My Journey: When Doubts Arise

Part 5

My mother has told me over the years that trust has never been my greatest strength.

“As a little girl, even into your preteens, you were always so afraid that I would leave you somewhere… at the grocery store, if you lost sight of me or I stepped more than a few feet away, you’d panic. ‘Don’t leave me!’ you’d say. And I never once left you. I never gave you reason to think I’d leave you… but somehow you still didn’t trust that I never would.”

She’s not wrong.

I remember it clearly.

I struggled to trust the one who’d carried me for nine months, brought me into this world through pain and labor, and sought to meet my every need from that time on. Somehow, I still thought she might leave… that she might not always be there.

To refuse to trust is to doubt.

The thing that no good Christian wants to admit to or talk about.

And yet there it lies, the greatest and darkest enemy I’ve ever known.

The Deep Darkness

It seems to me that doubt is worse than trial. I had sooner suffer any affliction than be left to question the gospel or my own interest in it. ~C.H. Spurgeon

This quote by the Prince of Preachers rings so incredibly true.

As the Lord has worked faithfully in my life these past 21 years… this thorn in my side has been a frequent (though not constant) companion.

I could tell quite a story of my struggle with doubt.

I could tell you of long nights, cold sweats, deep anxiety, and dark pits. I could tell you of mountain tops and deep valleys. I could tell you of seasons of confidence and boldness, followed by seasons of doubts and fear. Times of peace deep in my soul, and times of chaos in my heart and mind.

I have questioned, at various times, every aspect of my faith.

Who I am, who God is, the origin of the world, my salvation, heaven and hell, Christ’s divinity and mission, His perfect and sufficient word.

Questions that I never asked as a child or teen came crashing in upon me in adulthood.

I wish this had never been a struggle.

In these past couple of years, I have tired greatly of this roller coaster. I’ve begun to see how doubt brings ruin, detriment and steals away abiding joy. I’ve been driven to my knees in absolute despair, begging God to free me from my doubts and fears.

My struggle has led to these three questions:

1. Why Have I Doubted?

I’ve had to grab hold of what has driven me to this inward battle for my faith.

Well, I mentioned back a ways that prayer was never my greatest strength, and I sort of brushed it off. I told you of my pride and self-righteousness, over one thing or another. I’ve just now shared that to trust and rest has always been a struggle.

And I’ve discovered that the culmination of these make for a stumbling block unlike any other.

How can I hope to love the One I acknowledge in passing conversation but won’t take the time to sit as His feet and truly talk with him? How can I desire to give Him glory if I want it so badly for myself? If I can’t trust those who have loved me well and I can clearly see, how will I trust the One I can’t see?

For those who come to Christ at a young age and have no “large” or “obvious” sins to quit… I think our greater struggle comes when the “little” sins grow bigger and bigger and we simply failed to notice the monsters they’ve become until they’re breathing hot and heavy in our faces.

Did I allow certain sin struggles to go so long unattended, that I became unfamiliar with His beauty and my own need?

2. Do I Desire Christ?

This was the next question I needed to ask and it’s one that I can answer with absolute certainty.

No matter my doubts or questions, no matter how deep or ongoing the struggle, if Christ is not Savior, if He is not mine, then I truly have nothing.

Through the highs and lows, I’ve sought him, defended him and desired to live for him. Perfectly? Not by a long shot. But my desire has remained. Even when I’ve doubted him… my greatest and deepest desire has been that he be true and that I might rest in him.The nights I’ve lain awake, it’s been for the desire to be resting rather than wrestling, and trusting him rather than testing him.

I look at this world around me and it has nothing I want or need if it is outside of him. These doubts do not stem from a desire to abandon the faith or to walk away. I have no desire to follow the trend of “deconstruction”.

His Word has remained life and breath to me and more than anything my unrest has driven me to my knees in prayer as never before. These doubts have caused this self-righteous child to realize that I can’t even have faith, much less any goodness or victory, if it isn’t granted to me by him. My childish fears of being abandoned have left me exhausted as I’ve failed to trust that he will never leave nor forsake me.

