“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 20:24.

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men. –Acts 17:11-12

 And Jesus said to him, “If you can”! “All things are possible for one who believes.”  Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”-Mark 9:23-24

 

I’m Glory Bound

 Me and my Lord are clappin’
For what’s gonna happen
‘Cause we know that I’m glory bound.

I’m preaching to souls
On hills and plateaus
In sun, rain, or snowfall.
And each place I go
The miracles grow
As I faithfully answer God’s call.
I’m sharing His love
And His blessings thereof
And holding them all in my thrall.
And as I serve the Lord
I find my reward
In His saving grace for us all.

I’m on a mission
The Lord’s great commission
To find lost sheep and collect them all.
So when it’s my time
To make my last climb
I can meet my God standing tall.
I know when I get there
I’m gonna be met there
By glorious sights and sounds.
The sky will be bold
And the streets paved with gold
And every head will be wearing a crown.

We will lie in green pastures
And worship our Master
For once we were lost now we’re found.
It will fulfill all our prayers
Because the Lord will be there
And each soul will be held spellbound.
The Lord will look through
My whole life’s review
To see just what I’ve achieved
And If I’ve done my part
From finish to start
He will say, my child, I am well pleased

Me and my Lord are clappin’
For what’s gonna happen
‘Cause we know that I’m glory bound.
©Linda Troxell 11/16/2017

 

Are you excited about what comes next when you die? I’m not asking you for your church answer, I’m asking for your 2-in the morning- I can’t sleep and I wonder what’s true and what’s not- answer. Oh, am I the only one who has those times? Okay, I’ll go with that. Well, let me tell you how it goes for me. Most of the time I’m secure in the Lord. Most of the time I’m at least close enough to God to sit with Him and talk about where I need to grow in my walk with Christ, what I need to do to worship Him better and more completely, and what I need His help for that day. Most of the time I know that when this life is over I will have the privilege to spend eternity in a glorious heaven with my God.

But I’m okay admitting that there are those other times; those 2 am times when my mind and my soul feel as dark as the sky outside my window. I’m unable to sleep and I’m reviewing my life which just that morning, in my prayer time, was okay if not perfect. God was there with me, I felt His presence, we talked, and it was good. But here I am not even 24 hours later and I’m questioning everything I hold dear and sacred. I’m asking myself if this is all there is and laughing at myself for believing in the pearly gates and streets of gold. I know I should be praying but I can’t feel my faith and I can’t seem to access God, probably because I’m not even sure He is real. What happened? What do I do?

I know I’m not the only one who has been in this situation, not even the first. I really would like to know what you do when you find yourself here, but I’ve found that “good Christians” don’t like to admit to these things, let alone discuss them. So, the first time it happened to me I was left to fend for myself. That was probably a good thing because it forced me to turn to the Bible, God’s word, for answers. I searched for people in the Bible who struggled with their faith. I read about what they did and how they coped with their unbelief. Maybe you will be surprised to know that more than a few heroes of the Bible struggled with their faith regularly.

We’ve all heard the term “Doubting Thomas”? Were you aware that we get this term from one of Jesus’s disciples who was so full of doubt he refused to believe that Jesus had risen from the grave until he saw it for himself. He said, “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 20:24. Gideon too had problems with doubt. He doubted God when God called him to be the one to defeat Israel’s oppressors. In fact, his doubt was so strong Gideon insisted that God prove Himself by producing not one but two miracles.-Judges 6:36-40. And we all know about Abraham and Sarah who doubted that God could, at Sarah’s advanced age, cause her to produce a child. So they took matters into their own hands. Sarah sent Abraham to lay with her servant girl so that she might bear a son for them. It’s not difficult to imagine the problems this arrangement caused, especially after God did give Sarah a son of her own. Yes, all of these heroes of the Bible had times of doubt, if not unbelief. Yet God honored them. If Abraham struggled with doubt, yet God still called him His friend, I think it’s safe for us to admit to our struggle.

The truth is that we all struggle with doubt and lack faith at one time or another. Faith is not something we either have or don’t have. Faith is more like a process or a cycle. It grows and diminishes, progresses and regresses. It has ups and downs, victories and failures and triumphs and disappointments depending on the day, our circumstances and the season we are in. And that is okay because a faith unexamined and untested is not true faith. Faith is a product of our walk with Christ a gift strengthened and maintained by the Holy Spirit. As Christians, despite the cycles of doubt or unbelief that will happen, our faith can and should be the result of relevant evidence that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and He has only our best interests at heart.

