Doubt: Our Secret Faith

It has been a burden on my heart to talk about doubt for some time. I am actually starting to talk about it without having a photograph to represent the topic yet! But by the end of this writing I will probably discuss the photograph I’ve chosen.

I don’t believe Christians should doubt, however we do doubt and that’s why I am going to talk about it. It is like lust, we are not supposed to lust, but we do, so we talk about it. So why don’t we talk about doubt? The closest we ever talk about doubt is faith! But how can we understand faith without understanding doubt? How can we say this is “bigger” without knowing what is defined as “small”?

I think doubt is on top of the list we, Christians, don’t discuss along with pride. I mean, we are willing to confess adultery but not doubt or pride! I don’t know why though, I mean we all doubt. May be we are scared we will be labelled the “doubting Thomas”, or may be we think “everybody goes through it so what new “revelation” can I bring to the topic”, but I think the biggest reason is that we do not know what doubt is. Do you know that most people say they “I believe in God!” Really? How can it be, when most people I know don’t care if He exists or not?! How can we know what is doubt, when we don’t talk about it!

I’ve always believed that God existed, however I have not always believed that He was good, perfect, all powerful, and so on until I became a Christian in 1999 (later on of that year I came to Canada).

In late of 2001, in my late teens, I started to notice a lady who worked at my high school. Few months after I had developed a crush on her. Within a year I had a major crush on her, and to be honest it was more of an obsession than a crush. She didn’t know me, and I didn’t know her personally. I never talked to her, and I doubt she even knew I existed.

Mind you, I wasn’t obsessed with her physically or anything like that (I am not saying that she was not attractive), but I never lusted after her for some reason. I never dreamt of marrying her or anything like that. Basically, I was attracted to the way she carried herself around people (I can’t even say I was attracted to her character because I don’t even know how her character was like!).

Within a year I had made her my idol, my little god—or rather my main god. She determined my happiness, the reason I went to school-and as sad as it sounds-the reason I woke up in the morning! Then as the school year of 2002 started there was some announcements made about what had happened in that year’s summer and here was her wedding picture posted on the announcement board! When I saw it I went numb!

I didn’t talk that whole day. Actually that was one of the dearest day to me because my friends (classmates) who knew I liked her were so considerate towards my feelings! They pretty much said comforting words and respected my privacy and gave me space those few days after I found out she got married. Which was amazing because I am not used to having others know what I am going through, and so I really don’t have many experiences of being comforted by people (I talked about emotional walls here if you are interested: www.flickr.com/photos/001fj/2458054116/).

I don’t know why I was upset that she got married. I mean I didn’t want to marry her, and knew there was no way it would happen even if I wanted. I mean, even though I was disobeying God in having a crush on her, I knew she was not the one for me. (When I say “not the one for me”, it doesn’t mean I deserve a better wife as in I am “better”. What I mean is that God has different plans for our lives; that is, God has a suitable husband for her as He has a suitable wife for me, as He does in His plan for each person’s life. Whether we follow His plan for our lives or not, well, that’s a different story all together.)

By now you are probably thinking, “What does this have to do with doubt?!” For you to understand my struggle with doubt later you need to understand how deep I had put my emotionally security in that person. I mean, I had made tens of desktop wallpapers about her; I had written poems about her. I basically lived as if God was not only put on a shelf but it didn’t matter if He was on the shelf or not! That’s how spiritually blinded I was.

So that day, when I found out she got married, I came home and went to my bedroom, locked the door behind me, knelt on my bed and starting crying so much I thought my heart was going to stop! Then after I finished crying, I knelt on the floor and started praying for her and her husband.

However, I was not ready to give up my crush on her…I was too emotionally attached. To give up my crush was like taking my life support away! So I continued to have a crush on her until next summer, 2003, when I graduated from high school. Please do not think that I am saying this with ease; it is very embarrassing to admit that I liked a married woman, even though to me she was a complete stranger. To my way of thinking then, it didn’t matter if she was married or not because I knew nothing about her anyway! It was as if I had a crush on a movie star who has been married many times and has kids my age!

Anyway, in June of 2003 I had graduated from high school and was not going to college or university for the simple reason that I wanted to know God’s plan for me as a career before I processed with my higher education (If you like to read more about that you can read more here www.flickr.com/photos/001fj/2271047134/in/set-72157603857…. So even after I graduated I was not ready to give up my crush on her! I mean, by then she was not only a complete stranger, but a complete illusion! I mean I loved an image I made of someone I don’t know!

