Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (21 page)

Unbelief always denies God’s supernatural power.

Submit Your Unbelief to God

By now, you have identified areas of your heart in which unbelief is holding you back from receiving what God has promised. Satan doesn’t want your eyes to be opened to see the reality of the infinite power of Christ; he wants to keep your heart hardened by unbelief so that you will not be able to access the supernatural. Perhaps God has called you to start a business or a ministry, to take your church to the next level of faith, or to begin to pray for the sick and otherwise move in God’s supernatural power, but you continue to think,
How can this be?
The Scriptures say that an individual who is double-minded is unstable. (See James 1:5–8.) Such a person cannot receive revelation from God or become an instrument that manifests His power and presence.

You may be struggling with negative thoughts that fill your mind with reasons and arguments for why you “can’t” have something that God has promised or “can’t” do something that God has told you to do. Perhaps a certain sickness is hereditary in your family. Your reason is likely telling you, “Your grandfather had it, your father had it, and, according to medical science, you will have to suffer from it, too. That is just the way it goes.” But, again, what does the Word of God say about that sickness?
“Surely
[Jesus]
has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;…and by His stripes we are healed”
(Isaiah 53:4–5).

Or, perhaps you have been blessed with millions of dollars, and God has placed it on your heart to sow part of that money into His kingdom purposes. Your human reason may give you a series of excuses for why you shouldn’t do it. Yet, so many Christian ministries need finances right now to help them extend the kingdom! So many soul-winning churches need funds to host evangelistic crusades, run orphanages, and do many other outreaches, but there is no one willing to sow the funds, because reason won’t let him! People allow their reason to carry more weight than what God has placed on their heart to do, because their reason makes sense to them, while they can’t comprehend God’s will and ways. When “reason” makes more sense to us than God’s will, our heart has been hardened by unbelief.

There is an account in the Old Testament in which the Lord asked Abraham to take his promised son, Isaac, who had been conceived and born by a miracle of God, to a mountain and sacrifice him there. (See Genesis 22:1–2.) Abraham’s reason must have shouted within him, “No! You waited decades for your son, and now that you have him, you are going to kill him? That makes no sense!” Even today, this situation doesn’t make sense to many people. After they read about what God asked Abraham to do, their reason protests by reacting in the following ways: Either it considers God’s request to be “illogical” and “cruel,” therefore rejecting that He could have made it or rejecting Him for making it, or it believes that this account is a mere fable—that it never really happened but serves as a graphic metaphor for faith.

The Faith of Abraham

Abraham had every reason to tell God that he couldn’t obey Him, beginning with the fact that God Himself had promised him Isaac and had told him He would multiply his descendants! (See, for example, Genesis 17:1–21.) It didn’t make sense for God to subsequently ask Abraham to sacrifice his son! However, Abraham moved forward in faith to obey God. And God prevented him from slaying his son, telling Abraham that because he had been willing to offer his son, He now knew that Abraham would withhold nothing from Him. (See Genesis 22:3–18.) The command had been a test of Abraham’s faith, trust, and devotion to God.

In this circumstance, we could say that Abraham allowed his human reason to be guided by his trust in God, for the Scriptures say,
“Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death”
(Hebrews 11:19 niv). How differently Abraham’s life would have turned out if he had trusted in his human reason alone! But now, his faith continues to bear fruit as a blessing to all who believe and receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. (See Galatians 3:6–9.)

Will you place your “Isaac” on the altar, so that God will know that you withhold nothing from Him? Might your “Isaac” be your business, ministry, wealth, hobby, or family? Might your “Isaac” be your intellect, your reason—or your whole heart? Will you surrender the supremacy of your reason so that your heart may be freed from the spirit of unbelief, and you may receive faith to believe that God can do the “impossible”?

Stop asking “How can this be?” Do you think it would have made sense to the intellect, reason, and priorities of fallen humanity for God to come into the world in the person of Jesus Christ? No, but He came according to His own faith, reason, and purposes. At the end of His ministry on earth, Jesus allowed people to beat and whip Him to such a degree that He was unrecognizable. He allowed them to push a crown of thorns into His scalp. And He permitted them to nail Him to a cross to die an agonizing death. Why did He do all that? It wasn’t logical! But again, God didn’t come to earth in the person of Jesus to die because it “made sense.” He did it out of His eternal love for us.

When “reason” makes more sense to us than God’s will,
our heart has been hardened by unbelief.

The unredeemed, natural mind is an enemy of God (see Romans 8:7)—it questions His existence, knowledge, wisdom, and judgment; it rejects His supernatural power.
“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit”
(Romans 8:5). To overcome the obstacle of a mind influenced or controlled by the sinful nature, we must bypass the rational mind and operate directly by the faith that has been birthed in our heart by the Holy Spirit. One way we can accomplish this circumvention is to pray in “other tongues” (Acts 2:4; see also 1 Corinthians 14:2, 14) by the Spirit. However, if a spirit of unbelief resides in our heart, it can block the faith that dwells there. Consequently, our heart must be freed from the spirit of unbelief.

Bring Down the Stronghold of “How…?”

If you want to experience the power of God in your life, you cannot enter into agreement with the sinful nature, the attitudes of the fallen world, the mind-set of our contemporary culture and educational process, the practice of “religion,” or your own limited human reason. Instead, you must agree with Christ! Receive Him and what He has done for you by His death and resurrection. The Scriptures say,
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God”
(Romans 12:2). God’s
“perfect will”
will rule in your heart and mind as you are transformed by His Word, developing a heart like His.

Faith gives us access to God’s supernatural power, but that access will close if unbelief becomes entrenched in our heart.

