Discipleship Network Forum

Not long ago, one of my good friends rebuked me. Severely rebuked me. We were having a discussion about some issues in my life, and he asked me if I was trusting God.

Being the honest guy that I am, I didn’t want to automatically give him the nice Christian answer. I wanted to give him the honest answer.

After taking a moment to ponder whether I truly was trusting the Lord in this specific area of my life, I admitted to my friend that I didn’t really know.

“But Jim,” he said, “you know the Bible as well as anyone. You know the Bible says God is faithful and trustworthy. I’m really concerned about you.”

Our discussion went downhill from there. Although I acknowledged that the Bible says God is worthy of our trust, I admitted that I was I was struggling to do so.

“After walking with Christ all these years, how could you feel that way?” my friend persisted.

In the weeks since our discussion, I’ve had time to process this question a little more. How is it that we sometimes DOUBT the things we KNOW?

That seems strange, doesn’t it? Sort of an oxymoron. If we really know something, how could we also doubt it at times?

Yet the Bible is filled with examples of people who doubted things they clearly knew or should have known. Sometimes the result of their unbelief was catastrophic, but at other times God seemed to answer their prayers and bless them despite their doubt:

• Adam and Eve KNEW God’s goodness firsthand, but they allowed the serpent to sow doubts about God’s love and veracity (Genesis 3).

• Abraham KNEW God had promised to give him a son by Sarah, and he famously BELIEVED that promise (Genesis 15:6). Yet he fell prey to Sarah’s foolhardy idea to have a child by their servant Hagar instead. The Bible still commends him for his faith, but his decision to opt for “Plan B” has had horrific consequences on the Middle East ever since.

• John the Baptist KNEW Jesus was “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” and he boldly testified to that fact (John 1:29). But when he was thrown into prison by Herod, he began to have doubts. He had two of his disciples ask the Lord, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3) How could a man who was such a bulwark of faith ask such a doubt-filled question?

• The church in Jerusalem KNEW prayer was a powerful force, and that’s why they fervently prayed for Peter’ release from prison (Acts 12). But when their prayers were miraculously answered, it became obvious that there was lots of doubt mixed in with their intercession. They couldn’t believe it when Peter came knocking on the door—yet God had answered their prayers.

All of these are interesting accounts, and several of them are a counterbalance to the statement in James 1:6-8 that a double-minded person is “unstable in all his ways” and “won’t receive anything from the Lord.”

My favorite story about “doubting what you know” is found in Mark 9:14-29. A father had brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus’ disciples, asking them to help the boy. However, they weren’t able to cast out the demon, so the father went to Jesus.

The Lord told this desperate man, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” (v. 23). That’s one of the greatest memory verses in the Bible, isn’t it? Notice that Jesus didn’t just say SOME things are possible, but He said ALL things are possible if we simply believe.

How would we have responded if we were the father in this story? Some of us are so religious that we would have automatically given Jesus the correct theological answer. We would have assured Him of our great faith and told Him just to get on with the exorcism.

But this man was more honest than that:

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (v. 24)

This worried father was certain that he believed. Yet he also knew that unbelief lurked within his heart, mingled with his faith. Isn’t this also true of us most the time?

Fortunately, Jesus answered his prayer and did help him with his unbelief. That’s certainly good news for us as well. Amazingly, when we come to God with an honest heart, presenting to Him both our faith and our doubts, He often will still work miracles.

So, what about YOU? Are you trusting God today? Do you need Him to help you with your unbelief?

You can be comforted in this: Whatever you may be going through, all it really takes is a mustard seed of faith to get the breakthrough you need.

Our anxiety expresses itself through doubt. And our doubt expresses itself by taking things into our own hands. Whether we say it or even consciously think it, trying to make things happen on our own says, at best, “God’s not giving me what I want when I want it, so I’d better make it happen myself.” And despite what seventy-five percent of Christians believe (Barna, 2005), the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” does not come from the Bible.

In this season of my life, God has been confronting my tendency to live out of my doubt. Ask anyone: I’m good at coming up with a plan, pulling things together, and making them happen. I am, to use a human compliment, resourceful. Heck, I like referring to myself as “tenacious.” And yet, in this season all my efforts have come to nothing. Instead, God says, “Depend on me. Let me handle it.”

