The Pastor’s Pen: The Struggle of Honest Doubt

BY JACK WARD

I heard a pastor tell a story about a miracle that happened in the life of a 15-year-old girl during a weekend retreat. Quiet, reserved, shy, brilliant and troubled. That’s how he described her.

All weekend her hollow, lifeless eyes searched for answers to gnawing questions that had eroded her life and spirit and made her appear dark and despondent. But something happened. Her eyes became more restless and alert. She was searching, and she somehow knew she was close to something.

The group had spent the weekend on the theme “Discovery” and talked about discovery of self, others and God. And as another 15-year-old shared the pain of her older sister’s recent suicide, the dam broke, and water, like baptism, washed a face that hadn’t cried in a very long time.

Later that evening, the group did a Bible study around Luke 9, where Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do people say that I am?” And later in the chapter where Jesus lays out the conditions for discipleship: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” When the pastor asked the group what that sounded like — a commercial, a Sunday school lesson, a parent laying down another rule — the young girl with the tear-stained face responded: “It sounds to me like something worth giving my life to.”

What have you given your life to? Your own pursuits, activities, plans, ideas, will? When your life comes to an end, what purpose has it served? Who has it served? It has only served you. And you can’t save yourself from the fate that awaits all those who fail to realize that there is a God that we are accountable to. 

Whether you believe or doubt doesn’t affect God’s existence one bit. A preacher had the habit of saying, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!” His little son heard his father, and as he tried to repeat the phrase, he said, “God said it, and that settles it, whether I believe it or not!” Actually, the little son spoke truer words than did the father.

God understands your doubts, but He does not understand, nor will he excuse your lack of faith in Him. 

Romans 1 says that there is no excuse for failing to have faith in God. Doubt and faithlessness are different. Doubt says, “I have many questions, but I want to believe.” A lack of faith says, “I don’t believe, and I won‘t believe until I have seen.” The Bible says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen yet believe.”

Better to be a doubter than faithless, but you don’t have to be either. You can have faith with full assurance and find that Jesus is someone worth giving your life to.

Hear Pastor Jack’s sermons and read more articles at tomahawkmbc.com.

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