BIG DOUBT
July 31, 2020
In recent weeks, the Care Group that Kathy and I are a part of watched a series of videos where the presenter (Andy Stanley) cheered us on to what he called “big faith”. I needed the encouragement, since my “mustard seed” faith often seems stuck at sapling size. I’m more familiar with “big doubt.”
I haven’t made it a secret that before I believed in Jesus, I didn’t believe in God at all. I was a teen-aged, church-going atheist. But, when I was presented with the reality of my sin, the possibility of forgiveness, and the witness of some really good friends, I believed the seemingly too-good-to-be-true news that Jesus saves - and He saved me!
Having come to faith in Christ, though, my faith journey has included periodic strayings into the world of doubt.
On a doubting day, I am assailed by uncertainty about the existence of God and wonderings about the seconds after a person’s final breath.
My pre faith-in-Jesus mindset refused to believe in the spiritual realm, and I can still "go there" on a doubting day.
If you are one who doesn’t wrestle with doubts, I’m truly happy for you. But I know that I’m not the only “doubting Thomas/Dave” out there. There are plenty of others who are tempted to doubt the big and the small stuff of the Jesus way.
Today, I’m writing to those who doubt.
What do you do when you read in your Bible about a talking donkey, about a floating ax head, or about a day when the sun stood still - and you wonder…?
What do you do when you read, “In the beginning, God…” - and you wonder…?
What do you do when you read, “To live is Christ and to die is gain” - and you wonder…?
After all, you haven’t been to the other side. And you’ve never seen a Class A, “parting of the Red Sea” type of miracle. (Or maybe you have. The record of the Bible is that lots of people saw miracles and still didn’t believe. So, seeing a miracle isn’t a guarantee of a doubt-free faith, either. Just saying)
What do you do when you find yourself doubting any of the things that you might doubt? (the goodness of God, the truth of the Bible, the reality of heaven)
Here’s what I do on a doubting day and it is what I urge people I know and love to do when they wrestle with doubts.
Remember Jesus.*** (go to end)
You will read in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of the words and works of Jesus.
As you do, notice His strength of character to speak truth to power. Notice His claims to be God in the flesh. Notice His love, especially seen in His giving Himself to die on a Roman cross. And notice His power, seen in every miracle over nature, disease, and demons, but most especially in His resurrection from the dead.
Recall that, with rare exceptions, the first disciples held to the story of Jesus’ resurrection when to do so frequently led to their deaths. Remember that the first generation of Christians risked their lives to take the message of Jesus to dangerous places. Why? Because they had seen Him, post-crucifixion, alive. Those who knew Him were thoroughly convinced.
Recall that early on, Christianity was a cult, despised by Greeks, Romans, and Jews, and that recording Jesus’ stories made the Gospel writers marked men. They did themselves no favors by promoting the stories of Jesus. Why write them down except that they were true?
What was it that caused the first Christians - who were all Jewish - to change the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday? What prompted them to abandon worship at the temple in Jerusalem? What drove them to welcome non-Jews to their Jesus-centered fellowships?
Nothing explains these dramatic changes - and many more besides! - better than this: An alive then dead then alive again Jesus turned their worlds upside down.
When my doubts hit, I remember Jesus.
After remembering, I see that He clearly was who He claimed to be (God in the flesh) and that He obviously did what He claimed to be doing (winning salvation for all who believe in Him).
Doubts dissipate, not when I redouble my efforts to believe. They fade when I remember in Whom I have believed.
***Maybe you balk at this counsel because the primary source of our knowledge of Jesus is “the Bible” and you doubt the veracity of the Bible. Please know that by the standards applied to evaluate a piece of literature’s credibility, the Bible has been repeatedly vindicated. There is every reason to believe that what you will read in the four Gospels is historically accurate in what it asserts about the life, words, and works of Jesus. Give me a call or drop me a note if you are looking for resources toward which I can point you that will give you great confidence in the historical reliability of the Bible.
