Dealing With Doubt, Doubt, Trust, Words of Endurance

How do I seek Your face when my flesh needs Your hand? What must I do, O Lord, there’s a need to understand.
RITA SPRINGER “I Remain in You”

I can really relate to the verse above from the song “I Remain in You.” Especially because I am constantly seeking God’s face, longing to feel His presence and have a strong inner drive to always understand what is going on. It was not too long ago, when I was going through a season of doubt, that I cried out to God and asked Him how was I supposed to carry on a ministry to others – encouraging them to endure and have hope – when I could not even feel His presence and I myself was desperate for His touch. I totally expected a feeling of condemnation and guilt in response to my cry but much to my surprise and delight instead I heard a soft voice speak to my heart – “My child, what you are experiencing is so pleasing to me because you are in a season of exercising and growing your faith in Me.”

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. HEBREWS 11:6

I was elated! I was pleasing to God because I had faith in Him even when I could not feel or see Him and doubt was pounding at the door of my heart. But the key was I did not turn away from Him – I turned and cried out to Him because I knew He was there and He was listening. The Bible defines faith in Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
HEBREWS 11:1

Faith is exactly what we need when we are plagued by doubt. Faith banishes doubt as it enables us to seek God, to believe in Him, to trust Him and to move on through life with Him even when we do not see Him. We sometimes overlook the fact that faith is also a living thing. Faith is not static and unchangeable. Like a muscle, faith can grow and be strengthened when we exercise it. We exercise and grow in faith when:
*We put the gift of faith into action, such as when we believe in God’s power and ability to do something rather than believing in our own power (Romans 4:19-21)
*We spend time seeking to understand God’s Word (Romans 10:17).
*We are encouraged by others who share our faith (1 Thessalonians 3:2, 10).
*We remember God’s faithfulness to us in the past (Psalm 77:10-12). *We admit our faith is weak and ask God to give us faith (Mark 9:21-24).

It is important that we exercise and strengthen our faith because the Bible assures us that life on earth will test our faith. In the same way that the strength of a muscle is stretched and tested by hard use, the strength of our faith is stretched and tested as we apply it to the trials of life. When our prayers seem to go unanswered – when our pain lingers for months or even years – when God appears to be silent despite our desperate cries for help – our faith is stretched and tested. During times of testing, we are particularly vulnerable to doubt. For some of us, our faith may be stretched to near the breaking point but even then we can find hope and comfort because the Scripture assures us that the testing of our faith refines it – purifies it – strengthens it – proving it to be a genuine faith.

So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold— though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
1 PETER 1:6-7 (NLT)

On the journey with you,
Jan Dravecky

Dealing With Doubt, Doubt, Trust, Words of Endurance

Whenever we look in the realm of nature, we see evidence for God’s design and exquisite care for His creatures. Whether we examine the cosmos on its largest scale or its tiniest, His handiwork is evident … God’s fingerprints are visible.
HUGH ROSS, PH.D., ASTROPHYSICIST

When our faith is shaken to the core and when we question God’s very existence that is when we hunger for tangible evidence of our invisible God. Although the dark passages of our lives may dim our view, we literally are surrounded by a world full of visible signs of God. Even a cursory look at creation reveals evidence of God’s fingerprints in every glance. Feast your eyes on just a few of the “fingerprints” – visible reminders of what God has created by His own hand.

The Largest Fingerprints
The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known.
PSALM 19:2

*A universe that encompasses about a trillion galaxies, each one averaging a hundred billion stars.
*Our own star, the sun, that has a mass or weight of 2 billion, billion, billion tons.
*The planet earth that is perfectly designed for our existence. If the earth varied in distance from the sun by as little as 2%, life on earth would cease.
*The moon that lights our night sky and because of its gravitational force, creates tides that cleanse our oceans and stabilizes the earth’s axis, preventing extreme and deadly climactic changes.

