The journey of faith we all face in life is riddled with obstacles, roadblocks and potholes. One of the main hindrances we all encounter is doubt and unbelief. When we can’t or don’t know how to honestly trust God with out life decisions we become trapped in a world of unbelief while confessing the opposite.
We have doubts before coming to Christ and we have doubts after our conversion. I thought that after yielding to the Lordship of Christ my main battle was over and from then on Jesus would make me an overcomer. Little did I know that my battles were getting ready to shift into a higher gear. It is funny how we come to Christ with faulty assumptions about who God is and what he wants to do in our hearts and souls. Unfortunately, we often carry those false ideas throughout our whole Christina experience.
I recently had cataract surgery and the surgeon told me that I would be able to see better without glasses within 24-48 hours of my surgery. What I experienced was far from what I was told. When I went in for the first cataract surgery I heard the surgeon tell the guy before me that “this is going to be so smooth and you won’t feel a thing!” He told me the very same things! When I was on the operating table and he says, “Now this won’t hurt a bit“…… just before I felt what could be described as a hot iron jamming into my eye! Had I not be tied down to the operating table and had my head not been strapped in place I would have jumped off the table screaming for him to stop!
Bad experiences in life have a way of eroding confidence in words that are spoken to us even when those words are meant to encourage us and reduce anxiety. We build a process of assumptions from thousands of experiences in life that act like a filter for true reality. The emotion of hate is a good example. Hate can put a filter over what we experience in the present and in the future. If we are told someone is an evil, hateful person then whenever we see them we would refuse to trust them in any way, even if they meant to do us good, not harm.
When we come into faith in Jesus we don’t come with a clean slate of trust, even if Jesus just forgave us of a life of brokenness and harm. Spiritual growth takes a willingness on our part to regularly surrender our fear in order for God to slowly restore us to wholeness. This becomes especially difficult when we put on the emotional breaks because of fear. With fear in our hearts, the healing process takes longer to do because of the mistaken belief that God doesn’t love us as much as another person.
This reasoning leads to a number of stories in the New Testament that I would like to explore to unravel a common problem: doubt and unbelief. I want to look at how good hearted people, just like you and me, sometimes struggle even though we believe the phrase “God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life”. Simply put, transformation takes time but if we just cooperate with the Holy Spirit the change that we and God want to happen will happen. It’s like the struggle I am experiencing with my eye surgery. If I stop trusting the surgeon halfway through my healing then I won’t be healed but crippled for life. I have to keep extending the belief that the surgeon wants to do me good and can make me better if I keep trusting him.
Biblically, let’s start with a story about a man who had a son that was demon possessed. He asked the disciples to heal the boy but the demon would not leave him even though Jesus had given them authority to drive out demons and heal the sick. Jesus found them arguing about why deliverance wasn’t happening. Jesus asked the father a few important questions and the father showed his unbelief. Jesus then calls him out on this roadblock of doubt and…….
Matthew 9:21-24
Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?” “From childhood,” he answered. It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” [23] “ ‘If you can‘?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
I think if we all would be truthful with ourselves we would admit, like this father, that we do believe but we also struggle with unbelief at the same time. Jesus was not trying to shame this father but rather encourage him to strip the false pretense of confessed faith away so he could grow in his faith and trust. There is far too much “False” positive confession in many good Christian people who are trying to believe for miracles to happen. If we believe that God desires truth in the inward parts we would realize that growing in faith is not denying what we really believe and pretending but learning to trust Jesus more so that when the need arises we trust him and his word more than our current circumstances….. no matter how bad things look.
Psalms 51:6
Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.
This father had to confront his “Prejudice” that his boy would always have a demon. In doing so, he could trade his unbelief by trusting that Jesus could to help him. Isn’t that what we want as well……trading our doubts for something greater than ourselves, namely the Son of God?
Questions:
1) Can you be honest with God and yourself about your doubt? He is able to heal the broken!
2) Can you admit that sometimes you hide your doubts rather than exchange them for trust? Learning more about who Jesus is and what he wants will set you free to believe.
I look forward to exploring our doubts in this series so we can grow in faith.
Pastor Dale
Leave a Comment