The Greek word for faith, pestis, is a derivative of the Greek word for persuasion, peitho. This tells us that rather than being something we blindly accept, faith should be something of which we are persuaded by evidence. Luke tells us in the book of Acts that the Jews at Berea, after hearing Paul preach the Gospel, searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so–Acts 17:11. And we too must find evidence if we are to have true faith. The New Testament documents tell us that Jesus is the son of God in that it provides plenty of eyewitness accounts that He actually lived and that He walked the roads of Galilee and Judea 2,000 years ago healing the sick and raising the dead. They tell us that He died on the cross and that He rose on the third day. Our faith that he died for our sins, he rose for our justification and that He lives today in the hearts of those of us who believe in can rest on these facts. Most of the time I absolutely believe this. Therefore, I trust Jesus and can give Him my heart, my needs and every detail of my life. In Luke 1:2 and Acts 1:3, Luke speaks of the infallible proof, eyewitness accounts and personal investigation. Being a physician, proof was important to Luke as it should be to us. Don’t forget that in the Bible faith is defined as “the substance of things hoped for” and “the evidence of things not seen”–Hebrews 11:1.

We can assume from this need for evidence that establishing our own faith will require some work. If we want real faith and not just the hand me down faith that falls apart at its first challenge, then we will need to do some personal investigation. We will need to look not only at the Bible but other respected sources to see what is and is not true, what can be proved and what cannot. And this is not just a onetime event. No, it is a lifelong pursuit of learning wherein, as we grow so does our understanding of what we are studying. But let us not forget that being a Christian is not only about faith. Certainly, faith is an important part of our Christian walk. But our commitment to faith does not become whole and mature until we are able to act on our convictions.

And this is where our questions and cycles of unbelief become critical to our faith. Because being a Christian requires that we can act on our faith even when we aren’t feeling it. When we are questioning the goodness or perhaps even the existence of God, when we are questioning the reality of everything we have believed in and on which we have based our life, it is then that the testing of our faith becomes relevant. As Christians, we need to be able to step up and step out during these time and do just what it is God calls us to do even if, at that very moment, we do not even believe in His existence. If we are able to do that, if, at 2 am in the middle of a crisis of faith we are able to call on God and confess our unbelief and ask Him to restore our feeling of faith then we can know that we have the kind of faith God calls us to have.

God does not call us to have the kind of faith we put on display on Sunday morning; nor faith that has never been tested. God does not want us to parrot our belief in Him, in His grace, or in His mercy or deny that we ever struggle with our faith. Because He knows it isn’t true. Even Jesus, God Himself in human form, had doubts. Just before He was to be arrested Jesus asked the Father to let the cup pass from Him. But in the end, Jesus submitted to God and asked that His father’s will, not His own, be done.  Jesus’ behavior is always a model for the behavior that God wants from us. His behavior at that moment was a template for how God wants us to deal with our temporary losses of faith. We can admit our struggle to God, we can tell Him that at the moment we cannot find our belief. And then we can still act as if we do believe and follow God’s lead and acquiesce to His will.

In Mark 9 there is a story about a man whose son is possessed by a spirit which Jesus’ apostles were unable to cast out. So the son was brought to Jesus. Jesus rebukes His disciples for their inability to have enough belief to cast out the spirit. Then the man asks Jesus if He can take pity on them and cast out the spirit from his child. “And Jesus said to him if you can?” All things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”– Mark 9:23-24. If we can be like that man when we are struggling with our faith, if we can ask God to help us in our unbelief, He will always reach out His hand to us and help us to resurrect our faith.

 

Points for Pondering and Prayer

1. Think back to the last time you had a crisis of faith or belief.  1a.Was it about a specific area of Christianity or just all of it?  1b.Did you feel free to share it with someone?    1c.How did you resolve it?

2. Have you ever tried to walk in faith even when you were not believing or feeling that faith?  2a. What was the outcome?

3. Is your faith hand me down or have you studied the proof of the Gospels?  3a. If you’ve studied what have you studied?  3b. If you haven’t studied has your hand me down faith ever been tested, By man? By the enemy?  3c. What was the result?