Do you Doubt? - 3/05/2017

WARNING PREACHY…

 

Matthew 11:1-6

11 After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee.

² When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples ³ to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
⁴ Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: ⁵ The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. ⁶ Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

True life is born of the Cross. 

At the Cross, everyone struggles with doubt in Jesus.  At the Cross, even His own disciples abandoned Him and went into hiding.  I’m not suggesting this is right but I am comforted that I am not alone.

Many years ago, in despair, I laid hands on a person and boldly asked Jesus to intervene and heal the person; and miraculously He did.  This was the only time in the history of my entire life that I ever experienced such a clear and drastic positive response to such a prayer.  And since that time, I have often struggled with whether I had actually experienced what I remember experiencing. 

The verses above help me to see that I am not the only person to struggle with this sort of doubt.

John the Baptist was in a prison, a prison and on death-row in fact, and as he assessed his life he is wondered if Jesus was actually God’s Messiah.

Do you remember the day that John baptized Jesus?  He proclaimed that he was not even worthy to untie the shoes of the Messiah, that while he baptized with water the Messiah would baptize with the Holy Spirit, and that Jesus needed to baptize him rather than he baptize Jesus. (Matthew 3)  John even proclaimed “behold the Lamb of God (John 1:29) referring to Jesus.  Heck, John even experienced the audible voice of God from heaven declaring that Jesus was His son, whom He loved.  And despite all of that John had a faith crisis.  His life took a turn toward the unexpected and he found himself in prison because the king’s wife who wanted his head on a platter.  (Matthew 14)

John must have been totally broadsided by this.  His whole life was devoted to God and the introduction of Jesus as the Messiah.  He wasn’t supposed to end up on death-row, but rather to enjoy the riches of God’s kingdom as one of His prophets.  And in his personal struggle, in order to make sense of things, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was actually the One who was to come--or is somehow he got it wrong.

I do this.  Too often I have an idea about what the future is supposed to hold, and when things don’t play out the way I expect, I begin to doubt myself, I doubt God, and even doubt my own experiences.  How about you?  Do things not play out the way you think they should and then you begin questioning everything that you thought you knew to be true?

How are we supposed to handle doubt when the struggles of life pound us?

Like John, I think Jesus says that we need to pay attention to the miracles and blessings, and not our own life circumstances.  I know, easier said than done.  To this day, I still continue to waffle between faith and doubt depending on my emotional status on any given day.  But we can take heart as the Cross is not the end of the story, but rather, we must take hope in the resurrection from the dead and the new life in Christ.

Two-thousand years ago, in a prison’s death-row, a man who baptized the Son of God struggled with his faith because of his life’s circumstances.  The Bible never tells us how his battle ended; if at the end of it he had faith or not.  But he struggled, and I am comforted as I struggle because it is in the midst of my struggles that I know I still have faith.

It’s when I stop struggling that I will worry.