So that summer, of 2003, I came to pray but it was like God was not there! Almost like He didn’t care, or existed for that matter! He simply was not hearing anything I said, nor responded to my prayers, or anything like that! It is like He cut all communications with me! Until my graduation from high school He was still involved in my daily life, He answered prayers, He freed me from pornography (you can read more about how God freed me from pornography here www.flickr.com/photos/001fj/2365153745/in/set-72157603857… but now He was gone! He still provided me with a job, but right after that He completely put a wall between me and Him, and I knew what was going on: He had had enough with my crush on this lady (aka disobedience!), and His patience has run out. Every time I came to pray, I got the same answer to anything I said, and that is: her or Me…it is your choice.

That was by far one of the hardest experiences I went through, even though when I think about it now I think to myself, “How foolish was I?!” For a couple of weeks I would come from work and kneel on the floor and cry for at least half an hour because I knew I had to let go! That went on through the end of July to mid of August (I think). It was by far the hardest spiritual struggle I had come across in my spiritual walk until then. I had to either choose my God and Saviour whom I had known for 4 years, or my crush whom I made my idol for 2 years!

And the thing is that there was no middle solution: God’s will was so clear and He left no gray areas I can argue over! So one evening, I think in August, I was just so worn out emotionally and spiritually that I could not believe God would make me make such a decision: didn’t He know the thought of her was my daily emotional fuel? After some more struggling with God in prayer I stood up and stopped talking to Him because I truly believed that God did not exist.

Even before I became a Christian I never doubted His existence! But that evening I truly believed there is no such a thing as God (and few months earlier He had just delivered me from the addiction to porn!) I was so depressed I lied on my bed, and I quickly fell asleep.

A couple hours later I woke up and my room was dark because it was late in the evening, and outside the sky looked (or at least that’s how it felt to me) so gray. I looked up to the sky and realized how stupid it is to think that there is no God! And I had the worst feeling I had ever experienced in my life, it was a feeling of total emptiness, total depression, complete lostness…I mean I can go on forever talking about how I felt but there are really no words to describe how it feels to live without God. I felt as if I was in hell in a way, you know, total lostness for eternity. Absolutely no hope of whatsoever joyful, purposeful, hopeful, and good. Taking Him out of my life was like taking the substance of life out of living.

The strange thing is that when I woke up I simply couldn’t convince myself that He didn’t exist! I mean, the idea seemed so ridiculous! I am going to say something people who don’t believe in God’s existence will think it is a crazy statement. I’ve heard someone say it recently while sharing his testimony, and I truly believe it is true because I’ve experienced it personally that evening, and that is:

“It requires more faith to believe that God doesn’t exist than to believe He does!”

The evidences of His existence are every where! When I woke up I simply couldn’t convince myself that He doesn’t exist! I mean, just the thought seemed ridiculous, really! It was like free falling and truly believing that gravity doesn’t exist! I even thought to myself, “How silly it is just to think like that!”

I mean, even before I became a Christian (when I didn’t believe in God’s divinity, goodness, justice and so on), and when I was living in sin after I became a Christian I didn’t experience a feeling like that. I truly believe living life as if God didn’t exist at all is worse than living in disobedience with a belief in His existence.

Few second later I realized something else, I realized that I had hurt His feelings. I don’t know why that came to my mind, but here I was telling my God, best Friend, Saviour, Protector, Guide, and Comforter that He simply didn’t exist. The worst part is that I didn’t tell Him that I don’t believe He existed because if I had done that then that means I believed in His existence, otherwise why would I talk to someone didn’t exist?! But I simply stood and turned away as if He never existed, that’s what hurt me—the way I treated Him, not what I told Him. Imagine your spouse whom you love so much and live together with acts as if you didn’t exist! That must be very rude and painful!

So I got off of my bed, knelt down, apologized for hurting His feelings, asked for His forgiveness, repented of all those months (rather years!) of living in deliberate disobedience, and asked Him what I should do to be able to live my life for Him?

All the while I was crying and my tears were falling on the floor beneath me. It was still hard to let go of my crush but I knew that I could not live without my God, but I could survive without the image I made of her. I knew what I had to do: delete, burn, break, and cut anything that I made of her. He wanted all images I had made that I worshiped to be destroyed.

