Topic: Two different types of belief…
Scripture(s): Romans 10:9-10
Getting to the heart of belief.
Notes: The Bible verses are included below, but it is more beneficial to read any verses from an actual Bible – or better yet, have the children read from their own. We recommend the NLT (New Living Translation – Tyndale Publishers) which is easy to read but very accurate. If you don’t have one please let us know as we may be able to help.
Description
Sharmini has long had a love of art. She draws & creates things that reflect what she is feeling in amazing ways and this has led to another angle for Jesus Time. When time permits, the children are allowed to choose ‘drawing’ and we will engage with a Bible story, belief, teaching, our feelings, doctrine or what we are looking at. I generally choose the topic based on what I sense God wants us to know, what I think we as a family need to learn / know about or from what we have been going through.
Today, I chose the verse from Romans as Sharmini and myself had been discussing it in relation to ‘false converts’. This is people who say (or act or think) they are saved – but in fact are not. Quite a good discussion – but we’ll leave that for another time!
The verse itself is well known to Christians:
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved
(Romans 10:9-10 NLTse)
So I read the verse aloud to everyone (those old enough follow in their own Bibles) – then again slowly asking if there were any questions regarding the meaning of words. Then I asked if anyone thought they could remember it if we repeated it a few more times. Of course everyone wants to try now so we let that play out…then I ask them to point to the part of us that God is talking about in the verse as I read it aloud again.
So as I start reading “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord” they are pointing at their mouths… then as I read “and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead…” they are pointing to their hearts.
The bit I love the best is the discussion and interaction with God’s Word. Seriously it always amazes me what people get from the Bible. It could be a verse you have read a thousand times and still new insight and understanding are attained. Of course it is equally amazing (but deeply saddening) how non believers are literally dead to it’s light. I still remember picking up the Bible twice as a non believer and opening it with the though ‘ok God if you do exist and can help what do you have for me?’ and flicking it open (on both occasions) ‘Bastards shall not enter the house of the Lord for 1000 years’ or something like that. “See!?” I told myself – “how stupid to believe an old religious book! I really am that word in every possible meaning so it’s pointless I’m doomed even if God did exist!” How different things are after God opens our eyes!
But today I wanted to wait til after the art to discuss things. So the goal was simple, draw some kind of representation of the verses we have read. What they mean, what they mean to you – anything!
The drawings as always reflect what each child knows, understands, has experienced or gone through over the last few days / weeks and their personality. As we don’t disclose things on behalf of others (gossip) – I’ll centre on what I tried to draw.
A man on a huge tree with a bungee rope around his waste with various other figures in the foreground.
At the end of the time, we always take it in turns to explain to each other what we have drawn and engage with where each other are at.
My drawing was trying to illustrate the difference between head and heart belief. It is easy to believe in the head that a bungee cord is safe – and fun! There are after all regulations and thousands do it daily without any issues. But when you get up on the branch, bridge, building or other – the height, ground below, manufacturing defects – everything real and imagined – comes to mind.
If, while up waiting to jump, we feel anything other than peace, it indicates that we do not actually believe in, have faith, trust in the thing we say we do.
It is easy to know about parachutes, know how they work, know the history of them, teach people about them, how to use them and think we trust in them…but until we put it on and jump our of a plane with complete confidence and peace, we don’t know we truly believe in it.
The verse we have looked at is clear – willing to speak with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead. This is not a small thing! It is easy to think ‘yes I really believe that God raised Jesus from the dead’ as in “that event really happened. But that is not what the verse is talking about in my opinion. You can believe from the historic / archeological evidence that Jesus rose again – but what is really meant?
To me, believeing that God raised Jesus from the dead in this context is a complete trust in the character of God – in who He actually is not just what He did in one moment in time. For instance – in the darkest hour of any place, no matter what is going on around you – do you trust that God is God, that He is in control and able to rescue you? As with any heart or true belief – these things can not be conjurred up – no matter the amount of trying. In the area of sin – do we believe that Jesus paid the price for sin – once and for all? Or do we still try to earn forgiveness by being good, doing works of charity, kindness etc? Do we internally believe that God will give us extra credit or frogiveness because we do this or that? If so we fall outside of what this verse says we need to have to be saved. In fact we are just like every other religious person in every other religion if so. But can we come to a true belief in His mercy and complete sacrifice on the cross?
We live in a world with many ideas and techniques that avoid the reality of this process. For instance, we have psychology, Psychotherapy and cognitive therapy(among many others) that regularly take good profits from people in order to try to change or help them in these areas. The results are minimal however. In my own experience, I found only short term, light relief from certain issues–and this was only while I was mentally strong enough to think the thoughts, repeat the phrases, visualise the instances et cetera. While many therapists have great intentions, it seems they like the understanding of how the human mind was designed and created.
God has created our minds wonderfully complex and efficient. We can operate at different levels (i.e. drive a car then your mind wanders off thinking about something, then when you’re conscious mind comes back to the car you realise you might have been driving for 10 2030 seconds without actually knowing it) and even dissociate from things that are bad(I.e. Focusing on something else so we feel less pain at the doctors). We can also believe to opposing thoughts as ridiculous as this sounds.
Without going into too much depth, let me try to explain:
We may believe something(in our head) just like the illustration of the parachute or bungee rope. The belief might be “the parachute can save me” and we might actually believe it. But we may also believe when it comes to jumping out of the plane “I am going to die if I jump”. This inner belief Will often be hidden and I’m noticed until we’re actually in the position where we ‘need the parachute’.
Is quite easy to see this process in someone who has a ‘phobia’. Let’s take for instance claustrophobia. As someone who has experienced costa phobia until recently, I make the following observation. If at any point, anyone had asked me if it was safe to get into a confined space (such as a lift) I would have and soon”Yes”. It’s not that I was lying, I actually believed that it was safe – because it is right?! But something very strange happens when I got into a confined space. I would get a very weird feeling in my chest and stomach it became hard to swallow my thought process is changed I became acutely aware of things my heart rate rose – in short I felt the effects of adrenaline going through my body. Why? If I believed that the confined space was safe there is no logical or rational answer as to why.
Unfortunately this reality governs how a lot of us live our lives–we make choices and follow activities to avoid the bad feelings that these inner beliefs produce. As a small exam, we could think about someone to get nervous when there’s a lot of people around looking at them–they may subconsciously decide to not apply for a job with this situation may arise. In a marriage, this is known as ‘keeping the peace’ and from the outside it can look like the relationship is strong and desirable. But the internal reality might actually be cheap people treading on egg shells to avoid reactions in their spouse. This is not peace!
Our inner beliefs, although Hidden and avoided most of the time, are a lot stronger and can be more destructive than anything else in life. They often control alliance without us even knowing if we allow it.
Conclusion: The human mind is incredibly powerful – but it pails into insignificance when compared to the human heart!