Believing or knowing?
January 26, 2007
By Randy Mantik
Someone once described the difference between believing and knowing in this way: If you are standing by a fire you can say, “I believe the fire is hot.” However, in order to know the fire is hot you must put your hand close to it and feel the heat. Then you can say without a glimmer of doubt, “I know the fire is hot.” What’s the difference? It’s experience.
I’ve always been amazed by those who exhibit great faith in the midst of horrible circumstances. Through experience, they have found God to be faithful in the heat of the worst trial. They not only believe, they know.
As I’ve read the pages of Scripture, I have marveled at the sure faith of those I find there. I read of people like Elijah, who in desperately hard times trusted in God and saw God respond to his prayers, miraculously providing for him in unexpected ways, as when the raven delivered food into his very hand.
I always believed such faith was possible, but I didn’t know if it was. However, after seeing God faithfully answer and provide for our needs and the needs of the church, often in unexpected “raven-like” ways, I have learned not just to believe, but also to know. What a huge difference that has made in my walk with God!
One of my Bible college professors asked the class, “How many of you want to see miracles in your life?” Every hand in the room went up. However, hands began to waver when he added, “Then pray for impossible situations.” We love the miracles, but we hate the situations that make miracles possible! We know surface belief won’t cost us anything, but truly knowing often means we have to go through something hard. We can’t be self-sufficient anymore; we have to admit our need of a Rescuer.
In His wisdom, God will bring us into seemingly impossible situations where we cannot find the way out and we have to stand still and see His deliverance. He brings us to the brink so we can clearly see His faithfulness extends far beyond what we can comprehend. Our intellectual belief becomes a sure sense of knowing that is rooted deep in our heart.
The apostle Paul expressed this sincere trust in God when he wrote, “That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day” (2 Timothy 1:12, NIV). Paul not only believed, but he had learned to know and trust God’s faithfulness, even in the midst — or perhaps I should say because of — the suffering he endured. Life was hard, but Paul found God to be good.
Do you merely believe or do you know? Have you come to the point in your faith where you know God will faithfully see you through? The Psalmist prayed, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame, but they will be put to shame who are treacherous without excuse” (Psalm 25:1-3).
We all know there are times when life doesn’t seem to bear that truth out. Things seem to be going completely opposite of what this verse says. At such times we have to choose to trust in God without a lick of feeling! Lack of feeling does not mean lack of faith. To the contrary, that is when faith is learned the best. Genuine faith is something that can only be gained through experience. My dad wrote a “parable in a poem” called “The Way” which I think helps to illustrate the point:
I would like to see
This path go straight and have no bend
Until I see the end.
I anticipate the hills to climb.
But that this narrow way
Should twist and turn,
I do not understand.
I like to walk all day,
With light from above
In the sunshine of His love
And see no cloud upon the way
And run it like a race.
But then, another bend
And day by day depend upon His grace.
This path is not the end
But the means to teach
On Him to depend.
Peter walked upon the waves
And then began to sink.
Did he realize the walk was not the end?
It was the means to help him trust the Lord.
Through everything you may be facing right now, realize it has come because God has allowed it within His plan.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). I think we blow right by the powerful truth in this passage because we’ve heard it and read it so often. Stop and really take it in. Do you see God’s part in this verse? It is to keep the plan working. Do you see our part? Is to simply love Him! And as we do, we will not only believe, but we will know!
Randy Mantik is senior pastor of Crossroads Church of the Assemblies of God in Pembine, Wis.