But because the whole experience hurt so much I asked Him a favour: that next time I love a woman (At the time I thought I was in love! But how can anyone be in love with an image of someone doesn’t exist—at least the person I made of her didn’t exist!) that she would be my future wife. And for the first time in weeks I felt God smiling and nodding because I had asked for something according to His will. Then I asked Him for three specific signs so I would know who is my future wife, and again I felt His approval of my requests.

I had never told anyone, not a single soul, what those signs are, because people (even well intending people) sometimes try to help us (or God) by doing God’s work in our lives, for example: arrange circumstances to answer our prayers. Actually, some years after that I had decided that those signs do not apply anymore because I was living by the power of the Holy Spirit and signs are Old Testament stuff (Old Testament stuff! Haha! At least that’s how I thought then!), but for some reason I sensed God insisting on one sign—that it was according to His will. I yet have to experience His power and goodness in that area: marriage.

After that prayer I took everything I had made of that lady and broke it or burned it. To be honest, the process took months! It was not easy at all, but I was determined to put myself in a position where I would not experience the pain that comes from believing Satan’s lies.

Ever since that day I had never doubted God’s existence, and I have gone through more painful times than the described incident–tens of times more painful.

I can say with absolute assurance: after that night when I doubted God and then came back to Him was the beginning of me becoming a follower of Jesus Christ as well as a believer in Him. It was not until then that I started taking firm steps towards obedience.

What brought me from that incident on God’s side rather than choosing to live without God are few factors:

1) Even when I was living in disobedience I still prayed and read my Bible! My friend, may be you are living in such a sinful life style that you are ashamed to even touch a Bible but that’s just another lie of Satan. We first read, pray then we get changed! We get changed by God’s truth, so please keep on reading it! Keep on praying! Keep on asking! Even if people make fun of you saying, “What kind of a Christian are you?!” (some had told me this, and I can’t blame them after all I lived like the devil!) Please don’t stop reading God’s word, or cut communication with Him.

I watched a testimony of a Christian lady who was a porn actress for many years. She used to read her Bible with a preacher’s son when she was working as a porn-actress and he was addicted to drugs! For many years now they are married, freed from all immoral sins, drugs addiction, and serving God in ministry! I became a Christian after reading the Bible too! I never had a single person tell me what is a ‘true Christian’ is! But God’s Word is more than enough! That’s the way Martin Luther came to understand true Christianity, and that’s the way God can open your eyes and change your life too.

2) I kept listening to sermons. I listened everyday to at least 2 messages by Dr. Charles Stanley! I read Christian magazines and articles, and even daily devotionals…even though I didn’t apply them to my life at the time. So what happened by then, even though I was living in disobedience (not only by having a crush on a married woman, but disobedience in more than one area in my life), my mind was being re-programmed according to God’s truths, principles, how to react to this, and how to respond to that, and so on! So when the time came for me to make a decision I knew what God had said about this situation or that situation! (Actually, I had listened to sermons by Dr. Stanley that I thought I would never need, but a couple of years later I came across situations that I responded to according to God’s principles because my mind was now operating according to those truths.)

3) I wrestled with God. I didn’t just leave the issue to solve itself by itself. No, I knelt everyday for almost a month and cried out to God. I went to Him for answers, comfort, and guidance. I didn’t just assume that I will drift into obedience one day, but I made definite decisions and carried them out. Spiritual radical amputation of what causes us to sin is an important and vital principle of God’s Word. If we refuse to practice this truth then we should not expect ourselves or our lives to be radically changed to be more fitting of who we are—God’s chosen children.

4) I thought about the matter. I evaluated the situation. (I talked about the importance of evaluating ourselves here if you are interested: www.flickr.com/photos/001fj/2462713897/) I asked God questions, and expected answers. For example, I thought to myself that I was hurting because I had put myself into an emotional mess—I sinned against my God by liking someone not in accordance to His will for my life. So why was I blaming God for my pain? He had warned us that sin has consequences and they are painful, shameful, and damaging, and I believed Satan’s lie—why was I blaming God? It was an unjust way of treating my loving Heavenly Father; I doubted the goodness of the one who loves me and was helping me out of the situation I put myself into by believing Satan’s lies!

