How Much Do We Believe in Our God?
There's a question Sam Dunn keeps circling back to in his teaching, and he asks it like a man who already knows it'll sting a little: How much do we believe in our God? Not whether we believe — how much. He wrote this lesson in early 2023, and I keep returning to it because almost every spiritual struggle I've ever sat with, in a prison or a living room, eventually traces back to that one measurement.
## The Thief and the Abundance
Sam starts where Jesus starts: "The thief does not come except to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). Then he does something pastorally honest — he lists the places we actually go looking for that life:
A job, with enough effort, can buy you a certain amount of security. Family, when it's good, can give you real emotional support. And beyond that we chase whatever makes us happy — fishing, golf, motorcycles, the next thing. Sam doesn't condemn any of it. He just tells the truth about it: these things may be fun, but they will all leave us lacking.
The word abundant in that verse, he points out, means to exceed all expectations. God isn't offering you a slightly upgraded version of what the world offers. He's offering something that overshoots everything you'd know to ask for — because, as Sam puts it, God actually knows better than we do what will make us happy.
So he asks again: How much do you believe in our God?
## Believing the Words, Not Just the Name
Then Sam sharpens it. There's a difference between believing in God and believing the words of God — and he tests it with three of the heaviest verses in Scripture:
*"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope"* (Jeremiah 29:11).
*"Now see that I, even I, am He, and there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal; nor is there any who can deliver from My hand"* (Deuteronomy 32:39).
That second one is not a comfortable verse, and Sam doesn't soften it. The same God who heals is sovereign over all of it. To believe His words is to trust Him even there. So he asks the second version of his question: How much do you believe the words of our God?
## The Door Is Lower Than You Think
And here's the relief at the center of it. "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9). Sam calls salvation such an easy thing to have — and he's right. The entrance costs you a confession and a belief. But he won't let you stop at the door, because past it lies all of God's promises. Even in a world full of turmoil, he says, we can still live in the blessing of our Lord and Savior.
I've watched men receive that easy salvation and then spend years acting like God still doesn't have their back — believing in Him on paper while believing the thief in practice. The whole Christian life is the slow, daily project of closing the gap between those two.
Sam's prayer for everyone who heard this was simply that they'd ask themselves the question. So I'll leave it with you the way he left it: How much do you believe in our God?
**If that question landed somewhere honest in you,** reach out. We'd be glad to pray with you and help you close the gap between what you believe and how you're living.
