Choosing Faith: Deciding to Take God at His Word for Forty Days

By Elizabeth Wondergem

Do you ever struggle with doubt? Do you sometimes think everyone around you has more faith than you do? Do you have a hard time trusting the goodness of God when you're going through difficult circumstances? Is it hard for you to admit these things to yourself, much less to God or anyone else? Been there…I went through a season marked by depression and doubt. Then one day, out of nothing more than desperation, I began to wonder what might happen if I could just believe, really believe, everything the Bible says. Would it have any effect on my life? Could it possibly help? So I did the only thing that seemed natural to me: I made a deal with God. I would choose to believe with my whole heart for forty days. Ultimately, I was giving God one last chance. I had no expectations; it just seemed only fair that before I gave up on him completely to give him a fair shot.That's my challenge to you! I dare you to give God his fair shot! This book is challenging you to give God forty days of believing every single truth of the Bible with your whole heart. I dare you to commit to believing everything the Bible says about who God is and who you are as a believer in Christ. Make a decision to let go of every thought and belief that contradicts what the Bible says about God and especially about how God sees you if you are his child. Ask God to meet you there! Ask him to help you learn to live by his ultimate truth, and let it change you from the inside out. Let it set you free! You may be surprised at what he does!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098065744

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Day 1

God Loves Me, Really

Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so. I’m pretty sure that’s the first song I ever learned. In fact, it’s quite possibly the first song my children ever learned too. And it’s a great song with a powerful truth.

But to me, it had become a cliché.

I think I always knew God loved me in some form, but I thought of it as more of an obligatory love. I thought of God as mostly annoyed with me for my humanness. I think I figured he tolerated me because he made me, so he was stuck with me.

I never knew how deeply he loved me and wanted relationship with me until recently. And actually, I still think I’ve only grasped the tip of the iceberg.

And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. (Eph. 3:18–19)

I do not think our finite brains can even begin to fathom how much our Savior loves us. We can try to imagine someone we dearly love. Our spouse, a really wonderful close friend, or if we’re a parent, our children are the epitome of love in our minds. But we would have to multiply that love by infinity to even begin to compare.

God’s love is unwavering and unconditional. And we as humans are not capable of that without God. We may love some people pretty well, but we still have some strings attached, even if we don’t want to admit it.

Unfortunately, we tend to allow the love we experience from others to define how we think God loves us. But we were made in God’s image, not the other way around. We may have a glimpse of what love is supposed to look like because God is love, and we are made in his image, but it is only a glimpse. We live in a fallen world with fallen bodies, so what we experience with and through other people will never come close to the love we have in God.

I had stopped believing God really loved me because I felt so unworthy of his love and because I didn’t understand why he wasn’t fixing my life. I thought, How could God love me when I can’t get my life together to prove myself worthy of his love? And I wondered, If God does love me, why doesn’t he help me get my life together?

I’ve since learned the answers to those questions.

First, I am not worthy of this love, at least not on my own. I was born a sinner, and I need the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ to make me righteous. And God loved me enough that he sent his Son Jesus to shed his blood for me. I am now righteous in his sight because of his sacrifice. It’s not because of anything I did; it was all Jesus. He loved me that crazy much.

For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. (Eph. 2:9)

Second, God’s goal is not for me to get my life together. God’s goal is to have relationship with me. And he uses all of those things in my life that I can’t figure out on my own to draw me closer to him. So if he wants relationship with me, then he wants to be with me. I mean, in order to build relationship with someone, you must spend time together. I don’t know about you, but I try to spend as little time as possible with people I don’t like. Yet I tend to want to spend as much time as possible with the people I truly love. That can only mean one thing… He really loves me. He just wants to be with me and know me and let me know him.

For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. (Zeph. 3:17)

I have a really great friend that has said to me when I’ve been struggling, God is rejoicing over you right now.

Think about that for a minute. The God of the universe is rejoicing over you. I’m not talking about humanity in general; I’m talking about you personally. You are his son or daughter that he dearly loves and wants to be with.

If you have a hard time accepting that God truly loves you, ask him to show you. Early in this journey, I turned Ephesians 3:18–19 into a prayer for myself. Try praying this prayer every day. Mine went something like this:

Lord, please give me the power to understand, as all your people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep your love for me is. Please let me experience the love of Christ though it’s way too great for me to fully understand. Then please make me complete with all the fullness of life and power that come from you.

If we really let it sink in, and honestly believe as much as our finite minds will allow that God loves us that much, it changes everything. As we go through the next thirty-nine days, remember to look at each truth through this lens—the lens of God’s unimaginable love for us, his children.

Do you truly believe that the God of the universe is crazy about you and wants relationship with you?

In what ways could believing that change your thinking and your life?

Day 2

I Am Completely Forgiven, Really

So then, since we have a great high priest who has entered Heaven, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This high priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. (Heb. 4:14–16)

Recently I had a conversation with my son about being forgiven and forgiving ourselves. He had not been himself for quite a while, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on with him. At first, I just assumed it was teenage hormones, but one night he got crazy angry at his little sister for something minor, and I realized there must be something more going on here.

