When In Doubt

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Well, good morning, Awakening Church.

Great to be with you.

You can go ahead and find your seats.

We're continuing our series, Messy Spirituality.

Um I came this close to walking away from my faith.

I was twenty two, newly married, studying theology, and I had a crisis of faith.

What if everything I believed, everything I'm building my life upon, wasn't true.

It started actually, believe it or not, in a theology class.

I had a professor who began to describe God and his sovereignty in this way that God is to the world like Shakespeare is to Romeo and Juliet.

Not that just God is all-powerful, but God has written every single detail of life, every decision, every tragedy, every sin.

If that's true, well then God is the author of both good and evil.

Everything is already scripted, nothing we do really matters.

No choice, no freedom.

And I remember wrestling and thinking, if that is who God is, I don't want anything to do with him.

It was incredible disorienting.

It was like a thread that began to unravel everything and suddenly questions just came rushing in.

Is there really a God after all?

How do I know?

What kind of God being forces out there?

What do we do with this Jesus person?

Is the Bible reliable?

Is there any meaning or purpose to this crazy life after all?

And at the same time, I was desperately afraid to ask these questions.

One, because I was afraid of the answers I might find, afraid that I had a faith that just was like a house of cards, it just would collapse upon investigation, but then afraid to ever speak it out loud.

Because I was afraid I would betray those I loved most.

Betray my family, my wife, those I love.

And so I didn't tell a soul, not even Jenny.

At first I just tried to ignore it, push it down, hope it goes away, but month after month it persisted.

The dissonance grew.

I couldn't continue the path of becoming a pastor if I didn't really believe this stuff.

Now my whole future, my new marriage, and my foundation for life just felt shaky.

Sadly, my perception of the church and experience was a bit that church is the place where you get all of your answers, but not necessarily the place that you can come and have your questions wrestle with your doubts and struggles.

And so what do you do?

What do you do when God feels distant, silent, or absent?

What do you do if you're struggling with doubt?

The sermon title today is When in Doubt.

Would you say that with me?

When in doubt try it again.

When in doubt.

One of the things I love about the Bible is how refreshingly honest it is.

It doesn't sugarcoat things.

It doesn't, you know, present people as perfect.

In fact, it presents very human people, broken people.

It's honest about struggling and wrestling and doubting all through the pages.

The heroes of the faith.

This is one of the reasons I find the Bible incredibly reliable.

There's many more.

But one of the reasons is you would never write this stuff if it wasn't true.

You would never want to present yourself or anyone else in that kind of light of doubting, of struggling, of failing.

In fact, there's one person, one disciple, uh, who struggled with doubt so significantly that history gave him a nickname.

Do you know what his name is?

Yeah, you know him, doubting Thomas.

Poor guy.

Throughout all history, he got the name Doubting Thomas.

And it's his story that I want us to turn, John chapter 20, verse 24.

John 20:24

This is more than a story about a person who doubted.

It's a story about how Jesus responds to those followers who aren't sure what to believe anymore.

The context: Jesus has just risen from the dead.

Three days before that, he was executed on a Roman cross.

He was buried in a tomb.

All hope of this new movement, the way, is annihilated.

The disciples are discouraged, defeated, disillusioned, they are afraid for their very lives, they've gone into hiding.

And then Easter Sunday morning happens.

Jesus rises from the dead.

They see him, they believe, and hope springs forth.

And we pick it up in verse 20.

Now, Thomas, also known as Didymus, he was a twin.

That's what Didymus means.

He was a twin.

One of the twelve was not with the disciples when Jesus came.

Now we don't know why he wasn't with the disciples, but isn't there something to when we grieve, we just isolate ourselves?

We just withdraw.

And if we're honest, when we withdraw, when we isolate, almost always nothing good grows.

And so he isolated, he was alone.

So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord.

And you can imagine their excitement, their joy as they're coming to him.

And then Tom says this unless I see the nails marked in his hand and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

And the reality is, you would be, and I would be in the same place as Tom.

How many executed criminals on a Roman cross that was buried have you seen come back to life?

Over the course of your life, Thomas, tell me, how many have you seen?

Well, zero.

Okay.

Well, that's the track record we have.

Zero.

He's grieving.

He doesn't have a category for a resurrection.

He's I I gotta see the proof.

I don't know what you guys ate last night, but it was funky.

And then notice verse 26, a week later, a week later, eight days later, the following Sunday later, not a few hours later, not later that day, not early in the week, an entire week went by where Thomas is sitting in this unknown, sitting with these questions, sitting with this wrestling, sitting with his closest friends who say we've seen him, and he's like, I don't believe it, I don't buy it.

His disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them.

Thank God he returned back to community.

Though the doors were locked, Jesus came in and stood among them and said, His first words, peace.

Peace be with you.

The struggles, the storms, the doubting, the angst, my first words, the Savior's first words is peace.

Then he turns to Thomas.

Put your finger here.

See my hands.

Reach out your hand and put it in my side.

Stop doubting and believe.

And Thomas, with this, this is the most significant declaration of the deity and personhood of Jesus and the Gospel of John, and it comes from doubting Thomas after he sees the resurrected Lord.

My Lord and my God.

And Jesus told him, Because you have seen me, you have believed.

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

Jesus, we invite you here to speak to us, to meet us in the deep waters of doubting and wrestling.

May we experience your peace and your presence here in this moment.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Walter Brugerman, in his treatment of the Psalms, he's a theologian, describes a rhythm of life and faith in three movements.

You find this all throughout the Psalms that human beings are regularly finding themselves in one of three places.

He talks first about the place of orientation.

Orientation, a season where life is predictable, stable, secure.

It's characterized by confidence in God's order and justice, often reflecting creation, wisdom, or even covenantal themes.

These are psalms like Psalm 8, Psalm 19, Psalm 104.

And then he talks about another place that we find ourselves in, another rhythm, from moving from orientation to disorientation.

Disorientation is a time of chaos, loss, and pain where the old, predictable world collapses.

This represents a time of grief, injustice, abandonment, forcing an honest, sometimes angry dialogue with God.

In the Psalms, we see Psalm 13, 74, 88 talk about this disorientation, orientation, disorientation.

Then the third rhythm or phase, reorientation.

A surprising new stage that emerges after a crisis, not by returning to the old normal, but by finding a new, transformed, and more nuanced reality.

It is characterized by gratitude and a deeper, more profound awareness of God's grace.

Orientation.

Disorientation.

Reorientation.

Reorientation.

Psalm 30, 34, 150.

Doubt is a season, friends, of disorientation.

We don't talk about it well in the West.

And unfortunately, too many people find themselves adrift, losing their faith, feeling lost and alone.

What do you do when your God feels distant, silent, or absence?

What do you do when you're struggling with doubt?

When in doubt, I want to just remind us of a few things.

First thing is something that we all actually know to be true, but we forget so often.

And the first thing is simply this.

When in doubt, remember this, everyone lives by faith.

Faith is not a religious thing, friends.

Faith is a human thing.

Every single person on the planet lives by faith.

In fact, you exuded extraordinary amounts of faith just to get here today.

You woke up, you turned on your car, uh, with some of it has a um a combustible engine, and you had faith it would not combust on you.

Um, that it would work exactly as you thought it would work, or you had an electric vehicle with a battery that could melt your face.

Okay, anyways, uh, right?

But you had faith that that vehicle would operate and function the way you thought it would function and get you from point A to point B safely.

And then you had this immense amount of faith that the other people on the road, this is insane, that the other people on the road would follow the same rules that you follow so that there would be order and they would not collide into you, hopefully, in Silicon Valley.

We're not so good at this, but we do it from time to time.

It's incredible.

What you're doing right now, you don't even realize is an act of faith.

You came in here, and you know what you did?

You sat down.

I did not see one person, by the way, not one person investigate, test their chair to determine if it is sturdy enough to hold them.

You assumed, you presumed that it's a chair, and as a result, I put my faith in, I put my weight on it, I just sat down on it.

That's faith.

All of us, all of us, life is faith.

It is constant.

In fact, atheists live by faith.

I would say they live by more faith than anybody else on the planet.

Do you know how much faith it takes to believe that something came from nothing?

Do you know?

I mean, come on, think about this.

Do you know how much faith it takes to believe that chaos brought about order, design, and a fine-tuned universe?

We don't see that anywhere ever.

The laws of thermodynamics tell us it's the exact opposite, and yet they have faith, it does it.

And faith, oh my goodness, that think about this.

That non-reason produced a rational, reasonable being that could actually intellectually think about and relate and understand the world around them.

I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, by the way.

The reality is this: everyone is taking someone else's word about life, about purpose, about meaning, about destiny, and about eternity.

Personally, just as me, just personally, personally, I just happen to take the person who predicted his death and resurrection and then did it.

I'm just gonna take his word about life and meaning and purpose and all those other things.

That's just me.

That's just me.

But Ryan, if we all live by faith, why do we doubt?

Why do we have these doubts?

Let me just give you a few reasons.

These aren't exhaustive, but hopefully you'll find maybe where you've been or where you currently are at.

We doubt uh because of silence, don't we?

