Doubt
a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction
Yesterday I sat in church, intrigued, taking notes on the lesson Pastor Arol was giving. You can all guess, the topic was doubt.
(by no means is this exactly what he had said, his lesson was completely different (It was a great one!) but this is an off branch of it in my own words!)
Doubt is an emotion that we feel everyday. It can range from, did we pick the right college, triple checking the email that tells you what time your kid is supposed to be at soccer practice, checking to make sure your socks are matching even though its now 5pm and who really cares, questioning if you should get gas today because will it go up or down tomorrow, thinking you got the loosing lotto ticket, and then list can go on and on.
You simply can’t escape doubt. However, doubt isn’t always bad. Doubt leads to wondering, wondering lead to questioning, questioning lead to educating, educating leads to ensuring, and ensuring leads to faith. Without doubt you can’t have faith.
“Faith and doubt live right next to each other.” (Mike, Minooka Bible Church)
During Pastor Arol’s stories and explanations to better understand doubt, this quote was said. He was explaining how an unbeliever, Mike, became a believer and that was his last statement before announcing to Arol that he now finally, fully believed. Through everything that was said this quote was perhaps the one thing that stuck out to me the most.
A couple weeks ago I started to doubt this trip. Everyone was starting to talk about the normal freshman year of college stuff and it really made me feel left out. So, I started wondering if this journey was really right for me. (I assure you all, 100% that it is and I am so ready to go spread the love of God throughout his kingdom!!) I started to think that this trip wasn’t right for MY plan in life. And to be honest, it wasn’t.
On May 13th, a very inspiring role model and friend of mine posted on my wall, saying, “Keep shining the light and love of Jesus! I think you’re awesome and God is going to keep doing amazing things in and through you!” She will probably never know fully how grateful I am for this small gesture. Shortly after reading this I shed a few tears. I hadn’t realized until after reading it that I had taken God out of the picture as to why I was going on this mission trip. Of course it didn’t make sense anymore! I was trying to figure out why I was going on this trip for myself instead of for God. This post made me put God back in the picture and once I did that I realized once again that I am fully going on this journey for God and him alone and it all made sense again. After realizing that everything started to fall back into place. Since then I couldn’t be more excited to go on this trip!
Church yesterday helped me to realize that doubt, faith, and God are all intertwined. Once I threw God out the window for this journey I lost my faith in it and was left with only doubt. Yes, simply adding God back to the equation fixed my problems but after church I was able to realize why. Once I brought God back in, the faith followed and all the doubt pushed my faith in God’s plan for me forward.
If any of you take one thing from this post please have it be that doubt can help you go forward or drive you back depending on if you have faith or not. I lost God and therefore lost faith and so the doubt drove me back but once I brought God back, the faith followed and the doubt drove it all!
until my next post,
Love and blessings,
Court!
