Alright, so I’m gonna be super real. The last month and a half, my doubt of God has grown tremendously. Daily I felt my faith lessen and my fear expand. I felt lies creeping in and all my joy and peace leave. I was slowly picking up everything I’d ever laid at the cross, because I wasn’t even sure the cross existed. I wasn’t sure God was here, with me. I wasn’t sure I, and everyone I was with, weren’t crazy for believing in God. For carrying around this book and basing our lives on it.
Doubt is not in my personality. Even at my deepest and darkest moments, when I’ve been stoned or drunk, when I’ve been in dangerous places or in situations I still carry much shame for, when I wasn’t pursuing God in the slightest, I knew he was real. I always knew he was real.
But here, on a missions trip, surrounded by people who love him, now i choose to question it all? I was terrified. I didn’t want to tell anyone or say it out loud.
But I did. I had a conversation with our squad mentor and vomited every fear, every question, every doubt that had been eating me alive the last few weeks. And it was right then, when what was in the darkness was brought to the light, no longer had power over me. The bricks lifted from my chest and the fog cleared from my head. And then the Lord reminded me, so gently, of what I had asked him just 2 months before.
I had begged God to expand my faith. I said I wanted the kind of faith to throw mountains in the sea and heal the blind and raise the dead. Not that I wanted to do those things, I just wanted to believe that Jesus did. And that he could. I told God, “I know I will get tested in my faith for asking this. I know to grow my faith you have to put me in positions where all I have is my faith. I’m ready.”
But I wasn’t. Because I had forgotten my request. And I sat in the victim circle thinking God had abandoned me. When every thought, every fear, every doubt, was a test of my faith. One I did not pass because I was too ignorant and selfish to see that all I had to do was trust.
The Lord brought me to the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert. God had rescued them from slavery, split the Red Sea, and made manna rain down from heaven when they were starving. When he brought them food he told them not to store the old manna for the next day, because he would rain it down fresh for them each morning. But even with the splitting of a massive body of water and the complete destruction of their enemies, not to mention every other thing He’d done for them, they still stored up the manna because they doubted.
The lord told me that’s what I was doing. I was holding on white knuckled to my old manna, which is all the Lord has done for me in the past (which has been so much) because I didn’t believe he’d ever do it again. I didn’t believe he’s bring me fresh manna, or continue to rescue me over and over, or ever split the water for me.
But the most important part is, that God never got to a point where their doubt was too much for him. He never stopped making food rain from the sky no matter how many times they doubted him. It must have been so frustrating for him! But it didn’t matter. They are his kids, we are his kids. And he takes care of his kids.
I know I will doubt again. I know I will try to store up manna because I won’t believe he’ll do it again. But that doesn’t matter to him, because he’ll never stop being good. He’ll never stop redeeming, forgiving, loving, caring, being sovereign and merciful.
So my faith has grown. And I still pray it continues to. I still pray to be put in situations where the only thing I have to hold onto is my faith. I still believe in mountains being thrown into oceans and the dead being risen and wafers raining from the clouds. Because God is bigger than my doubt.
“Lord I believe, help my unbelief.”
Mark 9:24
