Unbelief

Today Pastor James preached from Mark 6:1-6, on the wonder of unbelief. He said some things that resonated with me; I've seen them over and over when I've been speaking with people. Here are my notes:

Unbelief makes anything but the truth more believable than the truth, no matter how unbelievable it is.

Unbelief is a state; it is not an intellectual problem but a spiritual problem; it is a problem of inability apart from divine intervention.

Unbelief fails to recognize the obvious, gets entangled in the inconsequential, and takes offence at the messenger.

Here are my thoughts:

He's absolutely right. I have spoken with enough people who will believe the oddest things but will not believe the Bible. Moreover, nothing will change their minds. And as Pastor James said, the people around Jesus saw miracles, knew that what Jesus was doing was amazing and had never been done before...and still rejected Him. If proof was all people really needed, there would have been no unbelievers in Israel when Christ was alive.

Beyond that, I have had enough people argue irrelevant points when I speak with them about God. They get stuck on things that Christians (and professed Christians who likely were not really Christians) have done in the past and refuse to care about what Christ has done.

But Pastor James didn't leave us there. He pointed us to John 6:65 and reminded us that unbelief can be overcome through God.