Our every act is driven by a belief

"Unlike faith, which is always pure, our belief structure includes both pure elements of truth and impurities of human assumption, tradition, false conclusions, and out-and-out lies. Most of what we believe comes from the experiences of our lifetime, all of which occur in the natural world, and most of which are in some way tainted. Such false beliefs are hostile to our progress unless overridden by revealed truth.

By so noting the difference between faith and belief, we are not assigning belief second-class citizenship. Belief, while very different from faith, is the sum total of what we think, both good and bad, true and false. Belief is extremely powerful and has a greater pull upon our lives than any other single force, because our belief literally defines our universe. Life is what we believe it to be. People are what we believe them to be. Our perception of our world, our belief structure, imposes so much distortion upon our vision that in many ways it creates the world we view.

Our every act is driven by a belief. Whether that belief is based upon truth, or upon a misconception, determines whether that act is righteous or evil. Often, our faith can be profound, while our belief about how that faith applies to us can limit, or even eliminate, our enjoyment of the fruits of our faith. Such faith-opposing believing is called "unbelief" in the scriptures. It is not necessarily an absence of faith and can coexist with faith quite companionably. But it is nevertheless an effective and often long-lived damnation of our faith.

An example of this might be: We may have faith that Heavenly Father loves us and has the power to heal an illness or disease we may have. But we may simultaneously believe (or assume because of what others have taught us) that Heavenly Father wants us to learn some lesson through our suffering, or that we must seek a medical solution first, turning only to Him as a last resort. Or, we may conclude that since we haven't personally seen this magnitude of healing with our own eyes, He may just not be doing healings of this degree nowadays, and thus, we doubt the will of God to heal us—not His power, but His intention to do so. We have great faith He can, we just don't believe He will, and thus uninspired belief (unbelief) smothers our faith. "

John Pontius, "The Triumph of Zion", p. 241

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