If there is one thing you can guarantee in a walk of faith,
it is the ever-irritating struggle of death-bred doubt. Uncertainty in the hope
of which we boast and second guessing the love that is showered upon us is
exactly what the devil would want. Doubt is something that tries to take us
down and make us feel like there is no way we can get up and get through
anything. The crazy thing is, there is no one who can truthfully say they have
never been challenged by the unoriginal schemes of the doubt-master, and that
includes Jesus Christ.
Now I know that we have all read Matthew chapter 4, in which
Satan tempted Jesus in every way. In all hard-swallowed truthiness, that means
that Satan tried to lead Jesus down every possible road temptation could walk
Him down. We’re talking everything from bitterness, homosexuality, envy, murder,
jealousy, selfish gain, lying, false promises of dominion and every other
possible ugliness that could come from a sinful nature. Satan feasted on the
weakness of Christ’s humanity and did everything in his limited repertoire to
try and take the Lord down. Through these temptations, Satan tried to
manipulate Jesus to disobey and doubt his Father, run to an empty pit of
selfishness and promise to give Him all that the world could have to offer. He
was physically and spiritually put in the same wilderness that we walk in until
we make the choice to be saved and loved by the One who loves us. Every last
inch of evil that could cross His path and make Him stray to the right or the
left was there and He was given the choice to stay in sinless perfection. He
knows exactly how we feel every day but you have to wonder if we realize just
how relatable He really is?
We are aware that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man,
but it is really crazy to believe that He really knows exactly how it feels
when we are tempted to doubt and fall. Christ was set in the wilderness with
nothing but the love of His Dad, completely abandoned from everything other
than faith. He was put in the place that all of us have walked in and often
choose to stay in. The humanity and relatable character of Christ is something
that I haven’t really delved into too much in my life, but I’m starting to see
just how nutty it is that Jesus can relate to us on every doubt-dusted level.
When I think of Jesus going through it all, I know that He
truly took the ultimate risk on love. He fully shows us that He knows just what
we need to know that he loves us. I imagine a scene in the Israeli desert with
Christ doing a lot of sighing and combing through his Jew-fro with His fingers.
I see Him scuffing his feet on the dry ground with his strappy sandals while pacing
to and fro (all the while, He is starting to get some serious pit-stains on his
linen robe from particularly intense sweat patterns). He is awkwardly cleaning
his dirty carpenter fingernails with a twig he found on the ground and
furrowing his eyebrows as Satan laid out all that he had to tantalize Jesus
with. I see Him being fully susceptible to all of it because He was 100% man
and 100% God. He put Himself in a position on earth with all of us that made
Him completely vulnerable to everything we face every day. Anything that could
possibly make human bodied, upper-lip sweating, rapid blood pumping, weak kneed
just like us Jesus doubt the heart of the Father and prevent Him from bringing
abundant life was put on the table in front of Him. And just like all of us, He
was given the choice as of whether or not to take the risk on saying ‘no’ to
the Father.
Now, if any of you are anything like everyone else, you’ve
more than likely dabbled in your fair share of doubting the Abba Father. It may
range in a lot of different extremes (see Ecclesiastes 7:18), like doubting the
existence of God, doubting how wonderfully you are made, doubting your ability
to have self-control when you are tempted, doubting that you will ever be able
to change your habitually insane behavioral patterns, or even doubting that you
will ever be in God’s will for your life. All of these things can cause us to
fall into brash, emotionally driven decision-making and into continual bouts of
disorderly confusion that pull us further and further away from the heart of
God. We often feel like we have no one who will understand, that we should be
completely ashamed of what we are going through or that there is no way we
could live free from the doubt that seems to haunt our every day life. To walk
blindly in faith and wholeheartedly trust the heart of our Father and our
Savior is a daily battle and eternal choice that can sometimes really suck. It
hurts when we know so deeply that God is the truth but we don’t know to live in
constant intimate dependency when our doubts make us weak.
The craziest part of all of this death-spoken,
doubt-breeding stuff is to actually come to the realization that Christ has
already defeated it all on the cross. He came to earth to show us the Father’s
love for us, make Himself completely exposed to everything we deal with, bore
all of the sins of all people, completely eliminated everything with the
complete scandal of Grace, removed death and all of it’s artillery and gave us
His Spirit to live in the full light of love. He not only understands
everything we walk in but He has completely stepped into the fullness of His
God-given passion and took the biggest risk on love of all time. He not only
took the risk but He gave us His Spirit, knowing that He will always be with us
because of it, and empowered us with His strength in order to glorify the Lord
and walk in the fullness of love. He took the chance on all of us and gave us
all the same fire for the living and breathing Glory of God that He is. With
His act of Righteous victory, we literally have nothing stopping us from seeing
the life of Christ within us all.
What all of this means to me is still pretty fresh, but I
know that God is up to something bigger than letting us slip and slide into
doubt. Jesus is pursuing my life harder than ever and showing me the fullness
of who He is within me more than I ever thought possible. His desires for me
let me know that I’m tired of walking in only sparkles of confidence in my
identity instead of completely beaming with the truth of how I have been made.
More importantly, He is showing me more and more of my purpose in this Kingdom
and His plans for my life. I’m tired of people being imprisoned by doubt and
not truly coming alive in the love of God. I want to see all of us celebrating
together, living in celebration of our Father. Jesus took the chance on us and
has given us everything we need to beam with the Glory. Whatever we may be
stuck in has no hold on the truth of who He is and how we are designed. I know
I am tired of doubting who I am and I know Jesus is ready to love all of you harder than you
ever thought possible. I guess the question is, are you willing to let
Him?
