Rom 10:9  That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 

This is all we need and there is no other requirement to be saved.  However, it is our mind that often makes us lose faith when we most need it.

Jesus said that we must become as little children, or we cannot enter into the kingdom of Heaven (Mat 18:3).  On the other hand, the Bible also tells us that we shall be saved if we believe in our heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, and if we make a corresponding profession of faith, we shall be saved.  What then is the problem and why the additional requirement that we need to believe like little children?  Jesus is talking about the infinite faith little children have in their parents. He is saying that we must have that same unlimited faith in our God.   For a new Christian, for a babe in Christ, this is usually not a problem, but as we grow older in Christ, we tend to lose that unlimited faith because our head, our carnal mind, tells us that things are not quite as simple, and we start doubting.  In our heart, we may still believe, but our mind may tell us that things are not so, especially if we are in a difficult situation.  Unless we endeavor to educate our mind to understand the kingdom of God to the level of our ability to comprehend, our carnal mind will truly be at enmity with God and will tell us that God is not able, or does not care, whenever a difficult situation arises.  We need to believe in our heart, but we also need to educate our mind so that it will work for us, rather than be at enmity with God and our faith (Rom 8:7).  Clearly, simple folks are blessed, because their mind will never rise to the level of becoming an adversary to their faith.  Some Bible translations show this clearly: “and the common people heard Him gladly” (Mar 12:37), while the educated people rejected Him.

This message is for Christian believers who believe that Jesus was born sinless and never sinned although He was tempted in every way as we are, and who took our sins upon Himself and nailed them to the cross, who died and was buried, and who rose again after 3 days and 3 nights in the grave.

If we want to have the same unlimited faith in our God that little children have in their parents, we first must realize what we believe and what may be hindering our faith.  Faith is all about relationships; people of faith are having a relationship with God and also with other believers.  This is a matter of the heart and is beyond our ability to understand because no man alive has seen God, the only begotten Son. (John 1:18).  If this were all, then Adam would never have sinned, but our mind is also intimately involved, often hindering our walk with God.

Most of the time our mind is “at enmity with God” and it will cause us to lose faith when we need it most urgently.  If we are in a very serious situation, where we don’t see any way out, our mind will try to convince us that God is either not interested in our situation, or unable to help.  This is where the real battle is and we ignore this at our peril, thinking that all we need is faith in our heart.

How then can we get our mind to be our ally when it comes to matters of faith, rather than be our enemy?  By understanding God’s promises, His truthfulness, and His power.  While that sounds simple enough, we may find that there are many things we have been taught that are not in accordance with the Scriptures.  If we are not ready to embrace what the Scripture says, even if we have been taught differently, then we are wasting our time trying to convince our mind that God’s promises are all true.

Rather than looking at God’s promises, let us look at why God made man.  Once we know that, we should be able to see that all of God’s instructions and promises to man are there to serve God’s purpose including the ultimate destiny of man.  In Genesis, God said that They wanted to make man in Their image and in Their likeness.  However, God only made him in His image (the likeness is for the next life when we have our resurrected body (1 John 3:2) but when man in Eden wanted more, he even lost the image.  After that, newborn man always started out with a tiny bit of God’s image (if any), but God is using all things to make us more into the image of His Dear Son (Rom 8:28-30). When Scripture says ALL things, it includes those hopeless and painful situations we would rather not go through.  Here, we can see that nothing in God’s plan is wasted, but everything serves a purpose in God’s plan.  The Bible unveils God’s plan to the level of our understanding.

Does God really KNOW that all things work for our good, or is it just that He has so much experience that He knows how man reacts and what would happen?  Is it an educated guess that is correct 99% of the time, or has God already seen everything unfurl before He even created the universe?  This is critically important.   Let me explain.

With tongue in cheek, I maintained that we should have our third child first, for by that time parents pretty much know what phases their children go through, from the shy phase to the terrible twos to the chatty fours, etc.  We don’t know the exact details ahead, for every child is different, but the general phases they MOST LIKELY go through are all the same.  We are not sure, but we are PROBABLY correct in our assessment.  Is this the same probability God is using, when He tells us that we will be like Jesus in the next life?  Could we do something stupid that would negate our destiny?  Think about it.  Digging a little deeper, what does the Scripture say?

