Dealing with Doubt

Last week I talked about doubt, what it is, how some doubt is sinful and some not.  A natural follow-up would be how to handle doubt, at least the sinful sort, so that’s what I’m going to attempt here.

Most of the doubt I’ve faced in my Christian walk has been related to the teachings of our faith and whether they are true.  That may just be me, but there may be someone out there facing some of the same doubts I did.  I’ll address my approach to these doubts first.

My first doubt was if God exists.  You can’t really go to the Bible to answer this since if God doesn’t exist, the Bible is irrelevant.  Whether God exists is not so much a theological issue as it is a philosophical one, and there are many arguments in favor of God’s existence.  A simple one is that God is what philosophers call a “Necessary Being.”  If God doesn’t exist, you really have no answer for why anything else exists.  Now, if the “God doubt” enters my head, I think “Necessary Being” and the doubt goes away.

I just went back through my 174 previous blog posts, and I was surprised I have nothing directly on the existence of God.  Stay tuned.  Doubtless that will be next week’s topic.

All the other doubts I’ve had over doctrines and practices in Christianity I have researched and settled them pro or con to my satisfaction through Bible study.

The serious doubts we face are seldom doctrinal, though.  Those doubts usually concern how or if God is working.  “Is God going to help me make my BMW payment this week?”  “Will God protect my wife while I’m away?” “Can I really do what God has asked?”  That sort of thing brings doubt.

I need to insert here that sometimes God doesn’t provide for the wants we have or have had and borrowed money to get.  He hasn’t promised to do that.  He also isn’t responsible or shouldn’t be expected to bail us out of our poor stewardship.  He may be telling you to live more modestly.

David faced doubts in his life.  He dealt with them by reflecting on the things God had already done, the promises God had fulfilled in his life, then turned his eyes to God.  As a result, his doubts were eased or eliminated:

I like to follow David’s example.  Should I doubt, I just replay for myself the spots God has gotten me out of, the promises He has kept, the needs He has filled, and the times He has prepared me to do the things He’s asked that were outside my skill set.

It also helps to dig into the Word and see how God has been dealing with the needs of folks for thousands of years.  Read His promises and how He fulfilled them.  After all, He’s the same today, yesterday, and forever.

One more doubt that used to hang over me was if I was saved.  God dealt with this in me through a dream decades ago.  I dreamt Jesus was coming back, and instead of hiding from him as a lost person would, I was standing, waving, and shouting “Here I am.”  Jesus stopped in mid-air and said to me, “You wouldn’t be excited if you weren’t my child.”

True, God doesn’t often speak to us in dreams.  The point, though, is are you excited about Jesus’ return?  If you’re frightened, you need to reread John 3:16 and commit your life to Christ to be sure.  Salvation is turning control of our lives over to Him, not just belief.

Why is this important?

This is important because doubt can stand in the way of your Christian walk.  As James says, “. . . the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.”  Our walk suffers, our relationship with Christ suffers, if our faith isn’t firmly grounded.

Doubt is a common experience.  It comes not from God but from our flesh and from the enemy.  Don’t let it sidetrack you.  Fight, pray, remember.  God is always here reaching out to us especially in these times.