We doubt when God is silent.

We doubt because of unanswered prayers, when God feels distant.

The experience of a new believer is God is especially active, answering prayers, and then there's a season of what it feels like God withdrawing his presence.

St.

John of the Cross called it the dark night of the soul.

Like a mother weaning her child, so God weans his kids so they can grow and mature.

I remember my mentor explaining it this way to me.

And um, when our kids were little, it's fun, we have grown kids now, uh, and they're home, you know, for birthday stuff, it's the house is full.

Um, when our kids were little, uh, potty training, it's a big deal, by the way.

And um, so every time they went potty on the potty, we threw a party.

It's a potty party.

Yeah, every parent does this.

When you go poop on the potty, it's like, woo, because it's not here, it's not there, it's right there, it's where it's supposed to be.

You throw a party, you celebrate, you got candy for throwing, you know, going on the potty.

We have not thrown one potty party this weekend.

We haven't.

And you might go, wow, you are just an unfair, terrible human of a dad.

No, because there's something at this stage in life that is appropriate in your development and in your growth and maturity that we're gonna celebrate.

But when you're over here and you're growing and maturing, we don't celebrate those things anymore.

There's new things as a dad that and a mom that we celebrate.

And what happens in the dissonance for some of you right now is you're so used and leaning and said, God, you're not showing up in the way you once used to show up.

He's like, Yeah, because you have grown beyond that.

I'm meeting you over here.

And so we feel like God is withdrawn and he's going, No, actually, I'm helping draw you out into deeper waters.

We doubt because of the silence of God, we doubt because of suffering, don't we?

Not just when God is silent, but when life hurts.

The pain, the tragedy, the heartache, the evil, the injustice personally, the trauma, globally.

Like, how can a good God allow so much pain and suffering in our world?

It's one of life's biggest questions.

In fact, uh, after Easter, our series after Easter is on life's biggest questions.

I want your help to come up with the series.

Uh, we're gonna start giving you um kind of helping to ask questions, and you'll fill that in, and we'll take the five biggest questions that is facing our community of like around life's biggest questions.

We'll answer those for five weeks.

But I guarantee you this will be one of them.

When life's hard, it's disorienting.

We doubt in the suffering, don't we?

We doubt because of church hurt.

When someone we looked up to failed us, whether there's abuse or moral failure, what happens is we can unintentionally put our hope and trust in a person and not in Jesus.

And when they fail us, then our faith begins to unravel, doesn't it?

And for many, I've heard sat and heard stories of exactly that.

We doubt uh because of intellectual tension.

It's my story, it's what I was telling you.

New information comes, things that you have never thought of before, ways of understanding, questions you had never asked before come in, and you feel this like angst, like it's the very first time you've ever thought of this.

You watched a TikTok, and this person sounded really, really like, oh whoa, they just debunked everything.

I I my buddy um went off to college, we were college students, and his freshman year of college, he called me desperate.

He's a brand new believer.

He he was so freaked out.

He said, Ryan, my English professor, he's at San Diego State, my English professor, nothing against San Diego State, my English professor just proved the Bible is uh false.

I was like, wow, that's amazing, you know.

I mean, nobody's been able to do that, so how did how did she do that?

She said Abraham couldn't have written Genesis because he died halfway through it.

Oh you know, that really would be problematic if anyone thought Abraham actually wrote Genesis.

But nobody does.

Moses wrote Genesis.

See, the intellectual tension sometimes, and the reality is, is there's really smart people saying really dumb things.

Or not in their area.

Intellectual tension often, though, plays itself out as what I when I sit across the table, coffee shop, is bad theology.

Somehow God let you down, disappointed you didn't show up in the way you thought, because you thought God exists to make you happy.

You thought God owes you.

And so as you did your good little boy, good little girl things, and life didn't turn out the way you thought, you're disillusioned.

Why we doubt, silence, suffering, church hurt, intellectual.

Tension, and then I think one of the main areas many of us struggle with is shame.

When we don't feel worthy anymore.

I mean, I remember wrestling with like, how could I struggle with this after all these years?

What's wrong with me?

Am I broken?

We have repeated sin, secret struggle, and failure.

And doubt creeps in.

Maybe I'm not saved.

Maybe this isn't real.

And I love Jesus' response to Thomas.

Jesus doesn't rebuke him for his doubt, and he doesn't shame him.

He meets him personally.

And he does not leave him there.

When in doubt, first need to remember every single person lives by faith.

Secondly, doubt is not the enemy of faith.

Somehow we get this inside, like, oh, if I have this, this is the enemy of faith.

Doubt isn't more often a sacred companion to faith.

