Rising Above Doubt (212 Version)

A Question Is Not Necessarily A Doubt

Have you ever had the experience that the more you get to know about something, the more you realize how much you don’t know?

Learning Guitar

You know you have a lot to learn....and then you start playing and learning....and realize there way more to learn than you originally thought.

Space Exploration

We have a lot of questions about space....but the more we learn, the more questions we seem to have.

Our Brain

In 335 BC, Greek philosopher Aristotle thought the brain was simply a radiator that kept the heart from overheating

Today with the explosion of neuroscience, we know humans have around 86 billion neurons in our brains, woven together by an estimated 100 trillion connections, or synapses.

Over the years we have made leaps and bounds in our understanding of the brain......yet somehow, the more we find out the more we realize we don’t know

Christianity or our Faith can kind of be like that

The more you grow in your understanding of God and who He is, the more you realize how much you don’t know and how nuanced things can be, and how unclear certain things really are.

For every answer discovered, two more questions seem to pop up.

I want to talk about doubt this evening.

And I specifically want to answer two questions

1 - What is doubt?

2 - What do we do with doubt?

I opened today the way I did, talking about the many questions we are bound to have about God and faith, because....

Many people think that having questions means you have doubts. But that is not necessarily the case.

Most people summarize doubt with a question mark. But the Biblical definition of doubt can better be summarized by a period.

I’ll explain this further in a moment.

It’s not necessarily the question that is doubt.......it’s when a question becomes a statement that it either becomes faith or doubt.

Questions

Does God love me?

Doubt - I’m unloveable, I’ve made too many mistakes, not even God loves me.

Faith - God demonstrated His love for me in that while I was still a sinner, He died for me. Romans 5:8

Why does God allow so much suffering in the world?

Doubt - I don’t trust God’s character, because He is beyond my understanding.

Faith - I trust God’s character because He is beyond my understanding.

Does God even exist at all....I don’t really feel a lot when I pray or read my Bible, and there are so many opinion and religions out there.....who am I to say I really know the truth? How do I know that this whole thing isn’t just a bias due to my upbringing?

Doubt - I can’t believe in God until all my questions are answered.

Faith - I’m not going to throw away what I have due to uncertainty, rather I’m going to seek to learn and search it out.

What are the statements you are putting on your questions?

That’s where we get to the Biblical definition of doubt.

What is Doubt According to the Bible?

We are going to look at a couple of Scriptures about doubt, but before doing that, let tell you what I found out about the word that is used for doubt.

Without going into all the original language of Scripture lingo, let me tell you what I found.

The most common word translated as doubt in the New Testament literally meant “through judgement”

The word implies a process through which you make a decision or judgement.

Its sense means to “pause or hold back in uncertainty or unwillingness.”

This is why I say that doubt is more of a period than a question mark.

Doubt says, “I can’t act or move or believe in this thing until I get some resolution. But to not move, act, or believe, is to make a decision.

Doubt is not just being uncertain, it’s acting or not acting on that uncertainty.

So, here is the definition we can give doubt according to the Bible

To doubt is to make a temporary judgement call due to uncertainty.

Let me show you what I mean by that by looking at a couple of Scriptures.

Scriptural Examples

Matthew 21:21-22 “21 And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. 22 And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.””

He’s saying that our faith can move mountains (figuratively)

The sense of doubt in this passage is an intellectual doubt.

To doubt is to make a temporary judgement call due to uncertainty.

It is placing faith in our human reason while navigating intellectual uncertainties rather than on God.

Which means that doubt is not simply the absence of faith it is the misplacement of faith.

Our intellectual questions will lead us to these kinds of impasses over and over again.

Where I choose to trust in what I comprehend and know, or I choose to live by faith, knowing I can’t and won’t ever see the bigger picture.

So there is this intellectual doubt, but there is also a more dangerous from of doubt.

James 1:5-8 “5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

To doubt is to make a temporary judgement call due to uncertainty.

This doubt refers not to a person’s intellectual doubts, but to a person’s conflicting commitments.

It’s saying “Do I want to live for God or for myself?

Sunday you are in church, and you kind of want God, but Monday rolls around you still want to do what you want to do.

It says that this man is “double-minded”

A double-minded man is one whose devotion and attention is divided between God and other things, usually wordly things.

It is uncertainty as to who or what you want to pledge your allegiance to.

If this is the kind of doubt you have, you need to make up your mind.

You are a deeply divided person, and living that way puts enormous amounts of stress on your nervous system.

What the Bible calls double-minded, scientists call cognitive dissonance which means “inharmonious thought.”

You are at war with yourself.

It causes emotional and psychological turmoil and compounds stress and anxiety on your life.

This is why sometimes you hear stories of people leaving their faith, and talking about how much freedom and peace they now feel.

When anyone tries to submit to God with a carnal mind, unbearable cognitive dissonance occurs. The nervous system plunges into a tailspin until it achieves a sense of equilibrium or wholeness. The easiest way to find equilibrium is to reject the beliefs that send them into a spiritual dither.

