I’m so glad our God doesn’t impose a question quota on us. God welcomes our doubts, questions and feelings. Sometimes we all have bouts with doubts.
1. Those who are pre-doubters.
2. Those who are doubters. Every once in a while that doubt drives you crazy.
3. Those who are dead. The only way you won’t have doubts is when you have no brain activity.
The good news is we can win our battle.
You may have a low-grade doubt or you may have the full-blown deal.
Can God really forgive me? How can a good God allow all the bad things? How does Christianity square with evolution? Does Christianity have to do with your born?
First goal with doubt. It’s OK to doubt. It’s OK to ask questions. If you don’t face your doubts squarely your doubts can dominate you and over run you. Face them squarely punch them and face them eye to eye.
Second we need to strengthen our faith. Bill Phillips before and after pictures. That’s what needs to happen to us in this series. Strong feels good.
Third we need to answer the why’s of our faith. Do we have faith in faith or do we have faith in God.
Shocking statement about doubt. Doubt and unbelief are different animals. Doubt and believe are similar, but doubt and unbelief are different. Doubt means I’m between two things. Belief means on one thing living there. Unbelief means I’m staying clear of something. The enemy likes to come to us and say “Oh you doubt then your not a Christian, if you where a true believer you wouldn’t have any doubts”. Doubts and believe go hand in hand. Matter of fact doubt when faced will serve to build your faith.
If every single question was answered there would be no faith.
Doubt is not a cosmic crime. “I’ve committed the unpardonable sin because I’ve doubted. Madison Square Garden has an organist that is really talented. During crunch time in a hockey game, or basketball game the organist will begin to play the charge anthem. John the Baptist pointed out Jesus Christ he was beginning to play the charge anthem. But when he was thrown in prison he had a bout with doubt.
Luke 7:18-23
18The disciples of John the Baptist soon heard of all that Jesus was doing. When they told John about it, 19he sent two of his disciples to Jesus to ask him, "Are you really the Messiah? Or shall we keep on looking for him?"
20The two disciples found Jesus while he was curing many sick people of their various diseases-healing the lame and the blind and casting out evil spirits. When they asked him John’s question, this was his reply: "Go back to John and tell him all you have seen and heard here today: how those who were blind can see. The lame are walking without a limp. The lepers are completely healed. The deaf can hear again. The dead come back to life. And the poor are hearing the Good News. 23And tell him, `Blessed is the one who does not lose his faith in me.’"
TLB
Luke 7:27-28
28In all humanity there is no one greater than John. And yet the least citizen of the Kingdom of God is greater than he."
TLB
Doubt has great potential. Ear infection. A germ of doubt can cause an infection that can cause our faith to close down. Doubt can get us closer to God. God can cause this distance that can help us to see God’s character and our great need for Him and His presence in our life. Distance between me and Julie while she is in South Carolina.
Ps 22:1
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
Doubt has punches that hurt us. The intellectual questions of rational sometimes give us a painful upper cut. Angels, dinosaurs, virgin birth. Write your doubts out be specific, you’ll be prolific when you’re specific.
The psychological head butts. Some of us here are damaged from our past. Some peoples earthly fathers have been messed up as far as their relationship with God as a father.
Illustration: New York University psychology professor Paul Vitts in his book “Faith of the Fatherless” studied the childhood of several well known atheist and saw strong evidence that their rejection of God is directly related to their earthly father pain. The death of a father or the abuse, or abandonment by their fathers. Paul points out that Fredrick Neechie the philosopher who declared that God is dead lost his father at age four. Samuel Butler a skeptical British writer was often brutally beaten by his pious father. Sigmund Freud said his father was a pervert and he built much of his psychological theory around father hatred. John Paul Sauter French exestinctualnist lost his father when he was a baby and later he deeply resented his stepfather. Joseph Stalin’s father beat him unmercifully. So this suggests that it should not surprise us that communism which rejected authority figures including God appealed to Stalin. Hitler received terrible beatings from his father.
Sin can usher in doubt. Sin separates me from God. Pride can also, I’m a self-made man or I’m a self made woman. Let’s focus in on winning your bout with doubt.
If you’ve never accepted Jesus Christ as your savior you will always be filled with doubt.
I do belive but help me with my unbelief. Help me God with the part of me that doesn’t believe.
Leave your Island. Gilligan’s Island was a very frustrating show, the professor could build radios out of coconut plants but Gilligan would always mess it up. Get off your Island of doubt and get connected with the church. With other believers who have a stronger faith than you, and they will begin to rub off on you.
Get a faith lift.
When you think you’ve got to dumb down to have a strong faith. When you think you have to have a Jethro Bowden mentality to know God. God is much more comfortable with our doubts than the church has been. Some of the most intelligent people I know are Christians. Have a childlike faith but don’t have a childish faith.
If you’re looking for absolute proof
John 20:29
29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
You can’t prove that God exist. That’s why it’s called faith. If you’re looking to get every question answered, every I dotted, every T crossed you’ll never get their. You may think that since you live in this post modernistic rational world that you’ve got to have proof. If you can prove to me that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, if you can prove to me that He died on the cross and three days later rose again. If you can prove to me that the Bible is the Word of God then I’ll believe. If I could prove it to you then there would be no faith.