Isn’t it interesting how we always get angry at God when Satan tempts us and we fall for it? We never yell at Satan (and we should NOT…the last and un-wisest thing a person can do is to get into a conversation with Satan!) The reason we get angry with God because deep inside we know He loves us, and after all we expect Him to protect us, guide us and provide for us…not Satan, our enemy. It is the same reason why we get angry with our parents, but we never get angry with strangers. Even though our parents had offered us more than any stranger can every give us. It is the same reason why we get angry with our government and Prime Minister when a terrorist attack happens! Because we know terrorists don’t care about what we feel, but our government should! So we let our anger be directed in the direction of someone who cares about us!

Have you noticed how doubt usually follows either sin or trials? I think the doubt that follows sin is easier, because we know we sinned and we can ask for forgiveness, repent and go back to walk closely with Him.

But doubt that follows what we call “un-just” trials is extremely hard to battle. I truly have no clue how Job, and Joseph were so faithful to God all the time even in the midst of being treated unjustly for years.

I want to ask you few questions here: are you a new Christian who came across very hard trial, may be you experienced rejection early in your Christian walk, and somehow you were never able to experience a real walk with God because you never put your trust in anyone afterwards, including God. My question is: is this really how you want to live your life? Really? Well, you can either obey God by trusting Him again, and that means you open up your heart so He can start working on your wounds and pains, or you can put an emotional “wall”–a wall that does not protect–around yourself and live a long miserable settled for life wondering all along, “What if I had trusted God then…would I be here today…?” I know these are harsh words, but I’d rather you wake up so you make the right decision today, than see you live in misery. I certainly would rather be harsh with me and directs me to a good path, than be nice to me and let me drift into nothingness.
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Doubt also comes from our low self-esteem. I often times wondered how could Abraham and Sarah laugh when God gave them the promise concerning the birth of Isaac, until I came across a simpler situation and, sadly, I laughed too. I often times think, “How could this person do this? Or do that?” when I read the Bible, and often times than not I responded the same way if not worse to much simpler situations!

In the summer of 2006 I went with my youngest uncle, and his wife, to a city in Ontario that’s 4 hours drives from Toronto to visit my aunt, uncle and grandma and cousin there. On Sunday we went to a church which none of us has been to before (we have never been to a church in that city), nor did we know anybody there.

It was a small church, cozy, and had such a lovely and relaxing atmosphere; they even sang a Christian song that I really love called “I Need You to Survive” by Hezekiah Walker.

The service didn’t take long and afterwards as we stood up this older lady comes from the front pew which was only a couple metres ahead of the last row, and she tells me, “Young man, God has a word for you” Well, I had grown in a church that didn’t even teach that God speaks, nevertheless they believed in prophesy! And so the many years I was exposed to false teachings by the church I had grown up in made me sceptical about prophesy, even though the Bible says it is a sign of a true apostle.

Then my uncle’s wife got a piece of paper and pen quickly and started writing down what the lady told me, and so I will type what the lady said and my uncle’s wife wrote down:

“When I first saw you I thought of a stop sign…He will use you as a crossing guard in the spirit realm…there will be people you’ll speak to…speak direction to them as a crossing guard to children to take them to the right direction…sometimes it will be the spoken word and other times it will be by your life’s examples…I see a very busy street and so many people…there will be times when you’ll tell some people to stop…a safe person for people to interact with and speak to…”

As you can imagine why like Sarah I laughed secretly at God’s words. I mean, I don’t even need to explain why I laughed, do I?!

I thought to myself while she was saying those words, “Me? All those things God will do through me?! Sure that will happen!”

I am as unlikely candidate for those things to happen through as anyone can ever be: I am an introvert, I don’t have any close people to me who know what I go through or feel, I am very shy and stay away from strangers and crowded places, and I was only in my early 20s! What life examples, I thought to myself! I don’t even know what does “spirit realm” mean!

So you see, low self-image or esteem can hinder us from believing God. And the Bible is full of people who didn’t think they could accomplish what God predestined to accomplish through them, such as Moses and Gideon.
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One of the problems with doubt is that it is custom designed to every individual. It is like fear, what you might fear I might scoff at! What I might fear you might think is silly to fear such a thing! And the same thing with doubt: what might shakes my faith may not even cause you to notice it. That’s why it is so hard to go to someone and tell them what is making you doubt, because more than likely they won’t be able to associate with what we are talking about. Let me give you an example.

