SEEING BEFORE BELIEVING IS VERY RISKY TO OUR FAITH by Awotiku Akinlayo David

I have noticed a wrong thought of Christians today which we could not consciously discern in our life plan. It has become an unconscious norm for us to plan our future, think on what to do next at every phase of our life. We present these plans before God and yet we don’t allow God to direct us, instead we want him to rubberstamp it and agree with them without any thorough screening.

Why did you have to present it before God in the first place if you don’t want to follow his own direction? You want to have it your own way and God should just dogmatically follow your plans the way you have designed it? No! It’s not going to work that way.

Proverb 3:5-6 – ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths”. ‘Direct’ here doesn’t mean he fully consent to and follow your plans. He can either systematically align it to His own plans for you or He cancels your plan and suggests or gives you a new plan or some new plans, this has always been the modus operandi for God to all of us (you can ask men burning for God to confirm this, most of them don’t really wish to be full time ministers, but God wants them to be so, and they complied without opposition to His will).

It is only advisable to make our plans secondary; and to let go of them for God’s plan to be established and brought into actualization in our lives.

The issue we are now facing is that we want God to be fully concise with His plan, make it visible what will end the plan. In Matthew 19:27-30, we have become like Peter asking what will be their gain of following Jesus, Jesus actually answered them even though it was not visible but they believed him and continued to follow him till he left their midst. We have been following God’s plan because we want to see some obvious signs to confirm that our future is really secured with God. If you still fall victim of this, unfortunately you are unconsciously declaring to God that ‘Seeing is believing’, “let me see the end product of your plan so that I can be sure that you have a good expected end for me.” What is the difference between you and a guy who demands for sex from his future partner before he can believe that she is really a virgin?

We indirectly doubt God of His plans and assurance in hope; we doubt His capability of rightly handling our future for us. Many of us even try to dilute God’s plan with ours, we mixed them together and that is why we miss it. We create a backup plan for God’s plan that (in case God’s plan didn’t work out as expected, I won’t lose much; I already prepared a supplementary plan, but let me first give God’s plan a trial). My brother, you are unconsciously telling God that ‘Seeing is believing’.

In Genesis 12:1-4, when God told Abraham to leave his land to a land that He will show him, Abraham just obeyed without any questioning of how it was going to be or what he would do there; without an iota of doubt in his heart, he just followed God’s instruction. The only fact here was that God gave him an assurance that He’s going to bless him and that was all. The same scenario also happened to Isaac in Genesis 26:2-5, Isaac remained in the land despite the famine, he didn’t ask God for the food he would eat to show that all would be well, all he did was to sow, by instruction, and God blessed his fruit and he yielded hundred folds of his crops.

Most of us have forgotten the assurance of good life that the Bible affirms for us, we quote those verses for others but more often than not, we do not apply them to our lives. We love to teach on them to people, we rightly divide those scriptural verses and use them to solve people’s difficulties but yet we don’t think they can also work for us, we don’t feel they are for us as well, so we indirectly assume in our career life that we need to be assured of a great future by seeing some manifestations right now. We are consciously affirming a faith that we are unconsciously attacking. We need to be clear of this unforeseen funny attitude which is very dangerous to our faith in God in our Christian race and can cause errors to our thinking sensation which can affect our teaching in the nearest future.

The first line of our fellowship anthem then back in school is “He holds our future hope, …we won’t be afraid” and like that, but yet we don’t really believe he can make our future great, we want to be assured of a glorious ending by seeing some signs right now. Romans 8:24-25 – ‘For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.’ Have we forgotten this so soon?

On many occasions we quote 2Corinthians 5:7 – ‘For we walk by faith and not by sight’ but yet we are unconsciously walking by sight and not by faith. On different occasions we quote Habakkuk 2:4b – ‘The just shall live by faith’ We mostly practice this when it comes to spiritual things but when it comes to career wise, we doubt God and we want a visible sign before being assured our future is safe in God’s hand or before we can believe He can take care of our future.

Psalm 23; 55:22; 91:16, 1Peter 5:7, Jeremiah 33:3, Obadiah 1:17-18, Ephesians 1:3, Romans 8:31, Haggai 2:9, and especially Jeremiah 22:29. These verses and many more verses are a confirmation that God wants a great future for us, He assured us of a good ending so we just have to believe wholeheartedly in His words and don’t wait for signs before believing.

Beloved! You have to stop scrutinizing God’s plan before actualizing it, since it’s coming from God be rest assured that your future is safe and secured in his hands. You don’t have to start questioning him, it’s like asking God “Are you sure of this plan that it will produce success for me in the nearest future?” Stop asking and start acting. If he tells you to move to a new city or to move from a city to a village, don’t bombard him with questions on the negativities attached to the situations. He is very much aware of it before giving you the instructions. Isaac didn’t question God of what to eat when God told him to remain there in the land; he just followed the instructions totally. You’ve got to trust Him wholeheartedly and hope in Him that you’ll have a better and great future, it will surely end well, and you will surely laugh at the end.

If it is God, and God alone is involved, then nothing else should matter, the funniest thing is that your plans are the ones that have a great probability of failing not God’s plan! God’s plans had never failed before, never will they fail, both now and in the future, so stop making a backup plan as if God is giving promises He would not fulfill. Stop thinking of seeing success before believing, even when the instruction looks stupid, even when it looks risky and can jeopardize your future in the realm of the intellect of men, you have to believe in Him and trust His plan than your cooked plans. It is a test of a new level of maturity in faith in which you can’t afford to fail; you must give diligence to keep passing every test of faith at every stage of life. Don’t wait to see signs before believing His plans; believe in God, follow His plans and I can guarantee you of a great and glorious ending in the future. I trust Him. John 20:29 – ‘Jesus said to him, "Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

We have overturned the table from seeing before believing, we are not trying to figure out how it works by our minds and little brains, we believe to see, for believing is seeing. Faith is not science that sees to belief, but we, in this Kingdom we have received, belief to see!!!

With God, it can only get better

I love y’all and I call you blessed!

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