Dealing with Doubt (3)

Introduction

Doubting God is something that I’m guaranteeing that we all have faced in our lives and it’s something that is on our heart more often that we think. I will challenge you with this, have we ever thought of that one moment where what if God didn’t exist, what all that I’m doing is useless, what if everything that I through from my days in high school to now was all a lie, what if all the time I used to study the bible, to come to church, what if all of these things were not true and all my other friends around me were just “living the life” as they say they are. Now I’m fairly sure that we have had this idea, this feeling and I believe that if you’ve never had this moment then you are either lying to yourself or have yet to actually experience it and so this is bound to happen.

And I say this because dealing with doubt is important, in the same way that dealing with any other theological or chrisitan dilemma is important. Doubt, if you just leave it there will do one of the worst things to you - because you’re literally saying that God doesn’t exist, that Jesus didn’t die on the cross, that sin doesn’t exist. Now if you continue to think of all these things in your life and continue to doubt then you are in big big trouble

But, what we will see today is that dealing with it can have the biggest effect on you in terms of growing really close to the Lord and this can only be done by breaking it down and figuring out what the problem is. You all here I assume don’t want to doubt God, but you’ve seen either in the past or even now you still have doubts, but what I can safely assume I think is that all of you feel like at least you shouldn’t doubt

Now I can say I think that I am a big advocate of this and the reason I say that is because this is exactly how I came to faith - I was the biggest doubter across high school and university especially and as you guys know now, I came to have faith in God through logic. Now prior to this, I did have logic but when they logic didn’t add up ,I started to doubt and for a long time in high school I just left it there, but as I see now looking back, this doubt IS what got me to have faith in the Lord. This could only done by dealing with it, and not just leaving it - because if I was just to leave it, I wouldn’t be here right now, frankly I would probably be playing some games trying to be a pro-gamer or working myself away somewhere.

And so today we are going to talk about how we deal with doubt, how do we deal with it because it will come one way or the other and its much like how we have to deal with any other thing - we have to first realise what it is, what made us get into that point in the first place and then see how we can practically get out of it because obviously you want to get out of it and I’m sure all of you do if you are here - that theres something inside of you telling you that you shouldn’t be doubting God but you do.

Have you ever felt like you believed in God but still had doubts? What was it specifically and how did you handle it?

What is doubt?

Activity: Mandela effect activity

Doubt is wavering between two minds, between the truth and lie, and lacking confidence, assurance, or complete trust in something.

When you guys were deciding which one to pick, your minds were going through all the memories and all the knowledge in your head to figure out which was the truth but it was hard, you guys started doubting yourself because you realised that the thing that you once thought you knew didn’t turn out to be so obvious once there was another option that seemed believable. But we know from this that there is a definite right and a definite wrong.

And so I feel like this is what happens in the context of believing in God and how doubt forms in our minds

Where God is the truth, and everything else is a lie - where this “everything else” is actually formed from our own perspectives on who God is and can fall under 2 umbrella categories:

You can doubt God completely and just say that he’s not real, nothing in the bible ever did happen, Jesus isn’t real, sin doesn’t exist.

Or, you can believe that God exists BUT doubt that he is strong enough to do the things that you think are impossible.

And this “Our own perspective of who God is” bubble which isn’t just one thing this time, but its a million different things is believable in our eyes which is why when we are faced with this choice, we start to doubt.

This dilemma is something we have all definitely encountered, but then comes the question as to why?

Why do we doubt?

And now I know today we are looking at how to deal with doubt BUT I think in order to answer the question, we need to think of how we got to the position of doubt in the first place. Because in the similar way that we need to first identify that how we became a sinner in order for the solution of Jesus to truly come into effect and change your life, we need to first identify how we became into a state of doubt in order for the solution to truly come into effect:

You just have unanswered questions

These questions include things like if the bible is true, if Christianity is the right religion out of all the religions out there, was Jesus a real person, did God really create the world, did Jesus resurrect or maybe something else, like if God is loving then why would he do this in the Old Testament?

Now these questions can actually come in 2 forms

Subconsciously - I think alot of the time, we’ve grown up to just accept what we have heard and what we have learnt over the years and you don’t doubt. BUT once this idea gets challenged by either yourself or other people whether it be you just started thinking about it, or your friends asked you why do you believe it, you start to doubt if what you always thought your whole life was true.

E.g) In your head, you believe that Jesus was a real person - its almost something you don’t even think about because you’ve just known and grown up to understand that and never understood the proof, the evidence behind it. BUT, when someone comes up to you and says all these things that they claim to go against Jesus really being a person who was alive - what you will most likely do is doubt because you don’t even know the reasons why you believe that Jesus was a real person in the first place and you will start to think that what they are saying is true to some extent.

