A Gentle Whisper: Listening for God in Doubt

Well, this semester we're talking about listening to God.

Listening to God because the Lord was not in the wind, the Lord

was not in the earthquake, the Lord was not in the fire.

But after the fire, a gentle whisper.

And in the gentle whisper, we hear God.

And we understand how to hear God.

To understand that.

We started with Elijah, which was in the worst of the worst situation.

He was absolutely hopeless from the circumstances of life.

And if you can hear God in.

In hopelessness, you can hear God in all the other challenges of

life.

And so we learn from Elijah four things.

First of all, we have to be willing to hear.

If God dealt with you today and gave you answers and helped you

cope with your doubt, whether those be answers or just acceptance

with your doubt, would you do it?

You have to be willing to hear.

Second, we learned from Elijah that you have to ask God to speak

to you.

So often we don't hear from God because we don't ask him to.

And when it comes to doubt, we're afraid sometimes to ask him

to because we think somehow we can't bring our doubts to God.

Sure he can.

We have to ask him to speak to us.

And then we learn from Elijah that hearing from from God requires

reflection.

When God finally came to Elijah after all he'd been through,

he didn't give him the answer.

He said to Elijah, what are you doing here?

Figure it out.

I gave you all these victories just a little bit ago, and now you're

here groveling in the desert and you're scared to death what happened.

Reflect on it.

And then we learn from Elijah that you have to get close to God

to hear him, because often he speaks in a whisper.

And if you're not close, you can't hear the whisper.

God is approachable.

We can go to him in Scripture.

We can go to him from Understanding Kingdom perspective.

We can listen to him from other Christian people.

But we got to sometimes just turn off the noise and clatter in

order to hear.

But the question is not just what God's saying in every situation.

The question is, are we willing to listen?

Because Elijah, excuse me, God never left Elijah.

Elijah stopped listening.

And when we stopped listening, that's when God seemed so far and

in our doubts, he seemed silent.

God promises the best for you and for me.

Better than we can imagine a way of life to get through the messiness

and the challenges and to capture the best in life.

And this semester my prayer for us is that we will learn to listen

better to God.

And today we're going to ask him to Speak to us about doubt.

So let's pray together and ask God to speak.

Lord, we come to you with our doubts.

We're going to put them right in front of you.

We're going to not hide them.

We're going to admit them.

And that's scary because then what happens?

Well, you've got to give us the answer, and we trust you for

that.

In your name we ask it.

Amen.

Listening to God in doubt.

Here's the bottom line.

The bottom line is this.

There is no faith without some doubting.

But our faith is stronger every time we understand and resolve

doubt.

And so listening to our doubt is the most important opportunity

to grow in Christ.

Because every time we have our doubts, then we get closer to God.

And we'll have more doubts after that and more doubts after

that, as we'll see from some of the heroes of faith who lived

that and showed us that that's how they lived until they got to

a level of confirmation.

Well, the foundation of everything in life is trust, isn't

it?

I trusted this morning when I was running a little late for first

chapel that when I got in my car, it would start and it would

go, and it did.

And I trusted that my computer would come on early this morning

when I needed to catch some emails, and it did.

And I trust that gravity holds us right here in place and we don't

spin off into deep space as this world we're on is traveling

at thousands of miles an hour.

But gravity we trust.

We don't understand it, but we can still trust it.

I don't understand everything about my car, but I can still trust

it.

I don't understand how my computer works, but I can trust it.

I don't really get how gravity works.

It's pretty amazing.

There's just the right amount of gravity, but I can trust it.

You trust Belhaven to prepare you for your future.

You chose us.

You didn't have to come here.

You chose us.

You trusted us to prepare you for a future.

You trust your parents.

You trust your family.

My wife and I trusted each other 49 years ago when we made a

commitment to each other that we wouldn't break that pledge.

We trust God, who made us, who redeems us, who guides us.

We don't always understand it all, but we still trust.

Because trust is foundational to everything that happens in life.

But here's the thing.

The more you know about something, the more you can trust

it.

I got a really nice car now.

I don't know much about it, but I Used to have an old clunker.

I mean, it was really bad.

It was beat up and rusted, all this stuff.

Sometimes it didn't start.

I trusted that car totally because I knew it inside and out

and I knew how to fix it and I knew what to do when it wouldn't

do what I wanted it to do.

Because I knew that car so well, I could still trust it, even

though it was far from coming off the showroom floor.

Belhaven, you trust.

I hate to say Belhaven's not perfect.

There's things sometimes we get wrong.

But the more you know it, even with those flaws, you trust more

and more.

