Don't Be Afraid to Ask

Our Problem

I would like to invite you to consider a hypothetical situation with me this morning, and if it mirrors a life experience you’ve had I would encourage you to think back on that life experience. Regardless, please walk with me through this hypothetical situation. Imagine you are new to a job, you might could think back to when you were new on the job, but we’re going to use the specific example of being a new employee at a pizza place.

Now you start settling into your role just fine, you’re figuring things out, you understand how the place works. Until one night your manager comes up to you and asks you to shift over to the make line. The manager wants you to go over and make pizzas. The problem here is that you were hired and trained as a driver. You basically drove pizzas around and washed dishes. But someone called out and now you’re standing on the make line and orders are starting to come in. And you don’t really know how the make line works. How do you throw dough? How much sauce goes on the pizza? How much cheese? Is there a certain way you’re supposed to arrange the pepperoni? If someone orders anchovies do you just throw out everything that comes in contact with that pizza? Now, you could ask your manager to explain things a little bit, but he’s kind of a jerk and will expect you to already know what’s going on. He probably won’t fire you, being short-staffed already, but he’ll definitely give you trouble about it. So you stand there, with orders starting to fill the screen and a dilemma. So at this point, you can either make it up as you go, you can quit your job right there, or you can find an answer to your problem.

And, as you might have experienced, a pizza shop is not the only place where one might face questions and uncertainty that have to be dealt with. You might have experienced these questions and doubts in your job when you didn’t quite know how things worked or how you were supposed to deal with something, or maybe you’ve experienced this kind of thing in a social situation when you weren’t quite sure how to interact or react to someone. In all the different areas of our life, at some point we have to deal with questions or uncertainty or doubt. And we can either ignore the problem, escape the situation entirely, or resolve the issue.

I think if we’re honest with ourselves, our faith is no exception to this. When we come across aspects of God’s Word that are confusing, life situations that are difficult, or questions about God that are beyond us, we have to deal with them. Now maybe we deal with them by ignoring them, by trying to avoid that subject entirely. Some people deal with these issues by leaving the faith entirely. And sometimes we deal with it by seeking out answers to our questions and our doubts and our uncertainty. Regardless, we have this unavoidable problem that we have to contend with, the problem of our questions, our doubts, and our uncertainty.

Textual Clue to the Solution

And, as you might imagine, we’re not the first people to deal with these kind of issues. We see people dealing with doubt and uncertainty and questions all over Scripture. But those examples can be a little disheartening, because when people have doubt and uncertainty and they test God - He frequently responds negatively. When people ask questions about God in the New Testament, Jesus regularly responds almost with an attitude of “you should already know this stuff.” Not to mention the reality that people tend to avoid letting their difficulties show at church. It makes a lot of sense that when we face difficulties or confusion or doubt we struggle to deal with it, we might even be tempted to think “what’s wrong with me that I’m feeling or thinking this way?”

But then we come across the story of Gideon, a story where he deliberately and repeatedly tests God with the fleece. So what makes the difference? What makes his questions and uncertainty okay? Well, to get to the bottom of that I think we need to look at the character of Gideon, because that’s going to give us a clue as to how we can go about dealing with our problem.

You see, before Gideon tests God, he tears down an altar of Baal and cuts down an Asherah pole. He acts zealously with faith in God. And after he tests God, he takes 300 men up against an army of raiders. He acts confidently with faith in God. So we have these two examples of incredible faith that are broken up by this time of doubt and uncertainty. What we see in Gideon is a faithful man, a person who genuinely wants to do right, who genuinely wants to do what God wants him to do. We see a man who does difficult things, who doesn’t look for excuses, who lives his life as if God is living and active. And it’s this man of faith who approaches God with his doubt and uncertainty, wanting to confirm God’s will and God’s instruction before he goes forward. That character is a key part of this solution for our problem. Gideon is not someone who is looking for an excuse to do the wrong thing, he isn’t trying to manipulate God with his test, he isn’t trying to set God up. He is a faithful person who is genuinely struggling with uncertainty about his direction in life. So as we deal with our problems, we keep Gideon’s character of faithfulness in mind.

God’s Part in the Solution

But even more important than Gideon’s faithfulness is remembering God’s faithfulness. Gideon asks for a sign and God gives it to Him. Gideon asks for another sign and God gives it to Him. God faithful responds to Gideon’s struggle with uncertainty. And we see that in other places in Scripture where faithful people have doubt or uncertainty, God faithfully responds by building up their faith. Like when Jesus invites Peter to walk on water with him, Peter starts off strong but then seeing the wind and the waves introduced doubt into his mind and he starts to sink. Jesus doesn’t let him drown, he lifts Peter up and continues to build his faith. And even today, when we face questions, God faithfully responds by providing us with His Word, and with people to help explain it to us. When we face uncertainty and doubt, God faithfully responds with reassurance. He comes to us every week in this place and reassures us that we are forgiven, reminds us of everything He did for us through the words we speak and the meal we share. And He faithfully responds through the Christian friends and mentors in our lives who support us and reassure us in our moments of doubts and questions. And that might not take the form of a sign or a miracle, but even in the silence God is faithful to His promises of forgiveness and salvation.

Our Part in the Solution

So God’s faithful response gives us the solution to our problem of doubt, uncertainty, and confusion. What’s more, it gives us permission to air them out. It gives us permission to acknowledge our questions and our doubts, confident that God is bigger than any question we can ask. And we’re going to take advantage of that this morning. Coming in this morning, you received a blank index card. You might never get this direct of an invitation to air your questions, so I encourage you to use it. On that card, I want you to write down any questions you have and any uncertainty you’re struggling with. You absolutely do not need to put your name on it. I want you to write these down, and drop them in my laptop bag on your way out. What I’m going to do with these cards is organize them into a Bible Study that will be starting a couple weeks on Zoom. And the first several sessions of that Bible study will simply be exploring the doubts you share today and answering the questions you have.

And if you can’t think of any today, that is totally fine. Going forward, one of the tables in the back will always have these blank index cards on them for you to write questions down that you don’t want to ask me directly - and we’ll find a way to get them answered.

Because our God is so incredible, so faithful in supporting us in our weakness, in our questions, and in our doubt that we have the freedom and the joy to ask our questions and face down our uncertainty with complete confidence that God can overcome it all. Amen.