Believing can mean something a good deal less than certainty. I believe the bus will come in five minutes, but I cant be sure. Or sometimes it can mean the kind of knowledge which is acquired after scrupulous review of evidence to build up a cumulative case for some conviction. But believing [as Scripture presents it] is not half-certainty, nor the fruit of mental effort. Its belief in the deep, strong sense of giving allegiance to something which overwhelms us. To believe in the Lord Jesusis to do far more than simply give him a passing nod with the mind or even to honor him with our religious devotion. Its the astonished business of being so overthrown by his reality, so mastered by his sheer presence, so judged by him, that we can do nothing other than acknowledge that he is supremely real, supremely true. To believe in him is to confess himto affirm with mind and will and heart that he fills all things, that our only hope lies in his name. Belief in this sense concerns the entire shape of a personal life. It embraces the whole of us. Its not one department of our life, something in which we engage alongside all the other things we doworking, loving, hoping, creating, worrying, and so on. Believing is about the way in which we dispose the world of our existence. We believe when were totally shaped by something outside of us, acknowledging that it has put a decisive stamp on all that we are and all that we do. This is why belief in this deep, strong sense defines us completely: Were believers, doing all that we do out of the inescapable conviction that the Lord Jesus is the persistent factor in the whole of our life. Believing in him, confessing him, involves no less than everything.