Belief That Moves: When Faith Becomes Obedience
What if believing God means more than agreeing that He is telling the truth?
During a recent church service, I was suddenly struck by a Greek word.
You may not know me well, but Greek words don’t typically pull me out of a sermon to open my LOGOS app and start researching. But for Hebrew words? (Every time.)
But that Sunday, the Greek word pisteuō, often translated as "believe," caught my attention. The idea of believing something so deeply that it shapes how we live reminded me of a Hebrew word I have loved for years: shemaʿ (shama’). And that sent me down a little biblical rabbit trail.
What happens when we place the Greek concept of believing alongside the Hebrew understanding of hearing? We begin to see something beautiful about the relationship between faith, trust, and obedience.
As Was His Custom: Submission
I remember it vividly. Michael (my pastor husband) and I were leading a group of engaged couples through several months of pre-marriage counseling and preparation. During that time, we leaned into some heavy passages of Scripture that ruffled a few feathers. This time, Michael asked everyone to open their Bibles to Ephesians 5:22-33. Immediately, once the pages were turned and the passage quickly scanned, I heard several breaths suck in, saw shoulders stiffen, and mouths turn down. The women’s eyes shifted hastily from the page to their future husbands, and the men all seemed to be looking at the ceiling for an auditory word FROM THE LORD.
Submit. That word alone sends shivers down spines. It acts as a gut punch for any woman who has, at one time or another, wanted to lead something in her church or home. It shuts the mouths of prophets, silences wives everywhere, and makes a lot of men in our Western culture uncomfortable. It’s a word that’s been abused in the Church for hundreds, possibly thousands of years.
What’s surprising is that Jesus practiced submissiveness. Wait - submissiveness was a normal custom of a man? The Son of God?