What to Do With Doubt

Doubt....sometime I believe people are afraid of this word, especially Christians. I think that sometimes we are scared to question and delve into hard subjects because we do not want to jeopardize our views or our beliefs. We might get swept away and pulled from the truth. Yet, when I read this chapter I get a different understanding.


Yes, there are times when I have my questions. Times when I doubt God, when I wonder if all of this that I believe is really true. This is because I am human. We humans, want to understand everything and know everything, but our very nature keeps us from doing so. Our finite and narrow minds can only see things in so many ways when there are multiple other scenarios that we cannot even fathom. Besides, if we understood and knew everything God knew, would that not cease to make him God?

"Do you think you can explain the mystery of God? 

   Do you think you can diagram God Almighty?

God is far higher than you can imagine, 

   far deeper than you can comprehend,  

(Job 11:7-8, The Message)

This does not mean that we do not try to understand. God wants us to search him out and grow in our knowledge of him but we have to recognize that there will always be opportunity to doubt. We must have faith.

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD

(Isaiah 1:18, KJV)

But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

(2 Peter 3:18, KJV)

There will come a time when God will reveal to us all of the questions of our hearts but for now sometimes we have to be okay with not understanding. We continue to look and to search but that doesn't mean we have to forsake God just because we cannot explain every tiny little thing that we come across. God gives us plenty of evidence to believe in him and plenty of room not to believe. Have faith and know from experience and from our existence that God is real. And know that it is okay to have questions and to search for answers but may all this rest on faith!

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

(1 Corinthians 13:12, The Message)

The Privilege of Prayer

After the two week break from the blog it was a little hard for me to get back again. I think more because the chapter I was coming back to and starting with was on prayer. I know that prayer is important but I feel that it is one of those subjects that I hear about so much, that I begin to start tuning out anything on the subject. It is as if I think I am an expert on the subject or something, although I know that I am far from it. However, God never ceases to amaze me. As I read this chapter he brought out so much to me and still spoke to me even with my high minded attitude.

In the first paragraph of the chapter I read about how praying and communing with God is more than "meditating upon His works, His mercies, His blessings;" it is also having something to say about our actual life. I thought it was weird to read this because I feel like the opposite is true of my prayer life. My prayers are usually concerning my life and not so much about the blessings, mercies and works of God. So I realize that as in everything else there should be balance. I need to think about God and all that he has done and also share about my own life. It would be like talking to a friend, I open up about my life but I also recognize and share theirs.

Then sometimes I feel guilty about unloading on God. It is exactly the same guilt I feel when I finally open up to my friends. I believe that my problems are my own and that I should not burden anyone else with them and so when I do I feel guilty about it and think that I am bringing that person down and burdening them with my problems. And I do the same with God. I am reluctant to bring my problems to him sometimes, thinking that I come to him too much. But, in this chapter I learned that I could never burden God and I could never make him tired of my worries. He wants me to constantly seek and turn to him. He wants me to know that every hour of every day he hears me. I can talk to him anytime, anywhere, anyplace.

It is so humbling to know how much God loves me and wants to be a part of my life and how little I reflect the same desire. But the more and more I learn of him the more and more I desire him! Especially when I read something so powerful as this:

The relations between God and each soul are as distinct

and full as though there were not another soul upon the earth

to share His watchcare, not another soul for whom He

gave His beloved Son. -p. 100