It's part of the faith journey.

Doubt is, I like how Tim Keller said it, doubt, he says, a faith without some doubts is like the human body without antibodies.

It's susceptible to attack.

And here's what I found at 22 that God, the work that He was doing in me, is that an untested faith is actually a fragile faith.

It's these things that when I realize questions come in and I feel like, oh, I don't think there's an answer to them.

What I found, and I'll probably say it a few different times, what I found was in and through this process, I have a God big enough for every question that I have.

It brought about a settled conviction so that when questions arise, they no longer toss me to and fro like a wave, but I go, I have a God big enough for this one.

So, how does Jesus respond to our doubt?

Did you notice what he does?

First, Jesus comes near.

He wasn't put off by Thomas's doubt.

He wasn't standoffish.

Jesus always draws near to the broken heart.

And when you're really struggling, really wrestling, you're brokenhearted.

He draws nearer to those who are earnestly searching for the way, earnestly searching for truth, earnestly longing for life.

Now the problem is Jesus' timing.

Let's talk about timing.

I mean, he could have shown up like he said, I ain't believing until I see it, until I touch him.

And Jesus could have gone, boom, here I am, Tom.

And he didn't.

He didn't even come the next day.

An entire week went by where he's wrestling, where he's wandering, where he's struggling.

Jesus meets us precisely when we need him most.

But is not on our timeline.

This is the quiet work of God in our lives as you are wrestling and walking through, and some of you are walking through a dark night of the soul, and you're wondering, how long will it be?

How long do I have?

Is it a month?

Is it two months?

Is it a year?

And he says, I will be faithful with you through it all.

First, Jesus comes near, secondly, Jesus speaks peace.

The same word he spoke when he quieted the storm.

The first words off Jesus' lips was peace.

Because what your soul desperately needs isn't answers, you need peace.

What the doubt has created, the struggles and the questions created confusion and anxiety and depression and lostness.

And he speaks peace into that moment.

He speaks his wholeness and brings that.

He doesn't bring shame into that moment.

He says peace.

And then I love this next part.

Jesus invites investigation.

Did you notice that?

He says to Tom, Tom, come see and touch.

That's what you wanted to do.

It's not like, what were you thinking?

Why did you do that?

No, come see and touch.

Like there is no question, no problem, no issue that is scary to God, that is off limits to him, that somehow makes him shake.

Like, oh, don't look over there.

Don't think about that.

Don't go like he's like, no, no, no.

Your God is big, and your God defeated the grave.

And so come on, bring it.

He's like, come see.

Bring to Jesus your questions.

Bring to Jesus your doubts.

Bring to Jesus the hurt and the struggle and the worry and your concerns.

Like how C.S.

Lewis said, he said, lay before him what is in us.

Not what ought to be in us.

That honest soul cry, if you read the psalms, the psalms of disorientation, they lay before him what's in them.

He can handle it all.

When in doubt, everyone lives by faith, and doubt is not the enemy of faith.

What doubt actually has the ability to be in your life and my life, it can become a doorway to a deeper faith.

I've watched over the years of being a pastor.

Suffering be a double-edged sword.

Even in one family, the pain and the suffering, one person they drift away from God, another is drawn towards them.

Doubt.

Doubt can be that as well.

It can derail our faith or deepen our faith.

One of the things that draws us away is when we move to isolation.

When we retreat, when we withdraw with community, when we like me feel like we can't speak this out loud, no one understands.

No one would ever be able to, like, like if I said it, they would like, oh, I can't believe.

Instead of, you know what, this is a part of my faith journey, and Jesus is gonna meet me here.

Thomas, doubting Thomas, we already said his cry and declaration, my Lord and my God.

Seven days ago, I don't believe Jesus rose from the dead.

Seven days later, not only do I believe Jesus raised from the dead, He I believe He's God, not just a good man, God.

So I thought I'd tell you why I believe.

Twenty-three years later, from that moment, why I became a pastor.

I believe one, because uh it's historical.

To follow Jesus, you don't have to throw your brain in the trash.

Faith is not a blind, like you don't think at all.

And our faith as followers of Jesus, take this right, actually isn't built on a sacred book.

Our faith is built on a historical event.

Is my time up already?

Our faith is built on a historical event.

If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then this is the biggest waste of time.

This is a sham.

Go have brunch.

But, friends, if he did rise from the dead, then all that he said is true and trustworthy.

One of the best attested historical events in antiquity is the resurrection of Jesus.

Atheists and theists all agree on five historical facts that Jesus one is the real person that lived in Palestine, that he died by Roman crucifixion, that he was buried in a tomb, and on the third day the tomb was empty.