Your family, your friends, your relationships that you're in,

they're sometimes bumpy, they're sometimes rocky, but you

can still trust because you know them so well.

My wife, after all these years, I came up the other day.

We've known each other 53 years.

That's a long time.

53 years.

I'm not perfect.

After 53 years, I'm pretty well convinced she is.

I really am.

I'm fortunate.

We trust God more through the years.

The more we know him.

You see, Christianity breaks down to how much we can trust.

And the more you know God, the more you can trust God.

That is central to our doubts.

See, our relationship with God is not just a bunch of promises.

I'm thankful for the promises of God.

I love them.

We put them on social media, we stick them in little reminders

in our books, in our rooms, and whatever it may be.

But Christianity and faith in God is not just about promises.

It's a process.

And that process is often complex.

And it's messy and it's confusing, and it's called life.

And sometimes our relationship with God runs so counter to the world,

it just feels out of sorts.

There's a book I love, I probably mentioned it before, called

the Upside Down Kingdom.

In other words, everything that the world values, God devalues.

And everything God devalues the world.

Excuse me, everything God values, the world devalues.

So issues like grace and forgiveness and putting the least

powerful first don't make sense in our world.

And in that, the process is messy.

You see, lived out faith raises doubts.

And if you're living the Christian faith and you're living

in the complexity of life, you're going to have doubts.

But the good news is God can handle our doubts.

He's not afraid of our doubts.

We're probably more afraid of him than he is.

But if you go back through Scripture, almost everybody doubted

Elijah, that we started this whole series about Elijah doubted

God had just given this huge victory, amazing victory.

And here he is, just not very many days later, hiding in the desert,

scared to death.

He doubted completely.

Moses doubted Moses.

God brought him throughout to lead the people out of Egypt and

out of slavery and in, across the Red Sea.

And all that happened.

And Moses still doubted he'd been in the presence of God.

God in those days wasn't revealed into people like the Holy

Spirit reveals himself to us now.

God's presence was often contained and he was invited in.

And Moses had been in God's presence.

He was overwhelmed by God's presence.

He'd had that experience and he still doubted.

David in the Psalms, vocalizes doubts.

He just kind of screams out and questions God, why are you doing

this?

Why don't you take care of my enemies?

Why do you let me suffer?

He asks the questions that we're afraid to ask out loud.

And the disciples who knew Jesus best even doubted.

We see that all the way through their life until after the

resurrection, when they saw something dead.

But even at that point, Thomas, who wasn't there when Jesus

first appeared to the disciples, doubted.

He didn't think it was true.

And the amazing thing is that even with his doubts, Jesus loved

him.

Jesus didn't push him away because he doubted.

He invited him in.

In fact, here's a scripture.

It says, One of the 12 disciples, Thomas, was not with the

others.

When Jesus came.

They told him, we've seen the Lord.

But he replied, I won't believe it unless I see the nail

wounds in his hand and put my fingers into them and place my hand

into the wound in his side.

Eight days later, the disciples were together again.

This time, Thomas was with them.

The doors were locked.

But suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them.

Peace be with you, he said.

Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and look at my hands.

Put your hand into the wounds of my side.

Don't be faithless any longer.

Believe, my Lord, my God.

Thomas exclaimed.

Then Jesus told him, you believe because you have seen me.

Blessed are those who.

Who believe without seeing me.

Believing without seeing is sometimes very difficult.

You see, doubt is not the opposite of faith.

Doubt is not unbelief.

Doubt is that state of suspension between belief and faith

and unbelief.

It's in between.

It's being held there in limbo.

To hear God in our doubts, we need to understand that we've got

to do something about it.

So let's start by figuring out why it is that we doubt.

And I Think there are seven reasons why we doubt.

The first is we forget to remember.

We forget to remember.

A story today from Joshua that Emma read for us where Joshua recounted

the story about how they'd been slaves in Egypt.

Jesus.

God.

Excuse me.

God brought them out of that with the plagues against the Egyptian

people until the pharaoh let them go.

And then they went across the Red Sea and the pharaoh changed his

mind and they came after him to try to capture him again.

And as they did, the pharaoh's army was all taken in the sea as

it collapsed around them after the Israelites had walked through

on dry land.

And then they got to the other side.

And they said after they got there a little bit, they were glad

to be away.

But they said, what are we going to do now?

We're out in the middle of nowhere.

We have nothing to eat.

We have no water.

And God made a way.

And Moses struck his staff on the rock and it gave water.

And God brought manna by heaven every day and fed the people.

And they still doubted.

And God let them wander for 40 years in the wilderness before he

brought them to the promised land, the land we now know as Israel.