To be an atheist you must believe that there is no God and that’s not provable, so that takes faith. Most atheist can’t find God for the same reason a thief can’t find a police officer. Their not looking!
I believed the lights would come on when I flipped the light switch, because of the track record. Do I understand the lights completely? No! I go by evidence, not proof, that’s changed lives.
You’re looking for a miracle.
It’s a feeling based commodity. Faith is not a feeling based commodity. Yes, feelings do follow our faith but it’s not based on my feelings. If I can just have this feeling all the time, I’ll be super spiritual.
If you use faith as a leverage tool. If I’ve got enough faith I can get what I want. Like the name it claim it preachers you hear on the radio. “I’m going to show you from the Bible that you can have everything you want. I spoil my children and God wants to spoil you.” God is not a candy land God, who gives us everything we want.
How do you get a faith lift.
Feed the fire of faith focus on the object of faith. Hey reef move around you’re killing the grass. Some Christians need to move around and get involved with people of faith.
Illustration: It’s like three men traveling on a plane, one has never flown before, the next has flown a few times and the third is Mr. Frequent Flyer. When they hit turbulence the fearful flyer tries to pray, the second is a little uncomfortable, but Mr. Frequent Flyer is sitting back sipping on his club soda without a worry in the world. Why does Mr. Frequent Flyer have more faith? Because he has flown week after week and through his experience has grown to trust the plane and pilot so he focuses of the object of his trust and not the object of fear.
Program your VCR. Very Critical Response to doubt.
Doubts either drive us closer to God or further away from God. What happens when God pops in a tape that you don’t understand? That rattles your cage? That makes you wonder about everything you thought to be good and right? That knocks the wind out of your faith what do you do?
Ninety percent of Americans have a VCR. In the last several months VCR’s have been shipped from the manufactures to retailers. So we know all about them…we think.
Things you don’t do when you’re hit with a bout with doubt.
1. Don’t press the pause button. Pause: don’t obsess over questions. If you’re alive you’re going to doubt. It’s OK to doubt, but you must face your doubts.
First goal with doubt. It’s OK to doubt. It’s OK to ask questions. If you don’t face your doubts squarely your doubts can dominate you and over run you. Face them squarely punch them and face them eye to eye.
Second doubts can strengthen our faith. Bill Phillips before and after pictures. If we face our doubts and overcome them under the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God we will be stronger in our faith. Strong feels good.
Third we need to answer the why’s of our faith. Do we have faith in faith or do we have faith in God.
If you take doubt totally out of the picture you have certainty and with certainty you don’t have faith you have certainty. Faith: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
If you pause in your spiritual walk over doubt, it will attack you with punches. The evil one loves for us to stop over questions, he wants us to freeze frame our lives because when we do we never become what God want us to become.
You may say, “David when I get all the answers, when I get all the issues settled, then I’ll be a Christ follower.” Well good luck because no one has ALL the answers or all the issues taken care of. And just because you don’t have all the answers doesn’t mean there aren’t answers. Think about the VCR I doubt if any of us could answer ever-single question of how a VCR works. It doesn’t keep you from using your VCR does it? That’s what it like when you say, “I don’t understand everything about Christianity or the Bible but I’m going to press the pause button and obsess over what I don’t understand.
2. Don’t push the eject button. Don’t bolt before the break through. When many people who had followed Jesus and seen all the miracles and signs didn’t understand His teaching, they hit the eject button and said, “By-by Jesus I’m out of here.” Any time you walk away from Jesus your always walking towards something.
Before Jesus’ ministry the devil hit him with temptation to doubt. Right before Billy Graham’s biggest revival he had his most serious bout with doubt.
This is what you need to do:
1. Press the fast forward button. Consider the alternatives. Jesus offers us eternal life. Look at the book of Revelation, read the ending its all spelled out for us in God’s Word. The non-believers will be judged, the Christians will be rewarded. That’s not to mention the peace and joy God can give you here on earth as you walk in obedience. If you put in the tape of disbelief and fast-forward it to the end you’ll see and eternity in hell.
2. Press the re-wind button. Remember the history or remember HIS-story in your life. Think about my life before I meet Jesus I was wondering aimlessly I was floating on the sea of relativism trying to catch fish and it wasn’t working. I didn’t have any direction or focus and then I meet Christ and then things happened. Maybe you’re having doubts in your life right now if you are then hit the rewind button and think of HIS-story in your life, what a difference Christ had made for you. Illustration: David when he looked at Goliath remembered what God did for him when he went up against the lion and bear.
3. Press play “sharpen your spiritual sword”. Put action to your faith (live it out, yank off the training wheels and live out your faith. The disciples didn’t understand everything but they continued to follow, they pushed through their quitting points. Don’t doubt on an Island doubt in community. When Thomas doubted he hung out with the community of believers and didn’t hit the eject button and his faith was sharpened.
It’s not the amount of faith it’s the object of faith, so why don’t you put your faith in Christ?
Don’t wait until you have it all figured out, do it today.
