Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (18 page)

“One day, my cousin invited me to King Jesus church, and I decided to receive the Lord as my Savior. In 2006, I moved to Florida to begin a new life, and there all my dreams came true. I studied for a career in criminal justice. I also met my wife, who attended King Jesus church, and I began to attend the church, too. One day, during worship at a prayer meeting in someone’s house, a brother saw a wall tumbling down all around me. I had seen that wall as it was being built, many years earlier, and it kept me from communicating with the Lord—until that day. From that point on, I have been able to talk to God.

“In 2008, my wife was diagnosed with myosarcoma of the uterus. Two oncologists said the uterus had to be removed, but we believed that God had other plans, so we did not allow it. We had faith in God, and, not long afterward, my wife became pregnant and gave birth to our beautiful daughter. God healed my heart and gave me a full life.”

Prayer to Forgive

An offense is a trap of the enemy designed to hurt us and to isolate us—separating our heart from God and damaging our relationships with other people. Offenses will hinder our ability to advance God’s kingdom in the world and will encumber our progress in life. I invite you to be liberated from offenses as you allow God to remove the emotional torture you suffer from living in a prison of mistrust, anger, fear, and confusion. Repeat the following simple but powerful prayer. But don’t pray it just once. Pray it every day, so that the truths of God’s revelation concerning offenses may be established in your life.

Heavenly Father, I come into Your presence today as Your child. I acknowledge and confess that I have kept offenses and wounds in my heart. I repent of this practice, and I turn away from it. Right now, I forgive everyone who has ever offended me, and I ask You to forgive me for my offenses.

I also die to “self,” including the attitude of self-absorption that seeks retribution or vengeance when I am offended. I make a conscious decision to die to my sinful nature so that the life of Christ and God’s Holy Spirit may direct my thoughts and empower my actions.

I commit to move to the next level of maturity. What used to offend me will no longer offend me. I will not remain a spiritual “infant” but will grow in grace and become more like Christ. Help me to walk in love and to have a forgiving heart toward my family members, my friends, and my brothers and sisters in Christ. Remove every offense, wound, and pain from me. Make me free! I receive Your forgiveness, healing, and deliverance. In the name of Jesus, amen!

Now that you have prayed this prayer, be sure to follow it up with an act of faith that confirms your commitment. Talk to someone whom you have offended, or who offended you, and do what you can to restore the relationship through forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.

6

G
od has given me the privilege and blessing of proclaiming the gospel in more than fifty countries around the world. I have preached to people of various cultures, races, languages, ages, and social strata. Over the years, I have found two things in common among these varied groups of people: (1) they all have the same human needs; and (2) the greatest obstacle to their receiving salvation, healing, miracles, or any other blessing from God is the presence of unbelief in their heart. Many people struggle to believe in God, His nature, and/or His power. Their difficulty reminds me of the man in the New Testament who sought deliverance for his son, telling the Lord Jesus,
“I believe”
(Mark 9:24) yet immediately adding,
“Help my unbelief!”
(Mark 9:24). In effect, what the man was saying was, “I believe, but I find it very hard to do!”

Struggling with Faith

Perhaps you have experienced the same struggle to believe God. For example, is it hard for you to have faith for the salvation of your family? Do you find it challenging to believe that God will provide for your material needs? Is it difficult for you to perceive God as your Healer and Deliverer—and to receive Him as such? Do you wrestle with doubts that God exists? If you answered yes to any of these questions, the reason might be that, even though you may have a general faith in Christ for salvation, some unbelief is still entrenched in your heart, and this lack of faith holds you back from living in true freedom and receiving the spiritual and physical blessings that God desires to give you.

Unbelief Is a “Departure from the Living God”

In chapter 4, we noted that unbelief is one of the causes of a hardened heart. The Scriptures say,
“Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God”
(Hebrews 3:12). Many people attempt to address unbelief from the standpoint of their mind alone. Yet unbelief is not so much a condition of the mind as it is a condition of the heart that influences the mind—its intellect, reason, and thoughts. Just as in the case of holding on to offenses, unbelief will cause our heart to harden, preventing us from believing what God has said and from receiving His promises and provision. And, a hardened heart subsequently produces further unbelief.

Throughout this book, we have seen that every aspect of our life originates in the heart. Whether we are praying, worshipping, fellowshipping, serving others, caring for our children, managing our home, working at our job, participating in sports or hobbies, or anything else—who we are and what we do comes from our heart. If our heart is full of unbelief, many of our endeavors will be in vain. In spiritual matters, we will be functioning according to “religion,” which, as we have seen, is merely an appearance of piety that lacks true power. Works that are not birthed by faith are ultimately dead works. (See James 2:17.) When we
“
[depart]
from the living God”
in unbelief, our heart becomes corrupted, negatively affecting our life. Yet, the more we deal with the issues of our heart and allow God to transform us, the more evidence we will see of His healing, deliverance, prosperity, peace, and joy in our life.

Unbelief causes the heart to harden, and a hardened heart
produces further unbelief.

