Are you a believer? The Monkees wrote lyrics that playfully touched on a faith by sight kind of believing – ‘then I saw her face, now I’m a believer’. . . . But this begs the question, a believer in what? Love, we find out, in the next lines. So they didn’t believe that love existed without that sight?

This hardly follows in the mindset of what we as Christians are to believe. And we know this, God is Love (1 John 4:8). We do not have the liberty to say that love does not exist or that we do not believe in it. Love exists regardless of whether or not we believe it or not. The same follows of God. Those who say that they do not believe that God exists are tripping on their own argument, for their acknowledgment of God points to their knowledge of Him and their denial.
Peter, disciple of Jesus Christ, had a hard time believing. He loved God, but that same love got in the way of following Him. When he was asked three times if He was allied with Jesus in the same period of time prior to Jesus’ crucifixion, He denied it. Why did he do so? Well, Jesus had told him that he would, and yet, this too, Peter rebuked Jesus about. But in the end, he did turn away from God and embraced unbelief. God was gracious to him, and Peter experienced great remorse and repented for his actions. And God gave him another chance to redeem himself. He was able to profess his love for Jesus three times after His resurrection. This is sort of a bunny trail, but what I want to look at here is the character of Peter. He was loyal, but suffered from doubt. While the disciples had a hard time believing that Jesus had risen from the dead after the women went to them in excitement, the leaders had professed their fear in the fulfillment of the prophecies that had been told over and over that He would die but rise from the grave. Could it be that our knowledge of God could stumble our belief? I remember one time, when I was in a group of others and we were doing some evangelism in southern Ca. We happened upon a couple of Mormons who proceeded to turn our efforts around and we felt backed into a corner as they argued against us, and it felt like they were using our weapon. All of the sudden, they seemed to know the Bible better than we did. And believe me, it was humbling.

A childlike faith is what the Lord desires. He knows our weaknesses, and He knows that we are as blind as bats and feel the need for proof often. But the thing is, we HAVE proof – His Word is here for us, plain and simple. We see the universal Church and it should assure us that the Body of Christ is alive and kicking. We need to believe. It is a commitment. It is like when we marry. We say vows to one another, knowing that we are unable to keep them apart from the strength and the power of God. We commit to love one another – we commit to be faithful to one another. We do not know what lies ahead of us, the trials, the hardships – but we have committed to one another for both the good and the bad. It is by faith that we walk, not by sight.

I will write more of this later – these were just some thoughts that were tumbling in my head. . .