Before he brought them there and that land was occupied.

And Emma read the names of all the nations that had to be conquered

in order to take that land.

And God allowed that to happen.

That's the story Joshua tells them to remember.

He says, if you forget to remember, you're not going to trust

God for the future.

You've got to remember.

And when you don't remember, that's why you doubt.

Second reason we doubt is we have a faulty view of God.

Maybe we think of God as harsh.

God's just waiting for me to make a mistake.

I just mess it up and God will flick me off into hell and he'll

go on down the road.

Cause that doesn't matter.

Or maybe we have a view of God that's too small.

We're dealing with problems and complexities and things that

are difficult with our family or medical or decisions or whatever.

And we feel like there's no way out.

And we think God is too small, can't handle it.

God can handle it.

Our faulty view of God can lead us to doubts.

Maybe we have a weak foundation.

We've never wrestled with the hard questions.

We take the simplistic answers to things.

And so we've never really dealt with the hard questions of

faith.

And let our faith stand up to these questions of tests.

And because of that, our foundation is weak.

And so when the challenges come we feel wobbly in our faith

and we doubt.

Maybe it's because we have never fully committed.

You know, I've hired tons of coaches through the years here at

Belhaven.

I don't think I've ever hired a coach who says.

When I asked him what's the key to the team, he said, I. I've

got to have the players fully commit to the system.

If you're fully committed to the system, we're going to do well.

I've never always understood what the system is, but they know

it well and they usually give me a booklet that explains the system

like that.

And then when they're winning, I say, why are you winning like the

basketball team is now?

I asked Coach not long ago, why are you winning?

Because they're fully committed to the system.

They're fully committed.

That's why we're winning.

What's required when you're fully committed?

Maybe some of us are afraid of what's required to be fully committed.

And so we have doubts.

Maybe we doubt because we're not growing in Christ.

Being stagnant feels safe.

Trusting God for more is scary, and so we're just happy with

that.

But in that we're going to have doubts develop.

Maybe we doubt because we're dependent on an emotional faith.

Emotions are part of trust.

Absolutely they're part of trust.

But if they're all there is, emotions can't sustain.

There has to be a track record.

There has to be proof.

There has to be reason that goes with it.

Our faith can stand up to reason and to thinking.

And so if you're dependent on emotional faith, there will be times

you doubt more.

And then lastly, maybe we fear trusting without understanding.

I want to understand everything.

If I could just figure out everything in the Bible and understand

it fully, then I'll trust.

If I could just understand why God allows suffering to happen to

good people, then I'll trust.

If I could just understand why sometimes I don't hear from God,

then I'll trust.

We fear trusting without fully understanding.

But belief requires believing.

Faith won't understand it all.

It's going to take some trust without understanding to follow God.

Well.

Listening for God in doubt from Joshua 24 was read for us so

nicely today for us by Emma.

Joshua was the successor to Moses.

Moses brought the people out of the promised land across the Red

Sea.

Ten Commandments, the whole thing.

Joshua was the one who took over from him.

And Joshua now is at the end of his life.

In chapter 24 of the book of Joshua, he'd come through so much.

They'd come through this story of the Exodus, we call it the Exodus

from Egypt, through the wilderness into the promised land.

And at the end of his life, people were divided by what they

believed.

This had happened before.

This wasn't the first time people were divided.

Remember when Moses went to the mountain to get the ten Commandments

from God, and he was there a long time.

And the people began to question and doubt.

And so they thought, you know, this isn't working, so let's go back

to our old gods and let's create a golden calf.

Everybody melt down your gold and let's create an idol that we

can worship.

Because in those days, people worshiped a lot of different gods.

They created over various things to somehow try to find a spiritual

level of life.

So they did that.

So this, when they doubted again.

This wasn't the first time around.

They'd been here before.

You see, doubt is one foot in trusting God and one foot in trusting

the world.

And that's where the people were.

They trusted God, yeah.

But they also trusted in the gods of their past and the gods of

the land that they conquered.

And so this doubt was growing unexamined.

And Joshua said, this can't go on, folks.

You've got to deal with your doubt.

And so he challenged them to do four things.

The first is he said, you got to face your doubts.

You got to face your doubts.

We're afraid to face our doubts, so we pretend we don't have

them.

We assume nobody else has got doubts.

Look at them.

They're singing, they're happy, they believe all those words.

When we sang the song and I got doubts, and I'm kind of mumbling

the words because I'm alone in this.

No, you're not.

Everybody's got doubts.

Various times you're going to have doubts.

We assume that maybe others know more than we do, and that's

why they don't doubt.

