Deal With Your Unbelief

Unbelief comes in three different forms: ignorance, disbelief, and natural unbelief.

IGNORANCE
Ignorance is when someone just doesn’t know the truth. They might not have grown up in church, or they might have been raised in a traditional denomination. Therefore, their idea of Christianity is skewed. They think Christians are just waiting on heaven and that there’s no real victory to be experienced in this life. Due to their lack of knowledge, they have unbelief.

This type of unbelief is relatively easy to deal with. Just tell them the truth! If their heart is open to the Lord, they’ll receive it. Then, ignorance leaves and they’re able to believe God.

DISBELIEF
Disbelief comes from being taught wrong. Someone told them, “God doesn’t heal or do miracles anymore. All of that supernatural stuff passed away with the apostles.” That’s beyond, “Well, I’ve never heard of a person being healed today” (ignorance). It’s, “If tongues, healing, or miracles happen today, it’s of the devil.” That’s wrong teaching!

Disbelief is more difficult to overcome than ignorance. A person who’s been taught wrong has prejudices against the truth. It’s a lot harder for them to renew their mind and receive.

I had to struggle to renew my mind to the truth. I’d been taught many excuses for why God doesn’t do miracles today, how tongues were of the devil, and why the supernatural things in the book of Acts don’t happen now. Although it is a little harder to overcome, the antidote for this second type of unbelief is the same as the first. I had to receive the truth of God’s Word above man’s traditions in order to overcome this unbelief that came through wrong teaching.

NATURAL UNBELIEF
The third kind of unbelief is what I call “natural” unbelief. It’s not ignorance or wrong teaching but simply natural input that’s contrary to the truth. The demonized boy had a seizure and foamed at the mouth. (Mark 9:14-29, parallel to Matt. 17:14-21.) When something like that happens, your mind, emotions, eyes, and ears are all going to tell you, “The demon didn’t come out. Look, it didn’t work!” That’s not necessarily evil, just natural.

You go through life receiving input from your eyes, ears, and feelings, and making your decisions based on that. It’s not wrong, or evil; it’s just natural. If you were driving me somewhere in your car, I’d want you to have some of this “natural” input. I certainly wouldn’t want you driving “by faith” with your eyes closed! However, there are things you can’t perceive with just your five physical senses, and there are times the Lord will ask you to take a step of faith. That’s when you must be able to get beyond this kind of unbelief that comes from natural things.

If you pray for someone to be healed and they fall over dead, some natural unbelief will come at you. You prayed for them to be well, but now they’re dead. What’s going to happen? Unless you are really strong, you’re naturally going to have fear and unbelief come up and say, “Well, it didn’t work. Why? Because I can’t see it!”

Most people are dominated by their physical senses. It was this kind of unbelief—natural unbelief—that hindered

the disciples in Matthew 17. They believed they could cast out devils. They had done it before. The very fact that they asked, “Why could not we cast him out?” (Matt. 17:19) showed they had faith. They had ministered to the boy, believing, but when he began going into convulsions, they were moved more by what they saw than what they believed.

“THIS KIND”
How do you overcome this kind of unbelief? By knowing the truth and renewing your mind to it, you can get over ignorance and disbelief. But how do you get beyond what you see and feel? How do you get to where you’re believing only and not letting that pain you feel in your body convince you that “No, it didn’t work”? Jesus gave the answer in Matthew 17:21: ” However, this kind [of unbelief] does not go out except by prayer and fasting”

Many people have misinterpreted this verse. They think Jesus was talking about “this kind of demon.” So they’ve invented different doctrines saying that certain demons are stronger than others and can only be cast out through prayer and fasting. That’s not what Jesus was talking about.

You will never encounter a demon—or even the devil himself,
that won’t cower and flee at the name of Jesus and faith in His name.

Your fasting and prayer doesn’t add anything to it. If the name of Jesus and faith in His name won’t defeat the devil, neither will your prayer and fasting!

Unbelief is the consistent subject of both verses. (Matt. 17:20, 21.) “This kind” in verse 21 refers back to “unbelief in verse 20, not to the demon in verse 19. Therefore, Jesus was saying that this type of unbelief—natural unbelief—can only come out by much prayer and fasting.

PRAYER & FASTING
Natural unbelief normally kicks in through your senses whenever you pray and something contrary happens. This is because you’ve been trained to go by your five natural senses— what you can see, taste, hear, smell, and feel. Jesus said that the only way you can overcome this kind of unbelief is through prayer and fasting. (Matt. 17:21.)

Unbelief that comes from your physical senses isn’t necessarily evil; it’s just natural. Living in this physical world, you must take into account what your senses are telling you.