About 3 weeks ago I was watching a TV show called “Notorious” and it was about the capture of the serial killer nicknamed BTK. He was absolutely ruthless, and as emotionless as any murderer I’ve seen on TV. Even more infamous murderers had shown more emotions and sorrow than he did!

Well, he was caught because the floppy disk he sent authorities they could trace to a church which he was a member of for many years. (His killing spree ran for 30 years and it included killing a total of 10 people including men, women and children.) That didn’t shock me because anyone can fake being a “Christian” by attending church, etc. What really shocked me is that his wife was a choir member!

That really made me ask some serious questions! Not that she was guilty of anything, but that’s exactly what bothered me! For years and years and years, this woman served God, sang praises to Him, worshipped Him, and not once did He warn her that her husband was an extremely dangerous murderer? I asked: what happened to visions, prophesy, warning signs, may be just a little dream—what happened to God’s guidance? She was married to that serial killer for 34 years!!!

Imagine your disappointment, and disillusion with the God you’ve been serving for so many years if that turned out to be your husband!

Of course that was very confusing to me. I mean God’s guidance is as important to me as anything else I can think of. (But sometimes it takes time to get answers to our questions. I’ve learned that sometimes it takes months or years to answer our questions but somehow He always remembers to answer our questions even when we forget!)

So you see, what made me doubt God might not bother you at all. You could’ve watched this TV show many times and the thought could’ve never entered your mind. The same thing applies to me, I could’ve been in your situation many times and probably the idea of doubting God wouldn’t enter my mind. That’s because doubt is tailor designed to our individual fears, hurts, priorities, desires, goals, etc.
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On the night of January 8 (I think) of 2008 as I went to sleep I asked God, “God give me a vision”, and I slept. I had many dreams that night but when I woke up I remembered only one, and that is:

There was a gray fighter jet flying from right to left, but I didn’t sense its motion because as it was flying the view kept moving with it; it was more like it was in a wind tunnel. The sky/background was black. Then something like a huge empty half-ball metal thing rotating from above the jet engine’s back opening until it covered it completely. It was like a cap of some type but it didn’t fit above the back opening perfectly, there was space between this cap and the back opening’s edge for the heat to come out. But of course the heat now was coming out in the opposite direction because of this metal cap.

When I woke up I remembered that dream, but couldn’t recall any of the other ones. But few moments later I completely forgot about it, because it is a typical thing for me to dream about cars, airplanes, etc! The only thing that bothered me is that I had no clue what that metal cap was, since I had never seen it before or after on any TV show, or read about it anywhere! I mean, it was as if I was dreaming a car had a tree growing out of its roof! I was as clueless to its function or what it was as I could be!

Later that morning, I had a dynamic class and the prof likes to take what he calls “coffee breaks” and talks about nuclear accidents (he used to work in the nuclear industry) or some other topics related to engineering or physics. That morning he had a question for us in the “coffee break”: “How do jet planes slow down.” (I don’t know if he meant fighter jets, or passenger jets–I didn’t ask him!) and he gave us few options, I think 5 of them. We all raised our hands in agreement with the option we thought was more plausible. But then he told us that none of those options are correct, and the correct answer was that jet planes have what is called “thrust reversers” which are simply metal things that open behind the jet engine to change the direction of the thrust which makes the plane accelerate in the opposite direction (slow down)! Everybody in the class room was like, “What is this man talking about?” We were all clueless to what “thrust reversers” are until that moment! I mean, we didn’t even didn’t even know they existed before!

That’s when I remembered my dream from the night before and his answer caught me off guard: I was speechless! I mean, my jaw almost hit the floor, and my classmate asked me, “What is wrong?!” I told him, “If I explained it to you, you wouldn’t understand!” Actually, this is the first time I share this story with anybody. You know what, since I know they are called “thrust reversers” let me search for them!

This is truly amazing. You can see them here right behind the engine: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Reverse…

Of course, later that day I thought to myself, “Well, that was just a coincidence. It was just a dream. It wasn’t from God. God didn’t answer my prayer. It was a dream about an airplane after all!” But the part that really bothered me is that I had never seen a “thrust reversers” in my life (or knew they existed) before that dream! I don’t know, does God give visions about airplanes? Or does He only give vision in regard to important things that will happen in the future? All I know is that I asked for a vision before I slept, I had a dream about something I had not seen before (until now!), and the next day the prof talked about it!

I am telling you this story because I want to make one simple point: Doubt comes from within us. It has nothing to do with God. God can reveal Himself in all His glory and power in front of our eyes, but if we don’t want to believe it then we won’t.