If I just knew more, then I wouldn't doubt.

Not necessarily.

Again, growing in Christ does help you trust more, but you're not

going to know everything.

Oh, we assume that if we don't deal with doubt, somehow the doubt

will go away.

No, the doubt will linger.

And if you don't deal with doubt, doubt will win.

We've got to deal with doubts.

And so Joshua just said to the people, deal with it.

Face your doubts.

Don't be afraid.

Let's get them out in the open.

Let's talk about them and put your doubts out in front of God.

Secondly, he says to the people, he says, choose who you're

going to trust.

Choose who you're going to trust.

Are you going to trust God or are you going to trust these idols

that you've created?

In ancient times, they would often create gods and idols.

God of the weather and God over the children, and God over this

and the that.

In Roman culture there were tons of tons of gods.

Everybody created these gods that they somehow used to explain

things they didn't understand, but they didn't follow the true God.

So he said, are you going to follow the true God or are you going

to follow your idols?

Well, you go.

Way to go, Joshua.

Tell them to get rid of the idols.

Well, what about our idols?

We don't create little statues.

We have idols of money.

We have idols of power, career, success, self status.

These idols we create in our lives and we follow after those idols

instead of following after God and trust him for what the outcome

will be.

And Joshua says, throw them away.

When you look at the majesty of God and who God is and, and all

that he is compared to the idols, the idols are meaningless

compared to the goodness of God.

You gotta choose who you gonna trust because it can't be both.

Then Joshua says, remember what you know.

Remember what you know.

You may not know everything, but remember the parts you know.

And that's why this long story of the Exodus is repeated again there

for us in chapter 24 that we kinda looked at as I shared this

morning.

Now, the Jewish people today still remember the Exodus.

That's the core of Jewish faith.

And they retell the story of the Exodus.

They have special meals that celebrate pieces of the Exodus.

They have celebrations, they have holidays about the Exodus.

It's all retelling that story over and over and over.

For some, you know, 3,000 years have been telling this story

of the Exodus.

Remember what they know.

Well, I love the story of the Exodus, but I can tell you it doesn't

do a lot for me because I wasn't there, none of my family was

there.

And it doesn't really connect with me in the same way that it would

have with the people of Joshua, because they all knew people

who were there.

So it doesn't.

So where do I go?

I want to tell you where I go when I have doubts to remember.

Now, your list may be different, but there are three places

I go when I have doubts and I need to remember who God is.

The first is I go to the resurrection, the resurrection of

Jesus.

You see, everything in the Old Testament builds up to the resurrection

of Jesus and everything that Comes after that in the New Testament

is explaining in the context of the resurrection, because the

resurrection, when Christ came to earth and walked in our world

and talked and lived with us, but gave himself a sacrifice for

our sins on a cross so that we could be forgiven and come back into

fellowship with God, and then he rose from the grave.

That's what I remember.

And if you were here last semester, you remember we spent quite

a bit of time looking at the proof of the resurrection.

There are parts of the Bible I know I do not understand, and I can't

explain it to you, but I can explain the resurrection to you.

And I know the resurrection is absolutely true.

And it's the centerpiece of the whole thing.

You see, the resurrection is not real.

The rest of it really doesn't matter.

But if the resurrection is real, then all of it matters.

I know first of all from the biblical eyewitnesses.

We have four biblical eyewitnesses who tell the story in

the four gospels of the resurrection.

But if they made up the lie and they just want to continue on,

so Jesus said he's going to come back.

Jesus really died.

So let's make up this story that he rose from the grave and let's

all write it down so that people would believe us.

You wouldn't write it that way.

They contradict each other a little bit because that's how eyewitness

accounts do.

They tell that the first people to see Jesus resurrected were

the women.

Well, in that day, 2,000 years ago, women had zero status in a court

of law.

They couldn't testify, their witness meant nothing.

But that's who they said because that was the truth of what

happened.

You go on and on in the detail of those resurrection eyewitness

stories, and you see they're absolutely true.

They couldn't have made it up.

Second, we had the empty tomb.

Tomb wasn't empty and the stone wasn't rolled away so Jesus

could get out.

It was rolled away so we could see in and we could see he was no

longer there.

And instead an angel was sitting there and said, he is risen.

And then Jesus appeared after the resurrection over 40 days to

500 different people.

500 different people.

If this was made up, how are you going to get 500 people to all

say the same lie?

And nobody ever tell the truth.

If three of you know a secret today, you can't keep it till dinner

tonight.

It's not going to happen.

Somebody's going to tell just the nature of it.