A more common example would be Jesus’ resurrection and if it was true. When I preached to you guys on Easter and provided you with the big cases of why the resurrection has to be true, how many of you knew those reasons? I’m sure you know that Jesus resurrected but was the question of “Is the resurrection true and why?” ever answered for you? Or did you just accept it and move on. This very act of “accepting it and moving on” is what will cause doubt in the future.

Consciously - This may or may not apply to you guys but I think it does because it did for me, but I also feel that we have alot of questions that we know we have unanswered, but just haven’t asked which can be a number of reasons ranging from feeling like the question is too simple so you’re afraid to ask (which we will talk about later), or it’s just not a question that you feel is worth going all the effort to finding the answer for.

And so whether these unanswered questions are subsconsciously or consciously in your head, the end result will be that you will doubt when you are challenged by other people or even yourself. By other people, I mean when they start questioning why you believe certain things and you don’t have an answer. And “yourself” because you start thinking why you believe these things as you start to go into the world more.

And this is because we don’t actually know why we believe certain things, but rather just have accepted what it is and move on.

And so this is the first reason, that we just have unanswered questions which either we haven’t been able to ask, don’t feel like it’s worth the effort of answering or just haven’t had the reason to by being challenged - which will lead us to doubt when we are faced with another option to choose.

2. Doubt often follows from unmet expectations which have been created by us

For e.g) I’m assuming for the majority of you, your parents make food for you on a daily basis. But what happens if suddenly one day, they just stop doing it, and the first day you’re like yeh alright, but then it goes on for weeks and they just haven’t. I think you would start to question and doubt if they love you and care about you even if they really do still love and care about you. Why? Because you expect to receive it.

In the same way, our doubt in God often stems from how we think he “Failed” to meet OUR expectations where it is this expecation that we have of God which is not based on who he says he is in the bible but rather based on either our own past experiences OR looking at other people’s lives and seeing how God worked in their life. And when we don’t see God working in both situations, we start to doubt and think, does God care and love me, is God even real?

Our own situation

And this is most commonly in the form of suffering where we find ourselves in situations where we are suffering, where we find our loved ones suffering, and the most common question you ask yourself is “God why are you not there”, “God why don’t you stop it”, “God you are loving, all knowing, all powerful, creator of the world, why can’t you stop this suffering”. Or maybe we expected to have certain mark on an exam, maybe we expected to have a girlfriend/boyfriend by a certain age, maybe we thought we would be healthier.

And so doubt in this case forms once we didn’t get what we expected to receive.

Other people’s situation

This doubt also comes from looking at other people where we think that If God does this to other people and heals them, why doesn’t he heal me? Why doesn’t he do the same things to me?

I think comparing ourselves with other people has gotten so common especially in high school just because of social media where I think it has made everyone think about themselves in the perspectives of other people and then most, if not all the time, you will end up doubting yourself and your own relationship with God thinking “maybe I’m just too far gone that God doesn’t love me as much as God loves them”

You might see like a Christian person that is really just showing the “best” part of their lives and saying God did this in my life in like a 10 second video where in fact the rest of their day might be like so sinful.

But from your perspective, if you don’t actually think about this and realise this, you will think that this is actually every second of their life or at least most of it.

Then after or during watching it you start thinking about yourself and wondering if you should be in their position as well, and then you worry because now you’re feeling behind. Then you start to doubt yourself because you think that God might “love” this person more

And so If we go back to the definition of doubting which is the wavering between two minds, between the unbelief and belief - what we will realise is that you’re battling between who you truly are (which is loved by God) and who you think you are (which is unique and formed from your own experiences and life).

And so these are the 2 main reasons we doubt - now theres many more but these are the 2 main ones in my opinion.

And so now we have this doubt and we can see how it comes to be, we have to be aware of one thing before dealing with it

However I think in this day and age, there is 1 major roadblock which we have to expect before we even go through the process of practically dealing with it because if we don’t expect this, then it can be so detrimental to your faith when you go through the season of doubting God and you might not even make it to step 1 of actually dealing with your doubts.

Have you ever felt too ashamed to ask a question? and why?

Shameful doubt

This is where you feel shameful bringing up the fact that you do doubt in the church. Where you feel as though that if you brought up a question at church then other people will treat you differently, treat you like someone who’s crazy, treat you like someone who almost shouldn’t even be in the church because you’ve asked/thought an outrageous question.

Where you feel that theres no place of asking questions, no place of wondering, no place of struggling, no place of wrestling with the word of God because people are telling you to just believe, people are telling you that God is real, that Jesus died on the cross, that your sins are forgiven and forcing you to just believe it and that if you ask questions that kind of challenge it, then you are a terrible person.

