To be sincere isn’t enough …

Loading your mind with positive sayings and happy platitudes will not transform your life.

That fact has brought about a lot of disappointment to many people. They have been told to just repeat certain sayings, tell themselves certain things, think certain thoughts, quote a certain mantra, or “speak” something in particular, and what they say will become a reality for them.

They may sincerely believe what they’ve put into their thoughts, but sincerity alone doesn’t make something true. Lynn Floyd highlights that fact with this example:

“What if your science professor announces that your first experiment will involve studying the properties of acids. She places a 500 ML Pyrex beaker containing clear liquid on the lab table and says, ‘This is sulfuric acid.’ In response to her explanation, imagine your lab partner, Jim, blurts out, ‘I don’t believe this is sulfuric acid. It looks like water to me.’ Jim, you discover, is so sincere about his belief that the Pyrex beaker contains water, that he decides to drink it. What will happen to Jim? Despite his sincerity, Jim’s belief that the beaker contained water did not change the nature of its contents. He may believe with all of his heart that the beaker only contains water but the acid will still kill him. One may be sincere and yet sincerely wrong.”

Just putting ideas or information into your stream of thought doesn’t mean you believe it or that you “own” it. And just believing something that isn’t true doesn’t make it become true. R. Scott Richards points to this fact when he states, “Truth matters. We can sincerely believe that human flight is possible by jumping out of a three-story window and flapping our arms, but our sincerity doesn’t make the sidewalk any softer.”

It isn’t a sincere belief that transforms a life, it’s real belief in the truth that leads to transformation.

So that your life truly benefits from a genuine belief in the truth, count on God testing what you say you believe.

Take, for example, the great patriarch of the Old Testament, Abraham. We read in the Bible that it was Abraham’s sincere belief that made him righteous before God …

“For the Scriptures tell us, ‘Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith,'” Romans 4:3.

Whether Abraham sincerely believed God was put to the test when God instructed Abraham to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to Him. A sincere belief that God only speaks truth was enough for Abraham to act …

“When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Yes,’ Abraham replied. ‘Here I am!’ ‘Don’t lay a hand on the boy!’ the angel said. ‘Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son,'” Genesis 22:9-12.

It was the moment when Abraham had raised the knife, ready to obey God, that he displayed what he sincerely believed.

Living a life of entertaining positive-thinking platitudes floating through our minds doesn’t have the same kind of transformative power as believing the truth so sincerely that we’re willing to sacrifice what is most precious to us in obedience to the One who is the source of truth.

Is your life a futile exercise of intellectual assent rather than a belief in God so sincere that you sacrifice everything to establish Him as the greatest love of your life? If God put to the test what you say you believe, how sincere would your claims show themselves to be?

Scotty