It is time to bring down the stronghold of “How…?” that sustains unbelief in our heart; it is time to allow God to be God in our life. Something like this happened to a woman named Guadalupe. She wanted a miracle, but, when it didn’t come, she decided to stop believing. Yet God, in His love, did not give up on her. The following is her story.

“I attend a church in Honduras. Approximately three years ago, cancerous tumors were detected in my thyroid gland, causing me to faint and to suffer great pain in my throat. I could barely recognize the people around me, and my eyes had to be bandaged to relieve the pain. I spent two months hospitalized. I stopped going to my church and had no plans to return to any church. I kept saying that I believed in the Lord, but I was convinced that everything would remain the same for me.

“A House of Peace group prayed for me a great deal. On one occasion, the pastor visited me. He laid his hands on mine, and I felt the presence of God—a shudder and electricity went through my body. After they prayed for me, I went back to church. They continued to pray for me, while the doctor kept saying that I needed surgery. I wanted the operation, but God had other plans. Just before the surgery, the doctor did a biopsy. He placed an instrument in my throat to detect the state of the cancer, and then he
said, ‘That’s strange! I can’t find anything!’ The only thing he saw were some white lines, like scars after an operation. His conclusion was that it looked as if God had operated. I was healed from that moment! I have not experienced any of the symptoms I used to feel. I reconciled with God and believed in His power, and He delivered me of resentment and of accepting the sickness, and He healed me!”

How to Be Free from a Heart of Unbelief

We must all be liberated from unbelief of some kind. Many of us have inherited “educated unbelief” from our culture and “religious unbelief” from our church or denomination. We need to be set free to believe God for the great things He wants to do in us and through us! Taking the following steps will enable us to attain freedom from unbelief.

1. Recognize Our State of Unbelief and Repent of It

The first step is to recognize that we have allowed an attitude, a mind-set, and/or a spirit of unbelief to enter our heart. We have questioned God’s character, integrity, Word, and promises. We have subjected Him to the limitations of our reason and have fallen prey to the stronghold of “How…?” After acknowledging our unbelief, we must repent of allowing it to become rooted in our heart, and we need to ask the Lord to forgive us.

2. Renounce the Spirit of Unbelief

We must remove the legal right we have unknowingly given Satan to operate a spirit of unbelief in our heart by renouncing that unbelief and commanding it in the name of Jesus to leave us. When we do this, we will recover the territory of our heart that we had surrendered to unbelief, and which the spirit of unbelief had been ruling to that point. Keep in mind that after you have renounced the spirit of unbelief, the devil will resist you and fight to regain the territory he has lost. This means that even after you repent of a lack of faith and renounce unbelief, you may suddenly find yourself struggling with various doubts and fears. Thus, it is essential to daily renounce the spirit of unbelief, as well as to take the following step.

3. Receive the “Spirit of Faith”

Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with the
“spirit of faith”
(2 Corinthians 4:13). Remember that before the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the disciples exhibited unbelief, for which they were chastened by Jesus. Yet after they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, they were filled with faith and boldness. When someone is baptized by immersion, he is fully covered. Therefore, ask the Holy Spirit to give you a “baptism of faith”—a submersion in faith, enabling you to live a full life as a believer, without being hindered by doubts.

When this happens, you may no longer understand how you could have doubted! You will move in a dimension in which you will know and perceive the spiritual realm—a dimension where human reason, logic, common sense, and unbelief do not hold sway. The spiritual realm will become a greater reality in your life than the natural world.

4. Receive the Anointed Word

A further way to be liberated from a heart of unbelief is to receive anointed teaching. Recall that when Jesus preached the gospel in His hometown of Nazareth, He couldn’t do many miracles there except heal a few illnesses, because the people lacked faith in Him. (See Mark 6:1–5.) The Scriptures say,
“And
[Jesus]
marveled because of their unbelief”
(Mark 6:6). Jesus
“marveled”
at why people would doubt God, thereby limiting His work in their lives. Ironically, by their unbelief, they had restricted miracles from coming forth from the God in whom there are no limits!

The passage continues,
“Then
[Jesus]
went about the villages in a circuit, teaching”
(Mark 6:6). I believe there is a direct connection between the two statements in this verse: One reason the people didn’t accept the message of the gospel is that they hadn’t been taught the truths of God’s Word sufficiently, which would have built their faith. This lack of spiritual knowledge had preconditioned them not to believe. However, the reverse can also be true. Having adequate teaching from God’s Word can precondition us to believe.

So, one way to overcome unbelief is to be taught truth from the Word of God—but not from just any teacher. As we have noted, there are unbelieving preachers who teach the Bible solely as a historical book. They approach all topics from an intellectual point of view, rather than a spiritual one. For example, it is difficult for preachers to teach on God’s supernatural power when they don’t truly believe in it and have not experienced it. We must therefore be taught the Scriptures by someone who has the anointing of the Spirit and is able to receive revelation knowledge for today. Aside from his own personal Bible study, a person can rise no higher than the one who teaches him. And only progressive revelation knowledge can enable people’s faith to move to the next level so they can understand and receive God’s purposes for them today. A preacher cannot adequately teach about what God wants to do in our life
today
when all he has is revelation of what God was doing in previous years.

We can’t expect people to believe what they have not been taught. That is why, the first time I preach the gospel of the kingdom in a particular place, I teach basic themes in relation to the supernatural. The next time I go to that place, I often observe that many of the people have captured the truths I have preached and have moved forward to experience them. The original teaching broke through their unbelief, enabling them to receive God’s promises by faith. So, the second time I teach the people in that place, I help them to go to the next level of faith through teachings that go deeper into God’s truth.