Isn’t it interesting how the Israelites a short while after experiencing God’s glory and power like never before (when Moses went to get the Ten Commandments) they committed their worst sin—making and worshipping and idol!

I think this is illustrated very well in Luke 16, where Abraham is talking to the Rich Man:

27"He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, 28for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

29"Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

30" ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31"He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ "

I used to wonder about Abraham’s argument: I mean, really who doesn’t believe if a dead man they knew and they know had died, rises from the dead and comes back to warn them?

Some time later I read John 11, which is the story about Jesus raising Lazarus (not the same Lazarus of the above verses) from the dead:

41So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."

43When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

45Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. 46But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin…. 53So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

Do you see it? Abraham’s argument in Luke 16 which I had questioned happened exactly in John 11, and how did the people respond to it? Well, some believed, but some responded exactly like how Abraham had said, and instead of believing they plotted to take Jesus’ life!

Again the point is simple: If we are doubting God that is because we want to, and not because we don’t have enough reasons, “evidence”, to believe in Him or believe His promises.
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A lot of times we, Christians, think that doubt kind of just drifts in our lives then leaves just it came, without us noticing it. But that’s rarely the case; people who love God and experienced fellowship with Him for many years and His grace, mercy, and forgiveness don’t just wake up one day and decide they don’t need Him anymore. Doubt usually follows very hard trials. I think we all know someone who was tried and simply couldn’t overcome that trial. Instead of that trial being the stepping stone to God fulfilling His promise to them, it turned out to be the breaking stone of their faith, and eventual drifting from God all together.

And most times we think that doubt is something a person has to go through alone to be able to truly overcome it. But that’s not true. Why are we commanded to help our fallen brother in sins, so why not doubt? Doubt is a sin! I can recall two instances where comments about faith made all the difference in my life:

In 1999 my family and I were living in Jordan; we lived there for a year before coming to Canada. We had an Iraqi “Christian” neighbour (“Christian” as in belonging to the religion “Christianity”; not being born again). He was visiting us one evening and people were talking about God and so on, and at that age 16 I had given up on calling myself a “Christian” because I didn’t believe in Christianity, and so I doubted God big deal. I mean, I believed He existed but that’s about it. So as he was saying something about God I said something to the like, “If God is this and this, then why does the Bible say this and this?” He didn’t have an answer to my question, but he had an answer to my problem because he simply reply, “Are you trying to tell me that you are smarter than God?” I mean, the way he said it was like, “You think you are smart, you silly kid?” And that’s exactly what I was!

It was the first time someone had brought that to my attention: it was like a spiritual slap! I mean, all that doubt I had covered with pride and some few silly arguments taken from here and there, and from that and this person’s doubts and so on, were stripped away, and I had to evaluate my beliefs then. I realized then that I had a decision to make: I either read my Bible (which I did) and believe in it, believe in God completely, and living according to His Word; or I stop reading my Bible, stop claiming that I was a “Christian” because my family is “Christian”, and stop claiming that I believe in God. The way I viewed Christianity was making it harder for Him because I claimed that I “believed” in Him and lived like the devil, because all the while I knew deep inside that I didn’t believe anything about Him more than His existence!

To make a long story short: few months later I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. So you see, all I needed was that spiritual slap. What if that gentleman had said, “Well, doubt is a personal thing and he has to find his own way…” I probably wouldn’t be a Christian today, 9 years later.

Another instance happed in 2007. Something happened to me that’s very painful and until today I am trying to get in terms with it with God. Anyway, I went through months of turmoil without anybody knowing. Then one day my youngest uncle’s wife called and we were talking and she said, “You know, Fadi, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Those were the last words I wanted to hear: God’s love, and His wonderful plan. So I had to chuckle about the idea because those were the last two things I believed then God has for me: love, and wonderful things. Then she said, “Fadi, He is God don’t forget that!” That was quite a spiritual wake up, because I realized then that I had taken Him really lightly and that I was messing with the wrong person!

It is easy to forget about God’s greatness when we are doubting His goodness. But the Bible says in Isaiah 45:5:

“I am the LORD, and there is no other;
apart from me there is no God.
I will strengthen you,
though you have not acknowledged me,”

He is God, whether we acknowledge it or not, or like it or not—He is! If we choose to live and die apart from Him, guess who is the loser? We are! Because long after we are gone He will still be here! My friend, we cannot fight God and expect to win!

