Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
I have always tried to tell people that the Gospel is veryGood News. I tell them that Jesus said, "My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matt. 11:28-30). Some don't like to hear those words; they want to emphasize how hard it is to follow Jesus, how much you must give up, how much you must do, your salvation depends on your knowing how difficult it is to be saved.
And I will agree--there is one verydifficult thing about being saved: that is, learning how to believe. Jesus says in John 3:17-19 that notbelieving will keep us out of heaven. Indeed! Serious!
And the truth is that all of us were born in an unbelieving state; believing is never transmitted genetically; unbelief is natural to us; unbelieving is far and above the most difficult thing humans have to learn to overcome. It is the addiction of all addictions, the most insidious, the most pervasive. "He who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God" (vs. 18).
The distraught father in Mark 9:17-24 shows us how deep the problem is rooted in our human nature. Jesus said to him, almost like tantalizing him, "All things are possible to him who believes." Then the poor man realized how awful his problem was, how every cell of his being was saturated with unbelief: he burst into tears and cried out in anguish, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!"
Now, there is Good News in that story. The moment you realize that unbelief is your real problem, help is on the way. A wise writer said, "you can never perish" if from your heart you pray that man's prayer. The people above all people whom Heaven rushes to help are those who realize the depths of their sin.
Unbelief is the most serious problem in the world church, the source of our lukewarmness, the reason for the delay in the coming of Jesus. We mustlearn to believe how good the Good News is; and the moment we say that, we remember that Christ will have a people who will overcome even as He overcame. He did not die in vain! He will see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied (Isa. 53:11).
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 29, 1997.
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