Last month in Thailand I was really struggling with doubting the Lord and believing in His faithfulness. Here is an exurb from my journal and then a sermon I did at church on doubt at the end of the month!
4.12.18
I’m wrestling with God tonight after talking to those two atheists. I’m just mad at myself that I don’t know what I believe. I don’t know why I believe it and why I just so blandly agreed to what I have learned. I just want to know the facts, the research behind it, the reasonings why there is no possible way there could not be a God.
I need to know why I am here trying to spread this message I don’t fully understand or believe.
I need to fully believe it to know it’s worth sharing.
Maybe that’s why I felt like I have one shoe in and one shoe out this whole race so far because I don’t fully believe. I’m waiting for God to give me a sign or a wonder to show me the truth, to point me in the right direction. I’m on my hands and knees begging for God to reveal himself to me, to help my unbelief, to show me who He says He is. To know his character and strength and be absolutely certain of His existence. The girl I was evangelizing with was so confident in her beliefs and knew for certain what she was saying was the truth, I want that kind of conviction when talking to others.
I don’t think God gets mad when we wrestle with Him, heck Jacob in the Bible wrestled with God all night long and God then gave him a new name for it, Israel which means ‘God Wrestler.’
But God said to me shortly after all my questions;
“I want you to wrestle but I don’t want you to waver in that faith, that’s a different thing”
He wants me to wrestle with Him, challenge Him, and search for what I believe for myself because He gives us the free will to do that. But it’s a completely different thing to waver in my faith and not believe in His existence all together. I now have this fire in my soul that I want to learn as much as I can about who God says He is and the history and facts that back it all up. So that I can defend my faith and not waver when the devil tries to question it.
“Lord please take all these disbeliefs and prove them true in your name, reveal to me your power and your glory like I have never seen before, help me feel your love in a new way where I know it’s from you, and lead me to the truth above all. Amen”
Sermon on doubting and faith: 4.29.18
So I’m going through a season of doubt and wrestling right now, doubting God’s power and His goodness and having so many questions about the facts that back it all up. It’s been a really hard season to go through especially on this race when I’m suppose to be sharing my faith, not uncertain about my faith. How am I suppose to share my faith when I don’t know why I believe what I believe? When I first became a Christian I didn’t need the evidence to help me believe, I just jumped in with blind faith. But to defend my faith to others and spread my faith I need to have some evidence and the reasons why behind some things. The Holy Spirit really convicted me after I evangelized to two atheists during Awakening. They asked so many good questions and I didn’t know how to defend my faith. I didn’t know how to answer their questions they had for me and I froze. I left there feeling completely discouraged and full of questions and uncertainty.
Why do I believe what I believe? What if this all isn’t true? How can it all be the? And why haven’t I ever questioned it before?
And I thought these were questions I were never suppose to ask.
Pastor Tim Keller states it perfectly: He says
“A faith without some doubt is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blindly go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A persons faith can collapse almost overnight if they have failed over the years to listen patiently to their own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.”
I was going through exactly that and my faith was crumbling overnight because I was just blindly believing without asking the hard questions.
So that night God revealed to me that it’s okay to question Him it’s just not okay to weaver in that faith. Jacob wrestled with God till the break of dawn and was persistent with Him. And his name got changed to Israel which means ‘God wrestler.’ God doesn’t mind you wrestling with Him because He will always reveal Himself to you in that struggle. But He wants to see if you will take the time to wrestle with Him and endure the struggling to know Him better. You have to know God immensely to wrestle with Him.
The other day God revealed to me that you don’t need to know all the facts to believe. Faith isn’t about knowing everything and being certain. It’s about in the midst of the uncertainty still believing, if we knew everything and could prove it all, we wouldn’t need faith.
God wants to know if we will still have that faith in the midst of the unknown.
In Luke 1:31-38 when the angel came to Mary and told her she was pregnant with the son of God her first response was “how?” Even though she had doubt and questions and had no clue how this could possibly happen, she answered “let it be according to God’s will.”
She didn’t need to fully understand to believe and trust God, but it never said she never had any doubts.
Your faith is grown through doubt, faith is not the absence of doubt, it’s the means to overcome it.
God changed my perspective on it and showed me that my doubt is my evidence of growth, the closer I get to God the more questions I have.
Doubt is where faith is developed and matured in God, when you choose to still believe in the face of doubt and questions.
It takes courage to doubt.
Just like Mary had to believe after the ‘how?’ to see Gods’ glory revealed through the promises He made to her. You can’t wait till you have all the answers and evidence to believe because you will never get there, you need to have faith in the midst of it all and God will show up and reveal His glory.
So it’s okay to have doubts, we all do, this is a crazy thing to believe after all.
But it’s what you do with those doubts that really matter.
So are you going to let your doubts stop you or push you closer to Him?
