No doubt rebellion and unbelief work together to stop God’s people dead in their tracks. No doubt that God identifies some disobedience with unbelief and responds to disobedience as rebellion. The failure to respond, to follow through, to finish the assignment – all are forms of rebellious unbelief.
Consider the phrasing of Hebrews 3:12 – “So watch your step, friends. Make sure there’s no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God.”
In the discussion the unbelief and disobedience are tied together: “failed to enter because they disobeyed God.” Consider The Message conversational version of Ephesians 2:2 – “You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.”
Rebellious unbelief limits our fulfillment of destiny, the working of dunamis power for miracles, the peaceful wholeness of what God has prepared for us, and the maturity of kingdom leadership as an influence upon the culture.
“If we disobey God, we will fall. For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joints and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.”
Lack of trust toward the Father’s leadership produces disobedience to His instructions. Substituting our own ways and strategies because we fail to listen with our spiritual ears to His ways and strategies, we fall short of full obedience and develop rebellious unbelief. It appears as if God isn’t doing a very good job of being God when the reality is that our rebellious unbelief has substitute human wisdom and strength for Divine strategy and power.
Do It My Way
God insists upon being God. That is pretty much the first commandment: “Do not have other gods. Do not worship anything other god. No substitutes.”
God insists upon doing what God does for the people who worship Him as God. That is, God rules. God is the boss. God has the only right and proper and appropriate “way to do things.” God insists upon obedience and submission because God is love: God knows His ways are best for us and love always wants what’s best for its object.
Any “do it my way” with God is a form of rebellious unbelief. It is witchcraft because it seeks to use God to get what we want or do things the way we wish to do them. That is rebellious unbelief because it substitutes for God’s “do it My way” leadership.
To oversimplify the purpose of the Scriptures, God introduced Himself and His ways in the Bible so we would recognize Him and His ways when He involves Himself in history, in our lives, in our generation. We would see Him at work and say, “I know Who that is! That’s the God of the Bible. That’s how He does stuff.”
