God-Given Belief – EGP Blog post from October 14, 2018

“Most of us just want to be TOLD what to do. ‘What do I DO? Just TELL ME what to do.’ … Jesus’s response is, ‘THIS is the work of God: BELIEVE.’ … It’s not RADICALLY believe. It’s not with your WHOLE HEART believe, … DEEPLY believe, INTENSELY believe, SINCERELY believe. … Why? Because to BELIEVE is to RECEIVE something. And the second you put an adverb or an adjective in front of it, it seems like WE can control it and WE can do it our own selves. The second I have to RADICALLY believe, it feels like there are some things in MY hands. But if I just have to BELIEVE, then I have to RECEIVE that from the Lord: the GIFT of belief. But if I have to INTENSELY believe, then I’ve gotta DO something. Right? … It’s a CURRENCY God will NOT accept. …

Our white-knuckled, ‘I’M gonna do better, I’M gonna be a good person, I’M gonna be moral,’ CAN NOT save us. … So, your BEST efforts to ‘clean yourself up’ morally is NOT acceptable to God [with regard to] salvation. … Think of the TRAGEDY of that mistake. ‘I’m banking my ETERNAL SOUL on being good enough.’ There’s no SCALE. There’s no way to MEASURE that. There’s no way to TELL. But, ‘I’m banking ALL of it on THAT.’ … Belief is a GIFT from God. … You will NOT ‘buy Him off’ with your good deeds. …

Now, this isn’t CHEAP GRACE. This is not easy BELIEVE-ISM. If in your mind you’re thinking, ‘Oh, thank God! I can just believe and do WHATEVER I want’, you’re NOT hearing me. … When we believe—SIMPLY BELIEVE—the Bible says the Spirit of God INDWELLS us, and we become TRANSFORMED, and we begin to do what Jesus wants us to do, and we begin to HATE our sin. And so when THAT happens, we’ve got CONVERSION so that MORALITY is an extension of INWARD transformation—not OUTWARD working of morality—leading to a love of Jesus. … And believers THEN become children of God. … Whatever does not proceed from faith, belief, cannot please God.”