When Christians wrestle with their belief in Christ, possibly thinking that faith is without purpose, voices in the mind can mutter the devil’s lies of belief being redundant and of no value. As the Christian life was never intended by God to be about self, this internal battle of the heart becomes a blood thirsty war that can only be won with “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). God’s truth must prevail for God’s purposes to conquer the heart. In this way “we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
Everything in God’s creation has designed purpose, nothing is accidental or without reason, and nothing is redundant or of no use. Everything and everyone is an expression of God’s purposeful will, including you and I. Therefore, even our weak and immature belief can have great purpose when in the hands of God.
Before executing the 7th plague upon Egypt, the Lord explained to Pharaoh, “for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth” (Exodus 9:16). Stubborn Pharaoh could not escape his usefulness to God, sacrificing his life through acts of rebellion, he sent a timeless message to the world of God’s greatness and the futility of disbelief (Exodus 14).
Even in the middle of Job’s great and perplexing suffering, he understood “that no purpose of God can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). Job realised that God was engaged in his suffering and that God was working out His purpose which could not be changed, restrained, or prevented. Job may never have understood the details of why he suffered so badly, but He did understand God’s holy intensions for divine purpose to be fulfilled.
Employing all the twists and turns in your life, God determined from eternity past for you to respond favourably to Him by putting faith in his Son. Consequently, you “believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” and personally became an expression of “the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14). That was God’s unalterable purpose for your life in Christ. You personally, including all of your complexities and struggles, are now a living, breathing, moving, proclamation of “his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6).
The very difficulties which our flesh uses to challenge our belief, are intended by the Lord to give opportunity for His strengthening grace to be displayed. God has equipped your belief with purpose, “so, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Belief in Jesus Christ and His glorifying purpose for you is a daily “walk by faith” and “not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Therefore, we do not allow the things we observe and experience in life to distract us because we have made “it our aim to please him” (2 Corinthians 5:9).
Christian faith builds on the foundation of God’s truth. So, when the times of conflict arrive, the believer defaults to that proven truth of God. The apostle John wrote, “I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth” (1 John 2:21). Even weak belief clings to God’s truth, because biblical truth is where we connect with Jesus who is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Today, may we live with praising confidence which comes from knowing that our belief has purpose.
