To Choose Belief

"So, as the Holy Spirit says: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways'. So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'"

(Hebrews 3:7-11)

"See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first."

(Hebrews 3:12-14)

Faith. Being sure of what you hope for, and certain of what you do not see. Do you find anything in that phrase that sounds contradictory? "Certain of what you Do Not See." sticks out to me.

As a first notion, it sounds ridiculous to believe in something that you can't see. Questions arise such as, how do you know if it's real? Can it be proven? Do I have to be certain? The truth is that there are things all around us that require our faith to believe in. We believe in faith that when someone opens their mouth to tell us something that it is truth. We believe that the sun still exists even when it is no longer shining.

God challenges us to believe and place our faith in Him, the living God. Unbelief is something that I have been battling with. When you place your trust in something and one day it seems non-existent...you can't grasp it, you can't hear it, or manage to recognize it's presence; it's hard to continue to have faith that it is still there. That's where I have been. But then I read God's word to me, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." It may not have been a sign emanating from the sky or a flash of lightning from God revealing Himself to me, yet it was God. Choose whether or not you will act in obedience and believe, or if you will disobey and willingly walk further from Him.