12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
We have a responsibility to determine the direction of our hearts, whether we are following after God, or following after something else. The writer of Hebrews has just finished telling of account of the Israelites who saw God’s miracles during the exodus from Egypt, and yet they still did not believe. Just because they were delivered from the land of slavery does not mean they entered the Promised Land. Only two out of the millions made it the whole way. The rest, a whole generation of people, died in the desert. We determine whether we are going to believe or not. We make the choice to believe. And we are not expected to make that choice blindly. We are told to engage our hearts, minds, souls, body, and strength in the pursuit. Everything that we are we bring to the table. The more I know about the world and the way things work, the more I believe. It is much harder to believe everything happened by random chance than to believe in God. Random chance is too hard to believe, unless of course you are avoiding the consequences of sin. Then you will hold tightly to any belief that helps you continue in your sin. I want to encourage you today. It is easier to believe than it is to fight against the overwhelming evidence of God’s existence. The only thing that stands in the way of belief is sin. Sin is pleasurable only for a season. Living with God’s pleasure turned toward you last an eternity. Nothing in the sinful realm compares to the satisfaction of obedience. It is worth giving up. Obedience is much more fun.
The Arnold Journey 