Doubt that Kills

Hey Girls,

Do you want to have more faith? Stronger faith in God? I sure do. Having faith in God is so important to- to everything!

Yet many of us have this little nasty issue called doubt. The Bible talks about doubt in Isaiah 40:27-28 "O Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles? O Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights? Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding." Oh but that's not all, in James 1:5-7 it says "If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.  But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord."


Ok, to sum up those two verses, we know that God is everlasting and always sees our troubles. He will also be faithful to give what we ask when our faith is in him alone otherwise if we doubt him, we should expect nothing from our petitions. After all, remember those numerous verses about asking requests of God? 1 John 5:12-14 tells us clearly "My purpose in writing is simply this: that you who believe in God's Son will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life, the reality and not the illusion. And how bold and free we then become in his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he's listening. And if we're confident that he's listening, we know that what we've asked for is as good as ours." 


Want another great example of what it means to have faith? Remember Abraham and Sarah? Romans 4:18-20 says "We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!" Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God." 


Okay that's really long- I know but I just really liked how the message version said it. It's clear enough that I don't need to comment on it. 


Well, all these verses just prove to us the importance of having unwavering faith. It's hard though isn't it? And sometimes it's hard to recognize doubt too. Doubt can creep in so quietly and then slowly eat away and destroy our faith- it's like a weed. For example, imagine someone whose finances are really tight on a regular basis but a whole bunch of bills, like license plate renewals, just came up so fast and she didn't have the funds yet. So she prays and she prays but then goes out and gets a second job to make ends meet. Ok- now I'm not saying it's bad to work more but I'm using this example because it shows a woman acting on her own initiative. She got the second job but God didn't tell her too. Sometimes, even though we pray for something, we end up acting in our own self interest to take care of that request on our own without even giving God the opportunity to do something. Perhaps we're on a time crunch sometimes and we think waiting on God just won't pan out because he just may not come through on time. Well, reality check. God's timing is not our timing! He knows what's best above all! So if we are really going to trust in him for everything, than we have to actually trust!


If you believe in God as a loving Father, that he will take care of you, than don't doubt that he will. We don't need to scramble to help ourselves. God knows what we need. When we ask for something, let's not doubt him. He's God after all. Doubt can destroy our faith, destroy our lives, our relationships, our jobs- anything if we let it. When you start to second guess God, you're letting doubt in, you're taking the control back, and you're killing your faith.


We have to make the choice to believe but once we do, let's stick by it. Let's reject those doubts that say God won't come through. He will always come through in the way that's best for us even if we don't see it at the time. 


So truly girls, have faith in God and what you've asked of God according to his will, believe that you've received it and that he will take care of you.