They don't all agree on how the tomb was empty, but they all agreed the tomb was empty, and that his disciples really believed that he rose from the dead so much so that they died for that fact.

And even skeptics, antagonistics like Saul of Tarsus, who was trying to snuff out this new movement, said he saw the risen in the Lord and gave his life and became the greatest evangelist spreading the good news.

Historical.

Down through the centuries, what you'll find is you'll find so many people who have tried to disprove Jesus, the Bible, and the resurrection, and in their process they've come to know Jesus.

C.

S.

Lewis being one of them, by the way.

C.

S.

Lewis, an atheist, Oxford scholar, went to disprove Christianity, and he became one of the greatest minds of Christianity we ever had.

A guy who was a journalist, investigative journalist at the Chicago Tribune, Lee Strobel, went to disprove Christianity, became a Christian, wrote a fantastic book called The Case for Christ.

One of the preeminent and premier scientist of our day, Francis Collins, former atheist, director of the Human Genome Project, and respected globally as a scientist.

He was searching for scientific reasons to reject God, instead, he found compelling reasons to believe.

One of the reasons I believe is historical.

One of the reasons I believe is philosophical.

I believe Christianity has the best answers to life's biggest questions.

Period.

Why am I here?

What's the purpose of life?

Is there a God?

What is morally right and true and beautiful?

Is there meaning?

What's wrong with the world and how do you put things right?

And when I look at the teachings of Jesus that have stood the test of time for over 2,000 years, no one has shaped human history more in ethics, compassion, justice, and human dignity than Jesus.

His vision of love, embracing the enemy, sacrificial self-giving remains the highest moral vision the world has ever seen.

Why I believe historical, philosophical.

The last one is probably the most significant one for me.

Personal.

After months with wrestling, doubting, struggling silently, I got to a breaking point.

I got to the place where I was like, I can't keep doing this.

The dissonance inside was just too great.

I recognized that leaving the faith meant changing my future.

I didn't know what to do with my marriage and family relationships.

Downtown Chicago, I went to a coffee shop and I just brought my Bible and I prayed the honest prayer that so many, maybe you've prayed yourself.

God, if you're real, I need you to show up, show yourself to me.

And if not, I'm out.

Did the thing that you're probably not supposed to do.

All I did was just, I did this.

I just opened up my Bible.

And in that moment, God met me.

Personally.

Because you have a personal rescuer and savior.

And I'd like to say that it felt like a light switch, you know, and all of a sudden the floodlights came on and the darkness of doubt evaporated, but it was so much more like the rising of the sun.

Gradual.

That moment, God, you showed up and you met me, and I know it, and I experienced you.

And it was as if that darkness began to subside, and you saw the gray of dawn just beginning to peak.

And then month after month after month, it just began to grow brighter and brighter and brighter.

And I found what the prophet Jeremiah said so long ago to be absolutely true.

He said, and you will seek me, and you will find me when you search for me with all your heart.

You'll seek me and you'll find me when you search for me with all your heart.

And so if you are there, or if you get there, or when in doubt, when you get there, friends, the only thing I know to say, when in doubt, would you seek Jesus with your whole heart?

Cling to Him.

Run to Him.

Search for Him.

And He will be found by you.

For some.

Yours just an honest prayer that I prayed, God.

If you're real, I need you to show yourself to me.

And He will.

And He will.

Others are where I'm at now is I remember someone once saying, Don't question in the darkness what God has clearly shown you in the light.

And that moment at that coffee shop moment is an anchor moment in my faith journey of where God met me specifically and personally.

I had it at 17, I had it at 22, and I could go on of a few other of those anchor moments.

So in the journey of life through the ups and downs, I have these anchor moments, these mile markers, these postings of where I go, his faithfulness, he showed up here, he showed up here, and he'll do it again.

And some of you just need to remember back to when he showed up, when he spoke to you, when he met you, because you are drifting, and he's already given you a tether of his relationship, of his presence.

And so today, bring to him what is in you, not what ought to be in you.

And allow Jesus to meet the very places of your heart that you desperately need him to.

Jesus, thanks for my friends.

Thanks for your grace.

Thank you for your tenderness and your kindness, that your presence is peace.

That you meet us in the places of our doubt, of our struggle, of our uncertainty, but you do not leave us there.

And so right now, Father, I ask that you would breathe life and hope.

Holy Spirit, your presence would be so tangible to those lost and wandering, feeling adrift at sea.

May they hear your voice.

Even the fact that I'm preaching on this and they walked into this moment is not an accident.

May they see your hand at work, your intentionality, your care.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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