Greear challenges unbelief among Christians, advises people to take dare on God

by Lauren Crane

When the lost world remains in darkness, Christians need to question whether it is their own unbelief in the power of God which is keeping the Gospel from reaching all people.

The challenge to address unbelief in the lives of Christians came from J.D. Greear, pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, N.C., when he spoke to the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary family during chapel on February 7. Greear said his role as a pastor is to help people believe. In other words, he said, his role is to help with vision.

“When the vision is correct, you have the motivation,” Greear said. “When you don’t have vision, there is no motivation.” He said vision is seeing something, not as it is, but as it would be. In this respect, Greear said vision is the topic of Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church, in which he prays the believers “will grasp the breadth, depth and height of God’s love for them.”

“What I want to do today is help you to grasp the depth of God’s love for you and for the world,” Greear said.

“God’s mercy is no different that than it was back then,” he added, speaking out of Isaiah 59:1-2 and John 15:7-8. “There is simply no shortage of passion and desire to save people.” Greear said the problem, then, is unbelief, which he called “chief among sins.”

“What most limits God’s work in the world is that the things we are praying for replace God for us,” he said. “The problem is: You pray according to your own passions…When we believe, we pray according to what God can do.”

Greear said there are several points to be gleaned out of the passages. In conjunction with other passages from the Gospels, Greear said it is evident that when people abide in the love of God, they begin to put their hope in God’s love.

“That becomes the key to which you unlock the power of God in the world,” Greear said.

He said that abiding in God’s love leads his people to pray for those things which unlock his power. However, the problems arise when Christians do not abide in Christ’s love, Greear said. Instead, we are adulterers, he said, forgetting our first love and instead asking him to fulfill our needs by providing us with fulfillment outside of himself.

“He uses one of the strongest rebukes found in the Scriptures (in James),” Greear said. “He says, ‘Adulterers! Don’t you understand that intimacy with the world is unfaithfulness to God?’”

Greear said when Christians ask God to fulfill fleshly requests by giving them their human desires, they ultimately are robbing him of his glory.

He said God “did not promise to convince other people to meet your needs. I meant I would meet them within myself.”

There are a lot of times in ministry, he added, during which ministers and laymen alike pray, asking God to bless and increase their ministry, because they believe they need that ministry success to be happy.

“God says, ‘Adulterer. You were supposed find your happiness in me. You were not supposed to find your happiness in a large church. You were not supposed to find your happiness in being a fantastic preacher. You were not supposed to find your happiness in elevating yourself in ministry…Adulterer,’” Greear said. “Because God knows you need that big church to be happy, he says, ‘I can’t give it to you. I can’t bless you, because you are using me.’”

Reading through several Gospel passages, Greear said he sees a pattern emerge. When people abide in Christ, believing in him, they begin to see the world through the eyes of the love of God. He uses the examples of the Roman centurion who recognized his own unworthiness, but believed Jesus could heal his servant anyway (Luke 7:2-10), and the example of the Canaanite woman with the demon-possessed daughter (Matthew 15:22-28).

“She (the Canaanite woman) put all of her hope on Jesus’ grace,” Greear said.

“What if what kept God from the places that most needed him wasn’t the shortness of his arm, but the unbelief of his people?” Greear asked. “What missions is, what dreaming is and what faith is is taking a dare on the compassion of Jesus and putting all of your hope in it and on nothing else.”