Now what usually happens to these people, (and if you feel like thats you then its something we need to change) is that these questions that they have about God don’t just go away, in fact what happens is that these questions grow and grow and what ends up happening is that they try to find an answer somewhere else which is fair. They will go find an answer from a Group that they do feel safe asking questions and this group can be your friends at school, instagram preachers, random people on youtube just talking about the question.

This is how a pastor explained it - Imagine a very protective parent who is very concerned with germs and wherever the kid goes, the parent goes, and has hand sanitizer and literally sprays it every 5 seconds to get rid of any germs that might attach onto the kid. Like becuase they care about germs, they never let them get dirty, never let them get any germs on them, don’t let them go into the playground and all that. Now those kids might not get sick their whole life up until like 17/18 but when they aren’t in their parents reach anymore, these kids end up in the hosptial because their immune system wasn’t aware of anything bad and whenever something bad did come in, it was like the whole body was going to shut down

In the same way, if the church/community restricts people thinking that asking hard questions will make them sick, make them leave, and basically force them to stay in church because they think that not asking questions is what will make them stay, more often than not what will end up happening is that when they leave high school and are not forced to go to church with their parents and experience university as this like free life where they can do whatever they want, their answers become answered by the world which will tell them that God is not real, to live for yourself, to care only about yourself and how you think - this is that virus that shuts the theological immune system down and you end up spiritually dead. This is what is detrimental to one’s faith - and happends basically the church will be setting them up all their life not being exposed to these hard questions and when they don’t get answered

But this actually isn’t the case in the bible, where we see how God actually deals with doubt and we will see that God is actually compassionate and loving to those who doubt. And when we go through this (I’ve mentioned this before on a TGIF or maybe even on a sermon but when we go through these characters, we ought to think logically - meaning - if we can see that these characters who also doubt and we see how God acted on their doubt, I have the utmost faith that however God dealt with doubt for them, then it ought to be the same for us because God has not changed:

Doubting Thomas - is literally his nickname

John 20:24–29 “Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.””

Now this was a time when Jesus died on the cross and from the perspective of Thomas as well as all the other disciples of Jesus, no-one new what was going on. Despite Jesus telling the beforehand that he will die on the cross and rise again in 3 days, the disciples were so confused, sad, questioning themselves, and ding ding doubting themselves if Jesus really was the Messiah, the one that came to save all of them.

Because from their perpsective, they basically left everything behind in their life (their families, home, job, everything) and they believed that Jesus was the one who came to save from all their knowledge of the Old Testament, but now that he has died and nothings happening, they are starting to doubt because they are suffering so much (refer back to 2nd point of Why we doubt)

And so the situation right now is that Jesus has risen, and all the other disciples have seen the resurrected Jesus but its just Thomas who hasn’t yet and he says “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe”. Basically saying, give me physical evidence NOW or else I will never believe.

I think this gives us comfort and encouragement as a reader in 2 ways:

First we see that Thomas who was a person who was basically with Jesus his whole ministry, who saw all the miracles that he did like feeding the 5000 and healing the blind and the sick with just his Word. But even a guy who saw all of this struggled with doubt. I think this gives us comfort in the way that, i feel like the doubt Thomas felt is much bigger than the doubt we feel. But he’s still doubting right?

And this is the second wave of encouragement which is how we see Jesus handle his doubt where he doesn’t say “You literally were with me the whole time, why don’t you believe” or “I’m not going to help you, I’ve literally proved to you that I am the Messiah through all the blessings I’ve done”, but instead he says “Peace be with you” and then proceeds to give Thomas exactly what he wanted.

If you think about it and if we were to look at it, I honestly would look at that and go no way bruh. Like he saw all your blessings and still doubted like no way. But in reality, this passage shows us that Jesus even in our moments of doubt draws near to us in a way that we don’t deserve. He doesn’t push us away, rather he responds in a way that Thomas’ faith and trust grew in him when he answers “My Lord and my God!”.

And so doubt in the story can actually lead to a greater trust and faith, BUT not because of anything we have done because we are the ones in the wrong by doubting in the first place, but only because of how Jesus graciously came to us and meets us in these moments of doubt.

I mentioned this in a recent sermon, but don’t look at yourself from the perspective of you, or other people, but look at yourself from the perspective of God and how he looks at you.

So hopefully if you felt this way, this has provided you with comfort to be able to express your doubts and actually start dealing with them instead of keeping it to yourself.

What are ways we can deal with doubt?

Now that we have this doubt on our minds, we have to deal with it right? We cannot just leave it or else we will be left with never believing in Jesus and what he has done for us.

Know the word of God and pray

I’ve put this to be the first practical way because honestly it is the best way to deal with it. If you remember what I preached 2-3 weeks ago, prayer is a way we can battle with doubts. Why? Because prayer realigns our heart with God’s way of thinking (which is the true way of thinking). It helps us to stop thinking about how we think, give all our anxieties, doubts up to God and rearrange our thoughts to change from what we think is true to what is actually true.

