Dealing With Doubt, Doubt, Faith, Hope, Trust, Words of Endurance

Although they were unsettling,
my doubts led me to search,
to ask questions that eventually strengthened my faith.
Pastor Frederick Buechner has called our doubts
“the ants in the pants of faith – they keep it alive and moving.”
I had a lot of ants.
JAN DRAVECKY

Debbie had been battling MS the majority of her adult life. She was worn out – not just physically and emotionally but spiritually as well.

“I seem to have lost God in all of this,” she shared. “I feel like I’m losing hope and what’s worse is that I can’t see God. I need so much to feel His presence but I can’t see Him. I even feel silly for believing in God. I wonder if God is real. What is it that I believe? What have I put my faith in?”

Her words, although they may seem shocking to some people, were no surprise to me. Many people who have endured a season of suffering echo the same doubts. Have you been there?

A number of years ago, Debbie’s words could have been my own. In the midst of a deep depression, I reached a point where I felt stupid believing in a God I couldn’t see. I wanted to see God visually because I could no longer feel him. I could so identify with the disciple Thomas, also known as “Doubting Thomas.”

“Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
JOHN 20:25 (WORDS OF THE DISCIPLE THOMAS)

But the Bible tells us that we are not to live by our own sight –

For we live by faith, not by sight.
2 CORINTHIANS 5:7

No human can literally see God and live but I learned that there are definitely ways for us to “see” God.
We can “see” God in His Word.
We can “see” God through His Son, Jesus.
We can “see” God in the love of others.
We can “see” God through the beauty of His creation.
We can “see” God as we look back on the times we know He touched and worked in our life.

The next several weeks we will be exploring each one of these ways for us to “see” God. Hopefully this will open the eyes of our hearts to “see” a glimpse of our invisible God. I pray that you discover, as I did, that He’s not so invisible after all.

Be merciful to those who doubt …
JUDE 22

On the journey with you,
Jan Dravecky