that what they believe matters less than how much they believe it. Like this sweet agent I met, she is spiritual enough to believe in some higher power, but doesn’t seem to want to limit herself to any one god or objective ultimate truth.
This is that common commitment we see in our culture to “my truth” and “your truth.” God tells us the problem is that all sinners “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18) even though “that which is known about God is evidence within them; for God made it evident to them” (Rom. 1:19). How did God make it evident? Simply through all that He intricately and powerfully made in His creation “so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).
God reveals Himself through creation (Rom. 1:20), but this revelation doesn’t save anyone, it just points us to a wise, powerful Creator God. The only revelation that saves is the gospel message that reveals who the Creator God gave to us when He sent His only Son to satisfy His wrath against us at the cross for our sin and freely granted us His forgiveness, love, and eternal life.
I pray this cell phone agent will be prompted to come to our church, meet some transformed believers, hear the gospel, and have her suppression of the truth turned into a reception of the truth of saving grace. Maybe I’ll get to see her again at Costco, and I’ll hand her a gospel booklet that the Lord will use to help her find her ultimate spiritually in Christ.
It matters what we believe, not just that we believe. Jesus said, “Unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24b).
Pastor Jeff
“People ask me, ‘Why pray if God is sovereign?’ I respond, ‘Why pray if He isn’t?’”