If living by faith is what makes us feel most alive in a world so broken by sin, then doubt can feel like a sickness threatening to pull us away from the Savior we so desperately desire. Those thoughts that constantly make us question our faith can leave us frustrated and cold. Worse, dwelling on our doubt too much can make us drift from Jesus Christ.
We don’t want to doubt God or the things He says, yet we do. There can be many reasons why, but here are 3 ways that not walking by faith can make us sit in doubt.
(Reading Part 1 of this series will help explain what I’m about to talk about, but you can catch up on all 4 parts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)
#1 We doubt God is real
If an essential first step of faith is believing that God is real, then it only makes sense that this would be a primary obstacle to that faith. Whether someone has grown up in church or only heard about Christ in their 30s, there’s a vast difference between saying God is real and honestly believing it. And so often, we can become so used to saying He’s real that we stop remembering why we believe it in the first place.
I’ve actually covered this at length in my article “Arguments for (and Against) God’s Existence,” so I won’t repeat too much of what’s there. However, despite all logical evidence that God must exist, we can still wonder if He’s really real. If we can look at everything around us, from morality to existence itself, and see that God must exist, why do we still struggle with doubt?:
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. (James 4:8-10)
One surprising source of our doubt in God’s existence may be our own pride. That core of our sin nature may create doubt in many ways.
- We may refuse to believe God until He reveals Himself to us in a way that we want Him to
- We don’t want to feel stupid for believing someone who could be as real as the Tooth Fairy
- We let our emotions, not God’s word, be our guide. If we don’t feel that God is real, we can’t trust that He’s real.
On and on this can go, but the core of this pride-fueled doubt is the same: We decide the terms of our belief, and we refuse to believe God unless He meets those demands. We are holding our spiritual lives ransom, telling God we won’t surrender our lives to Christ until we’re good and ready to do so.
If there’s one thing I hope this series has stressed, it’s that we don’t have to understand everything about God to trust Him. I’ve even written an article that specifically deals with it. Yet despite the claims by those who don’t follow Christ, belief in God isn’t ridiculous. When we dig in to it, believing that all of existence came from nothing may require more blind faith than believing such impossibilities were done by a single, supreme being.
So if a person finds themselves doubting God’s very existence, the first step is to understand why. Have they somehow made themselves the judge of God, refusing to grant His existence unless they believe He’s worthy? If so, then it’s not God who needs to change, but us.
#2 We doubt His reliability
Perhaps we believe God exists, but question who He is. After all, we can believe that the Queen of England exists, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to do everything she says. After all, we only give our devotion to those who prove they are worthy of it.
We can see this in something as mundane as the movies we watch and where we buy our socks. If a celebrity wants us to see their movie or a store wants our business, they have to prove they deserve it. If a celebrity supports/criticizes this politician or a company supports/criticizes that social issue, we call for boycotts. We won’t give our time and money to whatever doesn’t deserve it.
For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods. (Psalm 96:4)
Do we treat God the same way? In one sense, it may be our motives that are wrong here, and not the desire itself. After all, why would we follow a God who isn’t worthy? Why devote our lives to someone who is as fickle, weak, and ineffective as we are?
However, why we ask those questions will reveal a lot about our hearts toward God. Are we honestly wanting to know God better, just as so many throughout the Bible had to be reminded of God’s goodness and majesty? Or are we putting God on trial, merely looking for an excuse not to follow Him?
If we’re going to follow God, it’s important that we truly believe He’s worth following. Not because He will give us the desires of our greedy hearts, nor because we’re afraid of what happens if we don’t follow Him. The heartbreaking stories of people who abandoned Christianity are filled with people who saw God as either a vending machine or a power-mad tyrant. If that’s how we view God, then our core understanding of Him needs to change.
And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly (1 Corinthians 3:1-3a)
However, there are many who struggle with doubt simply because they don’t know God. They know about Him from their parents, pastor, or the books they’ve read. However, they haven’t taken the time to really encounter, and perhaps even wrestle with, the almighty God of the universe. Not because they aren’t saved, but because, like Paul said to the Corinthians, because they are still spiritually immature.
