Morning By Morning #240

How long will they refuse to believe in me?

Numbers 14:11

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

We should diligently strive to keep the monster of unbelief away. It so dishonors Christ that He will remove His visible presence if we insult Him by indulging it. Unbelief is a weed whose seeds we can never entirely extract from the soil; thus, we must aim at each root with zeal and perseverance. Of things we should hate, it should be the most abhorred, for by its nature unbelief is so venomous that those who exercise it, and those upon whom it is exercised, are both hurt by it.

In your case, dear believer, it is even more wicked! The mercies the Lord blessed you with in the past increase your guilt in doubting Him now. When you distrust the Lord Jesus, He could very well cry out, “Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves” (Amos 2:13 KJV). This is like crowning His head with thorns of the sharpest kind. It is cruel for a well-loved wife to mistrust a kind and faithful husband, and although that sin is needless, foolish, and unwarranted, Jesus has never given even the slightest grounds for suspicion. In fact, because He is always affectionate and faithful, it should be all the more difficult for us to doubt Him. Jesus is the Son of the Most High and has unlimited wealth; thus, it is shameful to doubt Omnipotence and distrust His all-sufficiency. “The cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:10) will suffice for even our largest meal, and the granaries of heaven are not likely to be emptied when we eat.

If Christ were only a cistern of water we might quickly exhaust His fullness, but who can drain a fountain? Multitudes of souls have drawn from His supply and not one of them has ever been able to honestly complain of the insufficiency of His resources.

Away then with the lying traitor of unbelief, for his only purpose is to cut the bonds of fellowship with our Savior and then cause us to mourn the lack of His visible presence. As John Bunyan (1628 – 1688) says in The Pilgrim’s Progress, unbelief, or Giant Despair as he calls it, has “as many lives as a cat.” If that is true, may we kill one of unbelief’s lives now and continue working until the entire nine are dead.

Down with you, unbelief! You traitor! My heart detests you.

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

When Jesus returned to Nazareth during His ministry, we are told: “He did not [do] many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matt. 13:58 KJV).

Imagine what those people missed because of their lack of faith! And they were the people who should have known Him best, because they were the people of His hometown.

So what is the message in this for us who have a relationship with Christ? What have we missed due to our lack of faith? Only God Himself knows!

Therefore, we should heed the valuable advice of King Jehoshaphat. Here is what he told Israel just before God destroyed all their enemies: “Have faith in the LORD your God and you will be upheld; have faith in his prophets and you will be successful” (2 Chron. 20:20).