The Tiniest Fingerprints
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
ROMANS 139:13-14

* The human body, comprising of one hundred trillion cells most of which are too small for the human eye to see without magnification.
*DNA, the chemical instruction book of all living cells. If the instructions in just one DNA molecule in one human cell were written out, they would fill a thousand, six-hundred-page books.
*Human DNA that is so complex that if the DNA from just one human being were unwound and joined together end to end, it would stretch from the earth to the sun and back again more than four hundred times.
*Human bone marrow, hidden in the long bones of the body, that turns out a trillion new cells each day.
*Sixty thousand miles of blood vessels within the average-sized human that link every living cell. Within those vessels, blood cells travel at remarkable speeds. A round-trip journey from heart to toe and back again, including a brief stop in the lungs to refuel, normally takes a red blood cell only twenty seconds.
*The human brain, weighing in at only three pounds, is packed with ten billion nerve cells, each with up to ten thousand private lines of communication. The brain’s total number of connections rivals the numbers of stars and galaxies in the universe. In addition, the chemistry of the brain works so marvelously that five trillion chemical operations occur with the brain in any given second.

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky.
Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—
his eternal power and divine nature.
So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
ROMANS 1:20

On the journey with you,
Jan & Dave Dravecky

Dealing With Doubt, Doubt, Trust, Words of Endurance

All Scripture is inspired by God
and is useful to teach us what is true
and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.
It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.
2 TIMOTHY 3:16 (NLT)

Whenever I am dealing with doubt, instinctively I immediately turn to the Bible. To me, it is the one tangible evidence of God’s existence that I can touch and experience. But I have not always had this complete confidence. During one season of doubting God, I began to doubt the authenticity of the Bible. So with my inquisitive mind, I began to do some research and I learned many invaluable facts about the Bible that would sustain me during future seasons of doubt.

I learned that the Bible has had a greater impact on human history than any other book. The desire for copies of the Bible inspired the invention of the printing press. Worldwide, billions of Bibles have been sold and the Bible continues to outsell every book ever published.

Yet the Bible is more than an influential bestseller; it is God’s Word. The Bible is God’s letter to the human race. As the Scripture claims, it originated with God, not with men. (2 Peter 1:20-21)

So given the vital importance of the Bible’s claims, how do we know we can trust its authenticity? How do we know it is actually from God? Consider the following facts:

Unity
The Bible was penned on three different continents, in three different languages, over a span of approximately 1500 years. Century after century, 40 different authors from diverse backgrounds wrote their portions of this book. And even more amazing is that after careful study; the 66 separate books of the Bible are in complete harmony and unity.

Scientific and Historical Accuracy
What I absolutely love is how the Bible is far ahead of scientific research. Centuries before scientists took note of it, the water cycle was described in the books of Ecclesiastes 1:7, Isaiah 55:10 and Job 36:27-28. ISAIAH 40:22 speaks of the “circle of the earth” even though for the next 1500 years most people still believed that the earth was flat. Scientists now agree that a catastrophic, worldwide flood, such as that described in Genesis 6, actually did occur. Archeological evidence agrees with the lives and recorded deeds of Bible characters.

Relevance
The moral directives and standards for living put forth in the Bible are as relevant today as they were when they were written. Unlike other works of literature, the Bible – Genesis to Revelation – addresses hundreds of controversial topics and does so with an amazing degree of harmony.

Preservation
Although many have tried, the Bible cannot be destroyed. Jesus affirmed this truth when He said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away” (Mark 13:31). Portions of the Bible were written first on perishable materials that were copied and recopied for hundreds and even thousands of years. Even so, the Scriptures have never diminished in style or correctness, nor have they faced extinction. When compared to other ancient writings, The Bible has more manuscript evidence to support it than any ten pieces of ancient, classic literature combined.

Fulfilled Prophecy
The Bible stands alone as the only piece of literature that accurately predicts the future. The Old Testament, for example, contains more than 300 references to the coming Messiah that were precisely fulfilled by Jesus Christ. In addition, the Bible has many other prophecies that have been fulfilled and verified through archeological evidence.

Influence
Part of the beauty of Scripture is that is alive, empowered by the Holy Spirit of God (Hebrews 4:12). While some books can change a person’s thinking, the Bible is the only one that can change a person’s nature. Thus its life-changing power is one of the greatest proofs that the Bible is true.

When doubts about God begin to erode our faith – take heart and know that we can open the pages of His mighty miraculous Book and know that its words and the God who inspired them, are absolutely trustworthy.

For the word of God is alive and powerful.
It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword,
cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow.
It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.
HEBREWS 4:12 (NLT)

On the journey with you,
Jan Dravecky