Isaiah 44:6 says:

“…I am the first and I am the last;
apart from me there is no God.”

What I wanted to show here is this: if someone is going through period of doubt don’t think there is nothing you can do about it. You might be just the person God wants to use to bring them back to Him. Doubt doesn’t just leave, we have to kick it out!
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Another misconception we have about doubt is that it comes and leaves really quickly! We snap into it and we snap out of it just like that! Umm…NO! Do you want me to be honest with you? Most Christians live in doubt! Yes, you heard me correct! Ok, let me explain it to you this way:

Let’s say someone leaves you a $100 bill at your doorsteps everyday at 7:30 AM, what would you do? You wake up at least 10 min earlier so you can get your $100 bill just as it is left there for you, so nobody else takes it before you or that it is blown by the wind or gets wet by the rain, right?

So why don’t we pray every morning? God made many promises concerning prayer: Ask and you will be given; ask anything in my name and it will be given to you, etc. The answer is simple: we do not believe that God hears, or at least, will answer our prayers. It is as simple as that. Also, do you think if we truly believe that God has a wonderful partner in store for us in His right timing we will go out and date this and date that? No, of course we won’t! But we do a lot of things because we do not believe!

And so many of us are afraid that we are challenging God by asking this, and requesting that, but you know something? If we ask the entire world from Him we still haven’t taken up the challenges He put in front of us in regard to prayer! We are not challenging God; God is challenging us! The challenge is not for God, but the challenge is for us!

Read the Bible–read the Old Testament, read the New Testament—and see how obvious His works are! When the young man who fell from the balcony died, Paul went downstairs and by his faith in the power of God brought the young man back to life! If that happened to someone in front of us, we would call the funeral home!

Why don’t we share God with others? Because we are not even sure He is real, or that He even makes a difference in people’s lives, because we never allowed Him to work in our lives in the first place! We think, “What if this person becomes a Christian and then gets disappointed with God and blames me for getting him/her into something that “doesn’t” work!”

We don’t pray, and we don’t ask, and we don’t share Jesus with others, and we don’t believe in physical healing because we are scared to be disappointed or that we won’t be able to explain why this or that didn’t happen like we expected it to be. We are scared to find that our God—whom we love so much and for so long–is not true because He never healed us, or answered our prayers, so we resort to doubt, but the sad part is through doubt that we will never be able to know if our God is real or not. We resort to doubt because doubt is “safe”, just like emotional walls are “safe”! So we settle down for the old and boring religion we call “Christianity”, and completely forget about the Powerful and Loving God who is Christ the Lord. We simply take “Christ” out of “Christianity”.

Do you know what true faith is? Let me tell you a short story:

My nephew who is four years old loves the colour green. And since my sister and her husband were planning to buy a minivan because their family was getting bigger he wanted a green minivan. So as they were driving one day he asked his mom and dad for a green minivan and they told him to pray to Jesus to give them a green minivan. So he prayed in the car for a green minivan; he was, I think, 3 years old at the time. When they came home he looked so excitingly at the garage expecting a green minivan to be there because he asked for one just a couple hours ago, and so he was surprised when there was no green minivan in the garage! Now, that’s true faith!

You know for us, adult Christians, we would be surprised if there was a minivan in the garage—I know I would’ve! But that story also illustrates why we don’t pray as often as if we truly believed that God answers prayers: we play it safe because we hate getting disappointed.

So what do we do when we pray? We ask for something and then just to make sure we don’t get disappointed if He doesn’t answer our prayers we say, “But Lord not according to my will but according to your will.” This sentence our Lord Jesus Christ said was motivated by His true submission to His Father’s will, not to cover up doubts! Even our prayer life we need to evaluate.

No wonder He doesn’t answer when we ask: we don’t even expect Him to answer! And the Bible says that the man who doubts is like troubled water unsettled in his mind, and he should not expect to receive when he asks! Praying with doubt is like asking God to answer our prayers but without Him getting the glory! And the Bible says that we should do everything for the glory of God: doubt does not give God the glory.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of Christians (including me) are living in doubt not that “things don’t work nowadays as they used to in the Biblical time”! God hasn’t changed, His Word, Truths, Principals haven’t changed, and He was able to work in all situations and cultures, so why do we think “times has changed and so God doesn’t work in our present day culture as He used to before”! This is simply nonsense to cover up our doubts.