Make up your mind....you can choose God, or you can choose the worldly value system, but you can’t have both.

There might be an initial sense of freedom in choosing the world, but the world will eventually chew you up and spit you out.

But we have a loving Savior who says, Matthew 11:28 “28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

If you are here and need to make that decision, today can be that day.

Stop going back and forth in uncertainty and doubt about whether you want to live for God or not, and choose a master.

Walk in faith, not in doubt.

So, we talked about what doubt is....but what do I handle my doubts when they come.

Let me give you 4 quick applications, whether it is intellectual doubt or a doubt of conflicting commitments.

What Do I Do With Doubts

Address your doubts through God’s grace

Abraham and Sarah doubted God’s promise of a child; actually they laughed at it. (Genesis 16-18)

Job doubted God’s goodness. (Job)

Moses doubted God could use him to lead Israel out of Egypt. (Numbers 11:21-22)

Gideon doubted God could use him to turn the tide against Israel’s oppressors. (Judges 6-8)

You’re in good company

Doubts need to be addressed, we can’t sweep them under the rug.

But approach them through God's grace and conviction, rather than through condemnation.

God’s not mad at you for having doubts, but rather says, hey lets work through those together.

Go back to what you knew to be true.

If all we ever do is sit in our uncertainties, doubt is inevitable, and it’s only going to grow.

I’m not saying don’t ask questions, or search out matters.

But sometimes, we need to ground ourselves in what we do know.

"Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable." CS Lewis

Go back to what you knew to be true.

What led you to give your life to God in the first place?

Where can you look back and say I saw God come through in this thing for me?

What convinced you at another point in your life, that God was real and that He is good?

“Faith is not based solely on physical evidence, rather a conviction that I am willing to stake my life on.” Unknown

Doubt your doubts.

Most of our doubts are built on a much weaker foundation than what it feels like our faith is, we just don’t realize it.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

Isaiah 55:9 “9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

The way that God thinks and acts is on such a different level.

To compare or illustrate the gap between God’s mind and our mind to our mind and that of a brain-damaged fly still wouldn’t due it justice.

Many times our doubt concerning God is not a doubt of who He actually is, but who we think He is.

I won’t go through hard things when I become a Christian.

Example flying a plane

To doubt in the moment is to say, I don’t trust a computer to safely land this plane, I’m going to take control.

To doubt your doubt is to say, “What am I doing?” I don’t know how to land a plane.

Doubt your doubts in humility knowing there is a lot you don’t know.

Last point and then we’ll pray...

Ask yourself, “If not Jesus, then who or what?

John 6:66-68 “66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,”

Doubts for many have eventually turned to unbelief and walking away from their Christian faith as a whole.

But if that is or ever becomes a very real temptation, you need to ask yourself the same question that Peter asked Jesus.

To whom or what shall I go?

Because walking away from one thing is walking towards something else.

What is that something else?

There is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to our worldview.

There is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to our faith.

You always believe or have faith in something. Atheism is not an absence of faith, it is simply a different faith.

Your new worldview has the answer all the same questions that led to your doubts in Christianity.

If your faith isn’t in Jesus, then who or what is it in?

I’m telling you....you won’t find anything better to put your faith in, than in Jesus.

Pray

Discussion Questions

Have you ever experienced a situation where the more you learned about something, the more you realized how much you didn't know? Can you share an example?

Do you agree with the idea that doubt is not just about uncertainty, but also about how we act or don't act on that uncertainty? Can you think of a situation where you allowed doubt to influence your actions or decisions?

How do you understand the idea of doubting your doubts?

How do you personally approach doubt, and what strategies or perspectives do you find helpful in navigating it?

Source

Unbelieving and Believing Doubt - https://voices.lifeway.com/bible-theology/4-differences-between-believing-and-unbelieving-doubt/#:~:text=Believing%20doubt%20trusts%20in%20God%27s,t%20understand%20everything%20about%20Him.

Words for Doubt in NT - https://pioneernt.com/2009/04/20/word-study-2-doubt-vs-unfaithfulness/

Doubt in Faith - https://www.rethinknow.org/faith_and_doubt/

Doubting God is Good - https://www.rethinknow.org/the-most-important-question-you-can-ask-when-you-doubt-your-faith/

Gospel Coalition https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/doubt-doubts/

Barna Poll on Doubt - https://churchcommunications.com/doubt-faith-top-reasons-people-question-christianity/

Double Minded - https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/cgg/ID/1925/Meeden-Diakrinomenos.htm

Diakrino Meaning - http://www.wiebefamily.org/doubt.htm

Is it a Sin to Doubt - https://www.evidenceunseen.com/bible-difficulties-2/nt-difficulties/1-2-timothy-titus-philemon-hebrews-james-1-2-peter/jas-16-is-it-a-sin-to-doubt/