The Bible says that TIME had a beginning (Tit 1:2b, 2 Tim 1:9b), but we don’t exactly know when that was, except that it must have been at or before “the beginning” (Gen 1:1).  Before the “beginning” and before time, the only thing that existed was (or rather, Isaiah) eternity and God who inhabits eternity (Isa 57:15).  Remember that time did not exist before it was created and, therefore, we cannot express eternity in terms of time.  In other words, eternity is not a long time, it is the complete absence of time.  This is what the Bible says, and it is an extremely important point we need to embrace, even though we cannot truly understand eternity and would not be able to live outside of the time domain. 

If we can accept that God is the only “thing” that is eternal, and that He is not subject to time, then we should be able to understand that God IS.  With that in mind, we should also be able to understand the significance of Jesus’ words:  “Before Abraham was I AM” (John  8:58).  Jesus did not say: “Before Abraham was, I was there with him”, instead, He said: before Abraham was I AM.  In other words, while Jesus the Christ was with the Pharisees and talking to them, He also was, NO, HE IS, with Abraham because Christ is not subject to the constraints of time: He is everywhere and “everywhen”.  That means, when God says through His saint that we shall be like Jesus, He is already there, seeing the completed work in us (1 Jn 3:2b).

After many years of meditating on these issues and wrestling with them, I have to admit that I still don’t understand eternity, nor would I be able to function outside of the time domain.  However, I am able to accept that God is everywhere and when He tells me that He is using all things to make me more into the image of His Dear Son (Rom 8:28-30), it means that He is already seeing the whole process and the finished product as well.  In all this, He tells me the outcome, but He does not tell me how many detours I will take or how many times I will shoot myself in the foot and suffer the consequences.  But I can be sure that I will reach the goal, not because of what I am doing, but even despite my doing.  Again, God is already seeing the final result, both how close I will get to the image of His Dear Son in this life, and that I will be like His Son in the next.

Knowing all of this, I may be hurting and in pain when calamity hits and I may be emotionally down under certain circumstances, but I have no reason to be discouraged or despaired because I know that the hard times are used by God to make me more into the image of His Son.  And when there is truly no way out, maybe that is the time the Lord will call me home?  How glorious!

2Co 4:7-11 KJV  But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;  Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. 

For me, this answers all open questions, and I can have complete and unlimited faith in our Lord.  It even answered questions for me I did not even know were important:  That a strong believer is mostly interested in asking “Who”, rather than “How”, while a weak believer or an unbeliever will mostly ask “How”.   For instance, when the angel came to Mary to tell her that she would have a son, she asked: “How can this be, seeing that I don’t ‘know’ a man?”  What she was really asking was: “Who will be the father, since I am unmarried?”  It was a “Who” question of faith and she was satisfied when the angel told her that the Holy Spirit [would be the Father].  On the other hand, when an angel told Zachariah that his wife would have a son in her old age, He did not believe and asked “how” this could possibly be since he and his wife were too old to have children.  He was struck with dumbness for a season for his unbelief.

The beauty of asking the “who” question is that the answer is as true today as it was when it was first given.  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This has been and will be true throughout all the ages. While the unbelievers and weak believers want to always find out “how”, and the answer constantly changes as science provides more sensitive instruments, the question of Who started it all is never even addressed.

Another answer that came automatically was why God created man in the first place.  He said it in Genesis 1: “Let us make man in our image and in our likeness.”  That’s it.  That is the goal God has set for creating man and it is an ongoing process.  God is letting us in on His plan by telling us that He will use all of our life experiences to transform us more into the image of His Dear Son, when we will be like Him in the next age.  Since this has been God’s plan from before the foundation of the world, we can be sure that He means what He said through His saints.  When I take all of these things together, my mind will no longer be an enemy of my faith in God, but a staunch ally who will strengthen the faith of my heart.  Oh, give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, and His mercy endures forever, Amen.

Supporting Scripture references:

Scripture references showing that we must be as little children to enter into the kingdom of heaven:

Mat_18:3  And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Mat_19:14  But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Luk_18:16  But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

Scripture references showing the beginning of time:

Tit 1:2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began 

2Ti 1:9 who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, 

There is also a weak confirmation in Rom 16:25, saying that the good news has been hidden throughout all the ages past, from which follows that there must have been a beginning of the ages.  But again, this is a weak confirmation, for this could also be interpreted differently.