A Ramble About Doubt

On our journey to research for the Mission which we envision, I have often struggled with doubt. No matter how many times the Lord provides for us, and no matter how magnificent a way, doubts continuously creep back into my mind as I look at the ridiculous poverty of our circumstances and the magnitude of the task in front of us.

I had something of an insight the other day as I was spending time in prayer. We were staying the night parked in a church parking lot in Iowa and I had gone to use an outdoor electrical outlet to charge my laptop and tablet. While they were charging I spent some time in prayer.

My insight was this, when doubts creep into my mind, they're not doubts about what God can do, they're doubts about what I can do. How I can accomplish something. God can do anything He wants. Me? Not so much. But this is why doubt hampers faith, because it turns our faith away from God and what He can do and it turns it towards ourselves and what we can do. And when we see what we can, or in this case can't do, we then become afraid. Doubt hampers our faith in God, because it redirects that faith towards ourselves, positively or negatively.

The impact of this on prayer, and the transformation and powers of Grace can't be underestimated. For Grace to become active, it absolutely requires faith in Jesus Christ. For prayers to bear fruit, they absolutely require faith in Jesus Christ that He will do them. But doubt throws our faith back onto ourselves and off of Him thus rendering Grace inert proportionately.

As human beings we will always have faith in something; either ourselves, other people, idols, or Jesus Christ. But the uncreated Energies of God will only be made active in the presence of faith in Jesus Christ. He will only respond to faith in Himself, and not in anything else. When faith is redirected away from Himself and onto the abilities of something or someone else, He chooses not to respond so as not to add to our delusions. Just as a psychologist doesn't want to contribute to a patient's psychosis or insanity, but draw them out of it, so also God doesn't want to add to our self-deception by responding to faith in ourselves or in idols. That wouldn't be healthy for us or bring us any closer to union with Himself. But He does respond to faith in Him however small the faith might be, and as we see and experience His responses to our faith, then, ideally, our faith in Him begins to increase and our faith in other people or things begins to decrease.

To this end, there are some times when He has to forcibly separate us from our faith in other things or people in order to increase our faith in Him. And so we lose jobs, friends, family, ideas, philosophies, theological structures, and anything else we are trusting in besides Him. The disillusionment of these losses can be painful and severe, but it is always done therapeutically like a surgeon removing a gangrenous limb because He knows if it's not removed we will not become healthy, and will likely become worse. In the process of discipleship and learning to follow Jesus Christ by Grace through faith, we must unlearn all the ways we have previously studied as to how to live because He shows us that they are not only unreliable, but they are as tangible as smoke. He is the only permanent, trustworthy reality.

In the Scriptures, Jesus gave His disciples the authority to cast out demons when He sent them out to preach, and they reported back that demons did indeed obey them and leave. But there was this one that was causing epileptic fits in a boy that they couldn't cast out, and after Jesus did cast it out they asked Him why. He responded that it was because of their lack of faith. The disciples knew for a fact that Jesus had the authority to cast out demons, and when He told them He was giving them that authority they believed Him, having seen everything else that He did. This faith in Him is what activated the Grace around them to order the demons around. But when it came to this particular boy, his condition seemed so severe they began to doubt, and misdirect their faith onto their own abilities or lack thereof. This is why Jesus again calls them “oligopistoi,” or “little-faiths,” which seems to be the name He gives them every time they begin to doubt and are unable to do anything, like when Peter stepped out on the boat to walk to Jesus on the water and then began to doubt because he started looking at the storm and the water instead of Jesus. Jesus calls him, “oligopistos.”

Doubt, misdirected faith, cripples faith in Jesus Christ, and as a result it also cripples the activity of Grace, and it can cripple answers to prayer as well. Part of God's transforming work in our lives is to remove the sources and objects of that misdirected faith so that we will actually have faith in Him alone.