You see, if it was made up, he wouldn't appear to 500 different

people.

And all the people they told.

And then one of the biggest ones was the transformation of the

disciples.

These disciples were arguing, they were shallow, they were doubters,

they were questioning Jesus all the way through.

These guys who knew him the best, and they were question stuff

all the way through.

But after the resurrection, these were transformed men, absolutely

transformed.

They knew it, they believe it.

They gave the rest of their life to tell the story that Jesus

died for your sins and he rose from the grave and he's alive today.

And they even most of them were martyred because of their commitment

to tell the truth.

You see, when I want to remember who God is, I remember the

Resurrection, first of all.

Second thing I remember when I want to remember who God is, is I

look at creation.

I'm fascinated by creation.

The complexity of this Earth and the mix of animals and plants

and the ecosystems and how they all work together.

And to see all that happen is just amazing.

Then you take the human body and how the various parts, the intricacies

of it, how it actually works.

It's just remarkable that who we are physically and mentally can

come together.

And then for me, I'm really fascinated by space and the space

God created.

Now, maybe it's not a big deal to you.

Space is a big deal to me because, you know, I was 15 years

old when we walked on the moon.

So I remember that day very well.

To watch in our black and white TV with Neil Armstrong getting

off of that lunar module and stepping foot on the moon for the

very first time.

Now, today we have photos from Mars.

We have these Hubble telescope photos that are pretty remarkable.

The detail they show about faith.

Excuse me, about space.

But to me, it's almost incomprehensible to understand the

vastness of space.

Space.

The vastness of space.

There's so much we don't know.

If you could travel and I could travel, and I wish I could,

at the speed of light.

At the speed of light, it would take one second to get to the

moon.

Now, right now, if you want to get in a space capsule at NASA, if

they were going, or Elon Musk has got one you could hitch onto

to get to the moon, it would take you at least three days.

That's as far as our technology has gotten.

We cannot get there any faster.

But if you could go at the speed of light, it would take you

one second to get to the moon.

It would take you eight minutes to get to the sun.

If you could travel at the speed of light, it would take 2,000

years to get to the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, the galaxy

we're in.

And if you could travel at the speed of light, it would take 46.5

billion years, years to get to the edge of the observable universe.

God created it all.

We don't begin to understand the power and the vastness of God.

And so when I want to remember, I go to that.

I go to Jesus rose from the grave.

I go to looking at creation.

And then I look at my story.

My story, what God has done for me, how he's transformed my lives,

what he's done for me to grow up in a Christian family and to now

give me a family of my own.

And how he watches and guides and protects us.

I've got stories about Belhaven that I could spend weeks

telling you about.

Miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle that's happened

on this campus to make things happen that you enjoy today and you

don't think much about.

I see the lives of.

Of other people who've been transformed.

I hear a lot of your stories.

I hear from alumni.

I'm overwhelmed by the stories of when I want to remember.

I remember the resurrection.

I remember creation, and I remember the stories.

And I know how big God is.

When I remember, my doubts become insignificant to what I know

for sure.

Yeah, I may doubt this little thing here that I don't really get

in some book of the Bible or some way it's said or whatever it

might be.

I got doubts about that.

But all this big stuff, I know for sure.

And so my doubts become pretty insignificant compared to what I

know for sure.

And the other thing is when I remember, my trust and understanding

grows deeper every time.

So when we doubt and we deal with those doubts by remembering,

we trust God more the next time around, and that cycle continues

in our lives.

Well, the fourth thing that Joshua said, you just got to finally

decide who you're going to serve.

Make a decision, gang.

You got to decide.

God reveals himself to us in creation, in Christ and the Holy

Spirit, in.

In scripture.

God is bigger and closer than we could ever comprehend.

More is written and studied on this topic of who God is and Jesus

is than any other topic in the history of mankind.

And we still have doubts.

You finally just got to decide.

I'm never having doubts.

I'll go away.

I. I finally just got to decide.

Joshua says, for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.

I made that decision to trust God enough that he'll give me a faith

to stand up to the test.

Of life doesn't mean I still don't doubt at times.

Doesn't mean I don't ask questions at times.

It's a process.

It's not promises alone, but in our doubts, we have to finally

decide, am I going to follow God, or am I going to try and keep

one foot in God's camp and one foot in the world and just let the

doubts control my life?

Because it's going to be one or the other.

I pray that for you, you'll listen to God in your doubts and

in our benediction as we pray it.

May that be your prayer that God will answer your concerns.

Say it together with me.

No eye is seen, no ear is heard, no mind is conceived, but

God has prepared for those who love Him.

Have a great day.

God bless.