If someone is doubting because they aren’t sure God is worth their devotion, there’s a good chance they need to develop a deeper relationship with God, not just with their spiritual life. There is no end to how God will deepen our relationship with Him through Jesus Christ, but here are a few ways that people can have more “solid food” in their spiritual lives:
- Pray. Not just during mealtimes or as a quick blurb to God when we need help, but really pray. Go through the Psalms and pray with the joy and heartache that we see in King David. Humbly kneel before God in our brokenness, confessing the depth of our sin as we turn in repentance. Have a prayer list for our family, friends, and church that demands at least 5-10 minutes of prayer every day.
- Read the Bible. I’ve written on how to read the Bible responsibly, as well as how to handle the frustration when our Bible reading seems pointless. However much time we devote to God’s word every day, it’s important to be consistent, thorough, and focused. Do it every day, read at least 1 chapter instead of 1 verse, and have a purpose to the reading. In other words, don’t just throw open the Bible and point to your verse for the day. Pick a book of the Bible, start at chapter 1 and don’t stop until the book is done. I’d suggest reading John if you want to see Christ, James to understand practical Christian living, or Romans to get a solid understanding of our faith.
- Count your blessings in the past, present, and future. One thing that has recently stood out to me is how often the people of the Old Testament would build an altar to God and name it after some great work He did in their lives. These altars and locations would serve as a timeless memorial of how God worked in their lives, and it was something they could look back on despite their current circumstances. Likewise, Christ wants us to count our blessings now and see all the goodness God has given us, no matter what other evil and suffering we experience. Finally, it’s important to not get so bogged down in today that we forget about eternity – Christ has so much more planned for us than this brief lifetime on Earth.
With all of these in mind, it can become more apparent that God is not only worth following, but He is more present and active in our lives than we may ever realize.
#3 We doubt He’s better than what the world offers
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4)
We may believe God exists and that He’s worth following, but our doubt still keeps us firmly rooted in place, knowing we should surrender everything to Christ but still unwilling to do it. Often, this boils down to one simple problem: Idolatry.
At its core, idolatry is simply finding satisfaction in something other than God. We commit idolatry when we let our lives be dominated by sports, hobbies, work, or our spouse. We pull around a wagon filled with things that make us happy, while deep down we know that they compromise the time we should devote to God. Most of these things may not be inherently wrong, but how we use them certainly reveals that we’d rather spend our time reading about health and exercise or brushing up on tech news than knowing Christ more intimately.
And this is the doubt that so many Christians today find themselves wrestling with. They know God exists, they believe He’s good and loving, filled with justice and mercy, hating sin and calling us to follow Christ. Yet here we sit, letting our days pass as we busy ourselves with a life that show little difference from someone who is still under the wrath of God for their sin.
Why do we, as those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, refuse to find satisfaction in the riches of our savior? Why do we sit and build piles of mud when we have the infinite glory of God that we can enjoy?
Often, it’s because the world tells us that those piles of mud will bring us ultimate satisfaction, just like they seem to bring happiness to everyone else sitting in the mud. So we keep our heads down, focusing on our wet dirt and waiting, often with growing discontentment, as we quiet the voice in the back of our minds that tells us we’re meant for much more than finding lasting satisfaction in things this broken world calls “good.” We doubt that it’s worth it to leave something so familiar, no matter how weak it is, because we don’t believe Christ is worth so much more.
If that’s where we find ourselves, we need only repent of our idols, confess them to God, and perhaps even remove them from our lives. At the very least, it’s important for us to put them back in their proper place, letting all things be enjoyed as we make Jesus Christ our main focus.
What to do when we doubt
There are times when we live in doubt without really knowing why. Sometimes, it may be as simple as our sin nature showing its ugly self while we are in the middle of enjoying our lives in Christ. Sometimes, we doubt for reasons that seem completely unrelated to our obvious issue. Whatever the cause of our doubt, God is always our solution.
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes ot God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)
But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:5-8)
God calls for us to have faith, but He never leaves us hanging. If we struggle with doubt, whatever the reason, we know that God is good and faith to His children. We may sit in doubt for days, or even months, as the Holy Spirit works within us. Yet with everything we’ve discussed about faith over the last 5 weeks, one thing we know is that we can always trust our God.
So when doubt comes, and we know it will, turn to God. Ask Him for wisdom, faith that includes action, and even peace for those areas that we struggle with the most. God may not always answer us how we wish, but He will always answer us in the way that is perfect. We can rest in that, because everything we know about Him gives us faith that our God is perfect.
This article is part of the series “65 Theology Questions People Will Ask You.” Click the link to read more articles like this one!