My doubts have fueled my desire to know him… never to be rid of him.

3. Is He True?

As I pondered this last question, I stood alone, in a quiet place… broken and weeping.

How could I see God so clearly at work in my life, answering my prayers, speaking through his perfect Word and yet doubt Christ? How could I feel the conviction of his Holy Spirit and yet question my Savior?

I wept as I remembered the simple faith of my later childhood and adolescence when I never even thought to question Christ. He was true, he loved me, and he died for me, and I knew it. And now here I stood, broken from years of building doubt that had left me almost unable to truly think of Jesus or to dwell on him for fear of what I would discover if I did. Would he still be there… as true and real as he’d ever been? Or was I simply too far gone?

As I begged God to open my eyes, I suddenly realized something vital:

I either have all of God, or none of him at all.

If Christ is not true, if Christ had not been beside me all along, if Christ had not saved me from myself… then there was no God the Father to answer my prayers (John 14:6). And there would be no Spirit to convict my heart… as he was the helper Christ promised he would leave (John 14:26).

They are truly three in one.

As I was reminded of this reality, my necessity for Christ as Savior came crashing in on me. This season of doubt and fear had caused me to take a very real look at myself and clearly see the depth of my sin. As John Newton, writer of the famous hymn Amazing Grace, so beautifully put it:

“I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.”

You see doubt leads to deep and dark places. We all sin. We all fall. But let me tell you, the moment I doubted the One who died to take my punishment, the moment I questioned the One who intercedes for me before a Holy God, the moment I was unsure of the One who will return one day to make all things right… that’s the moment of utter darkness. No fair and just God could overlook my sin. We all know that unpunished wrong doing is evil. And so when I considered where I was left without a Savior, I became all the more aware of my need for One.

It was then that I realized… God had never abandoned me (Hebrews 13:5), I’d simply forgotten, or maybe I was discovering anew, just how deeply, how unspeakably I needed a Savior… I needed forgiveness, I needed grace.

John Newton also said:

“We cannot be safely trusted with assurance till we have that knowledge of the evil and deceitfulness of our hearts, which can be acquired only by painful, repeated experience…. We are never more safe, never have more reason to expect the Lord’s help, than when we are most sensible that we can do nothing without him..”

I wept, I worshipped, and I begged God to never again let me forget.

In Closing

This is my story. There’s really more I could share. This hasn’t been exhaustive by any means. But I wanted to share the parts that have sat heaviest with me. It’s a slow, plodding story. Quite ordinary. But I think that’s most of us. Most of us are a slow work in progress. I think we all have a story worth telling, a story that will resonate with and encourage someone else in theirs.

I’m not hoping to convert the unbeliever with this story, or to change the mind of one determined to “deconstruct” and walk away.

I’m writing this to encourage the doubting, struggling, seeking believer, who has no desire to doubt and yet they do, who wonder how they can love Jesus and have so many questions all at the same time, who wish they could be among the blessed who don’t see “and yet believe.” Who wonder if this sets you outside his grace, grace you know you need, even as you struggle to trust it?

Here’s the beautiful thing: If you’re desiring to know and serve the God of the Bible… that’s His work in you.

It is God who convicts:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
 there is no one who understands;
    there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
    they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
    not even one.” -Romans 3:10-12

It is God who saves:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. – Ephesians 2:8-9

It is God who keeps us:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me,is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. -John 10:27-29

If our salvation rested on our strength and fortitude, how lost we all would be. It is God who holds us fast, it is Christ’s blood which, once we have trusted in it, continues to cover us, through our ups and downs, victories and failures, our confidence and our doubts. It is the Spirit that convicts our hearts to care, to be tortured when our faith wavers, to be diligent to seek the Lord in the darkness.

I’ll end with this quote and the hope believers have in Christ, no matter our story, no matter our struggle.

Often doubts will prevail. What a mercy it is that it is not your hold of Christ that saves you, but His hold of you! What a sweet fact that it is not how you grasp His hand, but His grasp of yours that saves you. ~ C.H. Spurgeon