Knowing the word of God is as important, because if you don’t know the word of God then if you were to ask me why you’re doubting, then I think you have your answer right there. If we don’t even know what God does and we say we doubt, then I don’t think you’re doubting the true God, but you’re actually doubting who you think God is in your creative minds. What you are essentially doing is rejecting a God whose characteristics you have made up in your head and that’s just going to be a losing battle all the time.

As we saw in the examples of (bible characters), we see God and how he deals with people who do doubt, and if we didn’t know these things and his character then that warrants big doubts.

Be in the presence of other faith-based people

Pastor example - Horror movie example

Basically in every single horror movie, you look at the main character or whoever it is and literally either internally in your head or externally by shouting to tell them to NOT BE ALONE. Because you know that if they are alone then bad things obviously will happen. Like it would be much better off if they were with people that can protect them.

In the same way, we shouldn’t be alone when we are facing these things because honestly its a scary thing right. If we continue to have doubts and they don’t become answered, we will never fully experience the love and glory of God. And by surrounding ourselves with people who are of strong faith and can help you, this can immensely help you where they can shield off any of these doubtful thoughts that can come your way

I’m sure you’ve heard of this but you’re characteristics are basically who the 5 closest people around you are.

This is kind of an add-on to being in the presence of other faith-based people but it is to Ask questions and to not be afraid to ask questions

Whenever someone reads the bible and they come across something that just doesn’t make logical sense, the first thought that should come into our mind is why did God do this? Why did someone in the bible do that?

And I can say that 99.999999% of the time that same question has been asked by someone over the past 2000 years and so there is an answer out there but its up to you to decide to pursue finding that answer. Or else what will happen is that you will continue to doubt and then it will be very hard to grow closer to God.

Remember the past things that Jesus has done for you in your life

If we look back at our life and actually think about all the good things God has done for our life, we can use that as the basis for our present and future because God is a God who doesn’t change, who has stayed the same, he doesn’t love you less, he doesn’t care about you less, he loves you.

5. Doubt the doubt - Tim Keller mentions this and this is my favourite way

What he says is that when we doubt God, what we essentially do is we try to replace the belief with another belief which most likely comes from the world, people around you, instagram, youtube videos or whatever. Right, essentially, because we doubt God, we think that this other thing that is replacing it will essentially be “more true” in our minds if we think logically.

But what Keller is saying is to doubt the doubt - meaning to doubt the thing that is replacing God and what you will find is that there are astronomically way more plausible doubts with that idea you are replacing God with and then once you realise how bad the idea is, you realise that Jesus is the one way, the truth and the life

If we take one of the biggest arguments against God being the creator which is evolution. Evolution is based on 3 main principles:

That life comes from non-life

Evolution happens when the strong overcome the weak

Our oldest ancestor is one cell

Now I genuinely took 3 minutes to prepare you guys 1 argument for each of these principles, just to show you guys that there’s no way that this can be possible, essentially me doubting this doubt:

Life comes from non-life - Have you ever seen a rock that can breathe or talk (this is like a side note but when my girlfriend when Korea she sent a photo of like a rock with the googly eyes on it and the shop was selling it for like $15 and it came with like a little house and all and she asked me if I wanted one and I replied that I think if I ever wanted to waste money that would be what I would do) , have you ever seen something just come from nothing - evidence tells in my own life, and from other people’s lives tell me absolutely not

Evolution happens when the strong overcome the weak: This was that Hitler example that I gave you guys where

Our oldest ancestor is one cell - Going back to the rock example, we are saying that we came from a rock. What we are saying is that you came from a rock, that rock with googly eyes that rock is your distant cousin somehow someway.

And so it’s doubting the doubt, challenging this thing that is replacing God in which I’m sure you will find much more illogical things than the bible.

What is are practical things you can do to decrease doubt and increase faith?

Conclusion

We all doubt, and it will come in one way or the other, but once we realise we do have it we need to do something about it or else it will be catastrophic for us. Because if you leave the questions in your head unanswered, they will be answered in a way you like and in the way you or your friends/people around you think and you will never know the true real answer which is from Jesus. And so my hope from today is that we first know that we have questions because all of us do, then don’t let them just stay in your head and wander around in your mind unanswered but get them answered.

Concluding Activity: What is one question that you want to ask about the bible

Please write your full name, year and class teacher !

I will try my best to answer the questions as fast as I can over the course of the next few weeks because there are a lot of you and also it might be a question I’ve never even thought about and I might be questioning as well ! So it’ll be a learning experience for the both of us and I’m excited to see all your questions !