There are times in your life when responding to what you can see, taste, hear, smell, and feel will not get the job done. You must be able to move beyond your natural senses into the spirit realm. How do you do that? Through prayer and fasting!

FAITH VS. UNBELIEF
Picture two outdoor thermometers: one measures faith, the other unbelief. Most people ignore the unbelief and concentrate on their faith. If their faith is up an inch but what they’ve prayed for still hasn’t come to pass, they think they need to push their faith up another inch or two. So they go on an all-out effort to increase their faith saying, “O God, give me more faith. I need more faith!”

The Lord said, “It’s your unbelief that’s the problem. Without unbelief working against it, your faith doesn’t need to be any bigger than a mustard seed to get the job done” (Matt. 17:20, my paraphrase). Instead of trying to shoot your faith through the roof, pull the plug on your unbelief. Drain it to zero, and you’ll find your faith strong enough to accomplish anything you need.

Most Christians don’t receive what God has already supplied because of unbelief, not lack of faith.

These are two opposite situations. If someone doesn’t believe, of course they won’t receive. Faith is the bridge that brings God’s provision from the spiritual world over into the physical world. Faith must be present, but it’s not that big of a deal. It’s not hard. As Christians, we have the supernatural faith of God. It’s just that most believers haven’t yet realized or dealt with their unbelief.

What is unbelief? It could be fear, worry, or care. If the doctor tells you you’re going to die and you start trying to believe God by confessing, “Jesus, I believe that by Your stripes I’ve been healed,” but in your mind you’re still worried, that’s being double-minded.  Double-minded people won’t receive anything from the Lord. (James 1:7, 8.)

Mark 11:23 says, “That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart”

You can’t believe, be saying and doing some of the right things, and yet have a split heart. To get the results you’re after, you must be single-minded and focused!

“HE CONSIDERED NOT”
Abraham didn’t allow himself to think on anything contrary to what God had told him. He was strong in faith because the promise was all he considered.

“Who against hope believed in hope, that he [Abraham] might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed be.  and being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb.” (Romans 4:18-19)

Abraham didn’t consider—study, ponder, deliberate, examine—his own body now dead nor the deadness of Sarah’s womb. When God told him that Sarah would conceive and give birth to a child the next year, Abraham didn’t dwell on his age or the fact that Sarah had long since passed the time of childbearing. The thought may have crossed his mind, but he didn’t consider it.

Just because an occasional contrary thought crosses your mind doesn’t mean you’re in unbelief. You can’t stop the devil from giving you a thought, but you don’t have to keep it. As Kenneth Hagin often said, “You can’t stop a bird from flying over your head, but you can prevent it from making a nest there.”

A fleeting thought doesn’t mean you’re in unbelief. But when you
consider, entertain, study, deliberate, examine, and ponder it, you’ll be tempted.

BAPTIZED IN UNBELIEF
The reason why Abraham was such a strong man of faith wasn’t because he had more than we do. He had less—less unbelief! This man was so mentally disciplined at age ninety-nine that when told by God that he would have a child, he didn’t even think about, focus on, or study his own body nor the deadness of his wife’s womb.

Abraham only looked at the promise of God!
Unbelief comes through your thought process.

It doesn’t take a huge amount of faith to receive from God, just a pure, simple, childlike faith. However, most Christians are baptized in unbelief. We’re still so plugged in to the world’s negativity that it’s a miracle our faith has accomplished what it has. We take in all the junk on television, radio, and movies. After subjecting ourselves to all of this bad news, God tells us He’s going to do something contrary to what the rest of the world is experiencing, and we have a hard time only believing. We know God wants to bless us. We’re asking for it and heading in that direction, but we’re loaded down with all of this unbelief.

A SEPARATED LIFE
(Wigglesworth rarely read a newspaper…) He probably missed a dozen or two good things in the newspaper over those thirty-five years or so. He could have used them in his messages to help make a point (like I do sometimes). But he also missed hundreds of thousands of negative thoughts and statements that could have produced unbelief in him. To Wigglesworth, it just wasn’t worth the risk!

Wigglesworth lived such a separated life, he simply wasn’t as susceptible to unbelief as I was when I tried to pull that man out of the wheelchair. Now that God has shown me this, I’ve started living a more separated life too. I don’t watch or listen to things I used to. Because of this, some people say my faith is stronger. Actually, it’s purer. It’s not as diluted now. I don’t have as many thoughts of unbelief as before, because I quit opening myself up to things that give me opportunity for it.

We already have the supernatural faith of God. Therefore, our problem
isn’t lack of faith, but unbelief. Our simple, childlike, mustard seed of faith is
more than enough to see anything done if there’s no unbelief to counteract it.