I try every idea at my disposal, thinking one of them will work. They don’t. And then something that wasn’t my idea shows up and accomplishes what all my bright ideas and efforts couldn’t. Again, God repeats, “Depend on me. Let me handle it.”

Sometimes we already know things are out of our hands. And yet, we wrestle with the same problem as the anxious and the self-reliant—the failure to acknowledge that things still in God’s hands. We see a great example of this as Jesus encounters a boy with an unclean spirit—and even moreso in the people surrounding Jesus and the boy:

And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:14–29).

I love the incredulousness of Jesus’ “If you can!” here. It not only carries the sense of “Who do you think I am?” but also “Who do you think you are, in God’s sight?” Which is borne out by Jesus’ next sentence, “All things are possible for one who believes.”

While it’s not simply a matter of “God helps those who help themselves,” our inability to “make” God’s will manifest might indeed be a matter of us not being in position for God to use us. Our doubt restrains God’s ability to operate. Not that he couldn’t blow past it any time he liked, as Jesus in fact does here. Nonetheless, God wants us to believe, and is willing to withhold his temporal blessings and deliverance until we do so.

I’m not advocating a “name-it-and-claim-it” theology here, but I am suggesting a principle of “believe it and you’ll receive it”—provided it’s what God wanted to give you all along. Psalm 84:11b affirms this: “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.” There is a truth buried within the more positivistic twistings of the gospel, and it’s this: So much of God’s will for our lives remains unclaimed, because we can’t bring ourselves to believe that God would really want to do something good for us.

Thus, I suspect that the prayer and fasting the disciples lacked for this situation wasn’t purely a matter of failing to press the right spiritual buttons—let alone “if you do this spiritual discipline more regularly, you’ll be so much more effective for the kingdom.” There’s truth to that, but there’s a deeper truth here: Like every spiritual discipline, prayer and fasting was a way for the disciples to humble themselves before God so that they too could see the situation properly, become acutely aware of their own fallenness, human inability, and just plain lack of trust—and acknowledge, as the boy’s father did, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

Lay down your doubt, and let Jesus help your unbelief, so that you can receive the good things he has already prepared for you.

Lay It Down Today

Let’s get more creative with today’s passage from Mark. Read it again right now, putting yourself in the disciples’ place. Experience the inability to heal, Jesus’ rebuke, and the curiosity/humility afterward. Then read it once more, from the perspective of the father—the overwhelmedness and desperation for his son to be delivered, and the equally deep desperation to want to believe fully that Jesus could, and would, deliver his son.

Who do you identify with more right now? Spend some time giving up your doubt, and the roadblocks you’ve placed to reinforce that doubt, to Jesus right now. Hand over to him those things that make you anxious or overwhelmed. Let him handle them, and ask him to keep those things out of your hands from this day forward.

Yesterday, December 8th, 2010, was the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's death at the hands of an assassin. Last October 9, 2010, would have been his 70th birthday. I was a fan of the Beatles when they arrived on the pop scene back in the early 60s, but not so much with their later music. As their music evolved it was just not my style although it is easy to see why so many of their fans loved it. John Lennon was perhaps the most interesting Beatle and his popularity continues, possibly due to the nature of his death coupled with the mystique of his life. One feature of his life that continues to provoke discussion and speculation is his struggle with faith and spirituality. Much has been written about it. It seems to me that Lennon's real quest was for truth. He seems to never have come to a resolution regarding this vital issue. Unfortunate. I'm personally so thankful for the Christian resources which are available today to help us discover truth and the confidence and hope for the future which that truth promises in Jesus. Resources which I'm currently using to strengthen my grasp on truth are: The Truth Project,a video series featuring Dr. Del Tackett of the Focus on the Family Institute; Foundations of Apologetics (video course produced by the College of Christian Apologetics at Oxford University), and The Reason for God by Timothy Keller.

It would be interesting to know if John Lennon would have ended his life on a sounder footing had he had these materials available to him. Chapter 18 in the Gospel of John records Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate. Responding to a question from Pilate, Jesus answered: “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Pilate retorted: “What is truth?” There is no indication that Pilate made any effort to discover the answer to his question. Apparently John Lennon cared about the truth but for whatever reason was never satisfied with the answers he received. As Christmas approaches it is wonderful to know that the truth is available and that God, in His grace and mercy, "...wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time. And for this purpose I (Paul) was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a true and faithful teacher...." (1 Timothy 2:4-7) What a wonderful gift.