After a strained conversation and trying to get him to open up about what was really bothering him, it finally came out. He was holding on to something he had done months before and thinking we were still mad at him for it. It broke my heart. We were not at all mad at him; neither had it changed our opinion of him. But he had been living with this weight and pressure of feeling like he had disappointed us and we had not forgiven him.

That night, I explained to him the difference between conviction and shame. I told him that conviction is from God. It’s the feeling deep in our spirit that something we’re doing isn’t pleasing to God. It’s his prompting to draw us closer to him. It encourages us to turn away from our sin and back to God. And that’s the key; conviction always turns us toward the face of God.

Shame, on the other hand, is straight from the devil. It’s the feeling of hopelessness and rejection that we get because what we did was so awful that it has permanently changed our perception of ourselves, and we assume God’s perception of us as well. It makes us turn away from God because we figure he must not want such a horrible person in his presence. And therein lies the problem; we turn away from God in our shame, not toward him.

I wonder if the devil doesn’t use shame more than any of his other tools to deter us from the relationship with God that God wants for us.

I explained to my son that it’s okay to recognize his guilt and feel convicted because it helps us to have a repentant heart. That’s what turns us away from our sin and back to God. Jesus’s sacrifice opens the door for God to forgive our sins and gives us the freedom to boldly approach the throne of God.

His shame had the opposite effect on him. Instead of approaching God boldly, with his head up knowing who he is in Christ, he had his head down, wanting to hide from God. That is not what God wants for us. He wants us to come as we are and accept his forgiveness.

Staying stuck in our shame will leave us feeling alone and defeated. We have to trust that when God sent Jesus to die for our sins, he died for every single sin, no matter how bad we think our sins are. Each and every sin we have committed and will commit in this lifetime has been completely forgiven through Jesus’s suffering, death, and resurrection. There is nothing we can do to add to or take away from that. It is finished. It is enough.

But, if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all wickedness. (1 John 1:9)

Confessing our sins requires us to go to God, not run away from him. He clearly asks us to bring our guilt to him and let him cleanse us. We do not need to feel like we have to cleanse ourselves before we turn to God. We are not capable of that. If we had been capable of that, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus.

We only need to accept Jesus’s sacrifice as enough, confess our sins, and accept his forgiveness. Then, what we receive in return is relationship with the Father. The absolute best thing God can offer us is himself.

The prize he offers is nothing on earth, anything that may happen, or any specific goal we may have. In fact, it’s not even heaven; it’s simply God, himself, his presence. That’s what will be so great about heaven! God is there! We will be allowed to experience his uninterrupted, undistracted presence. Here on earth, through the forgiveness of our sins and the Holy Spirit, we are able to experience God’s presence. But when we get to heaven, we will be allowed to fully experience God like we can’t imagine.

If not for God’s presence there, heaven would just be some other place for us to end up. We talk of meeting loved ones that have gone before us. But I imagine we will be so awed by the majesty of the almighty King of kings that we won’t even realize anyone else is there. Maybe after the first thousand years or so, we will finally be able to pull our thoughts and our eyes slightly away and begin to remember to search for the people that we thought we couldn’t wait to see. The good news is we’ll have eternity to do so.

All of this is only available to us because of the forgiveness of sin available to us through Jesus’s sacrifice. God cannot be in the presence of sin, so in order for us to be allowed to live in his perfect presence, we must allow Jesus to completely cleanse us from our sins.

Do you truly believe all of your sins are completely forgiven once and for all when you ask God and accept Jesus’s sacrifice?

Are there sins in your life that you need to confess to God and accept his forgiveness?

Does knowing you are completely forgiven by the God of the universe allow you to forgive yourself?

Day 3

I Have a Hope and a Future

For I know the plans I have for you says the Lord, They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. (Jer. 29:11)

If I’m honest, this is another scripture verse that I feel had almost become cliché in my mind. I thought of this promise for other people, but not necessarily for myself. Or maybe I thought of it as my future hope is simply for heaven. If I can just struggle through this lifetime and make it to heaven, then I’ll be okay. As for my time here on earth, it felt anything but hopeful. I was surrounded by a daily sense of dread for my future here on earth.

We know that God has a plan for each of our lives, and we know by faith that his plan is good. Unfortunately, though, God’s plan may not always come when or how we expect it. Or we may not be able to see that God is working in our lives at all. We always should be keeping an open mind as to how God may be working in our lives and the lives of those around us. But often, that’s easier said than done.

We may not always agree that what God seems to be doing in our lives is actually good for us or the people we love. We tend to think we are in control and we know better than God. But really, God is in control of everything. He created everything, even us, and therefore he owns everything, down to our very bodies. We can’t change certain things about our circumstances or even ourselves.

So what exactly does God want us to hope for? That we’ll be happy? Or that we’ll have good health? That we’ll live a long life? That people we love will be close to us and also enjoy good health and long life? Or that we will have enough money to retire on? These are all good things, and they are things God may very well bless us with. But we have to remember that God’s goal for our lives is relationship with him.

Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you. (Ps.