Yesterday we saw that sanctification is the fruit of God’s work in us. However, God will not do that work in us, if we do not cooperate with him in it. Probably the most essential element in this cooperation is to believe what he tells us. The bible defines faith as “The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Similarly, the Oxford Languages Dictionary says that faith is: “complete trust or confidence in someone or something”, and a “strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.”

As we’ve seen over the past couple weeks, God has made us to be united with him, to know in our hearts the truth of all of his words, to believe in the fulfillment of his purchase of us in the death and resurrection of his son, and to be confident in his present-day power to change our lives. Failure to believe results in a divided mind and heart, which makes us unstable and unable to grow as our mind waffles. (James 1:6-8)

As we believe the promise given to us in the Rejoice passage above (that Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree, breaking the power of sin in our lives), we can walk forward trusting that we are no longer slaves to the things that have bound us in the past. We are a people made new! We can believe that as we say “no” to the things that God has asked us to give up, he will give us the power to put those things to death.