The Origin of Unbelief

One of the Greek terms translated as
“unbelief”
in the New Testament is
apistia.
This word includes the following meanings: “faithlessness, i.e. disbelief (lack of Christian faith), or unfaithfulness (disobedience).”
Apistia
is derived from another Greek word that means “disbelieving” and indicates “without Christian faith (especially a heathen),” or an “untrustworthy person.” From these definitions, we may conclude that unbelief signifies more than a mere intellectual absence of belief—it can signal a heart of unfaithfulness toward God and His Word. It can demonstrate a disloyalty in which we doubt the nature and character of our loving, powerful, and righteous God.

Doubting God Is the Root of Unbelief—and Subsequent Disobedience

Before the fall, the first human beings lived like trusting children; they accepted what God told them without question or argument. They weren’t contaminated by sin, so their heart, soul, and body, while living in the natural world, functioned according to the life of the supernatural realm—above and beyond the physical realm. They didn’t struggle with a mind-set of doubt leading to perpetual sickness, poverty, oppression, and so forth, as many human beings today do.

We know that the disobedience of the first man and woman occurred when they questioned the truth of God’s words but believed the lies of Satan. In chapter 3, we talked about the importance of having both trust and belief in our heart toward God. Adam and Eve allowed the enemy to undermine both of these crucial heart elements, leading to their act of unfaithfulness to their Creator.

Throughout Scripture, we see that many people who were disobedient to God first exhibited unbelief, and the same situation occurs today. When our faith is active, we are faithful and obedient to God, because we trust in His plans for our good, and we know that obeying Him will bring positive results in our life. In contrast, when our faith is inactive, we can become unfaithful, hardhearted, and disobedient toward God. When our heart is hard, God cannot trust us to pursue His will and to be good stewards of what He has given us. If you identify unfaithfulness, hardheartedness, and disobedience in your heart, a spirit of unbelief may be at the root of them.

The Fallen Mind Questions God

The Scriptures say that God placed two distinct trees in the garden of Eden.
“And out of the ground the L
ord
God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
The tree of life
was also in the midst of the garden, and
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
”
(Genesis 2:9). And Adam and Eve violated the following commandment, which God had instituted for their good:
“
Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16–17).

I believe that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil represents natural, mental, and sensorial (relating to the five senses) knowledge—involving the intellect and reason. This level of knowledge operates purely in the physical realm, or the material world. When human beings fell by partaking of the fruit of that tree in disobedience, their spirit withered and receded, and their mind began to rely only on reason and intellect, which are not adequate for understanding or discerning the supernatural realm. They
“
[fell]
short of
the glory of God”
(see Romans 3:23) and thereby fell short of the supernatural knowledge and eternal perspective they formerly had through their vital connection with God and close relationship with Him.

The intellect and reason are God-given gifts to human beings to enable them to function in the physical world, but, again, they are not sufficient on their own. Additionally, when the intellect and reason are detached from God by the curse of sin and are controlled by the sinful nature, they are woefully flawed. The fallen mind, devoid of supernatural knowledge and wisdom, will doubt the existence and power of God and question His purposes. The fallen mind often becomes hostile to God, or “anti-God.”
“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”
(1 Corinthians 2:14).

In contrast, God’s supernatural knowledge and wisdom operate not in the mind but in the heart—in the spirit of a person who has been made alive through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. (See John 3:5.) If a believer’s heart is hardened by unbelief, it demonstrates that he has, in some way, not fully turned away from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and is “feeding” on it rather than on Jesus, the
“bread of life”
(John 6:35, 48). If we find this to be our condition, we need to repent, allowing God to soften our heart and to fill us with the
“spirit of faith”
(2 Corinthians 4:13), so that we may enter into full faith and complete trust in our heavenly Father and receive all that He desires to give us.

Until a person is free of an unbelieving heart, he will not be able to understand spiritual, or supernatural, realities.

Three Types of Unbelief

As I have studied the Scriptures, I have identified three different ways in which people can manifest unbelief. Let us explore these ways, examining our own heart to see how unbelief may be influencing us.

1. Unbelief Caused by Ignorance

Ignorance is a basic level of unbelief that all human beings inherit as a result of the fall. For example, the apostle Paul persecuted Christians before he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus and was converted. Concerning that time in his life, he wrote, “Although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent [“violent” niv] man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13).

It is not just unbelievers but also believers who can fall into unbelief out of ignorance. I think that many of those who genuinely know Christ but work against Him and His purposes do so out of ignorance rather than wickedness. For instance, when they have not yet learned how God’s Word applies to a particular realm of life, or to a specific area of their own life, many believers will make mistakes and/or fall into error. All of us have done this at one point or another. Some Christians may remain sick because they don’t know that Christ has already paid for their illness on the cross (see Isaiah 53:5), or because they don’t understand God’s principles for receiving healing (see, for example, James 5:14–16). God forgives this type of unbelief, according to His mercy. As Paul wrote,
“
I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13).

2. Unbelief Caused by Rebellion in the Heart

“And to whom did [God] swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:18–19). Rebellion is a form of disobedience to God that is characterized by a decision not to believe in Him or trust in His Word. A rebellious person raises his fist against the Creator of the universe and says, “I don’t believe in You, and I don’t need You in my life. I can live independently of You. I will live my own way.”