Do you know what I think is the problem for many of us, Christians? It is not that we doubt here and there, but that we have gotten very comfortable with it. We have replaced God’s exciting purpose and plan for our lives with the comfortable American Dream. If we get persecuted then we think God has left us, if we are comfortable then we think God has blessed us! (Which is completely opposite of what the Bible teaches!)

All I wanted to say is that for most of us doubt is not a passing phase but a state of living our “Christian” life for long periods of time. Sad, but true. What is even sadder, for many of us we never reach the point where faith takes over doubt: doubt is what we believe.
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I want to say that doubt along with pride are the root of all sins. Every time I sinned against God was for the simple reason: I believed that my sins didn’t have such “bad” consequences (doubted), and that I knew better than Him (pride). No wonder those are the least talked about topics in churches! I mean, the hardest thing is to find someone to share his testimony with pride or doubt.

And who can blame us? Who likes verses such as “Oh ye of little faith” be applied to him or her? But the Bible didn’t say those things to scare us into hiding our sins away, but to open our eyes and to repent of them and turn back to God.

I am not encouraging people here to open the Bible, find what promises they like and claim them and deceive themselves into believing they are getting them. After all God is the Lord of our lives, and His will is what will be done. What I am saying is that if God has promised you something, don’t insult Him by believing Him half-heartedly.

And it is ok if you have your doubts, we all do, but make sure you deal with them quickly and get closer to God and most importantly never ever act upon those doubts. It is bad enough to doubt God but it is much worse to act upon those doubts. Imagine if you doubt fornication is a sin and acted upon it? Now you’ve made returning back to God a much complicated issue than just dealing with doubt.
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I truly believe in periods of doubts we usually aren’t really looking for answers to our questions, but we are simply looking to sense His presence in those trying times, to know what we are going through is from Him. Most of us will accept His will even if it is very painful, but what we really need to know is that He is going to go through it with us.

By far the hardest trials are those that seem to come without any reason. If we sinned then we know He is disciplining us, and we can repent of our sin and draw near to Him again. But those unexplained trials, like the ones Joseph and Job went through are very hard to bear. How much faith will you have in God if your wife and kids got killed in a car accident being hit by a drunk driver? God forbid such a thing happens, but we cannot pretend it doesn’t happen. “Unjust” trials are the hardest to endure. But if we pass the test and believe God was in it and cling to Him we can expect Him to reward us like He did to Joseph and Job.

That’s why I chose this image to represent my talk about doubt. Because this little drop of water represents the hope we have when we sense God’s presence in times of doubt and pain.

I took this image about two weeks ago. I woke up before my mom on the weekend (and as in every other day! LOL! She loves to sleep…A LOT!) and I like to eat in the living room because it has a big window. So I opened the curtains and made sure I didn’t turn the TV on (it kind of scatters my focus and makes it hard to pray after starting my day watching TV!) and sat down to eat my breakfast. As I looked at the turned off TV I noticed those beautiful leafs at its side. As I looked closer I found that few of those leafs had droplets of water hanging down from them! I never knew dew happens indoors!

So after my breakfast I brought my camera and the tripod and shot a few Super Macro shots until I got so close to one of the droplets that my lens hit it! When that happened I tried to make an “artificial dew” by pouring drops of water on the leaf again and again and again, but they never clung like it is showing here, no matter how small I made them or how gently I put them! And I thought to myself, “It must be pretty foolish to fight God like sometimes I do, when I can’t even duplicate a single dewdrop He creates!” Yea, that put me in my place!

I hope you like this photo and more importantly liked my writing 🙂

The last thing I want to say is this: there is far more joy, blessings, and peace if we willingly choose to believe God, love Him, and draw closer to Him, than He bring us to a point where we have no other choice but believe in Him. Because even if He does this—which He usually does because He is a loving Father who disciplines His children for their own good—He still can’t make you love Him: this, you have to choose by your own will.

PS: Sorry for the harsh title! :s

(Toronto, ON; spring 2008.)

Posted by 001FJ on 2008-05-19 01:53:41

Tagged: , Canon , PowerShot , S3 IS , 001FJ , doubt , Christianity , Bible , Jesus , Christ , God , Christian , Christians , faith , love , mercy , grace , discipline , Heavenly , Father , crush , vision , thrust-reversers , pray , sign