My Seasons of Doubt
The little boy cried out
over and over, "Mom where are you?!" He was walking back and
forth in the front of the store. People with shopping carts full of milk,
bread, fruit, and other household items rattled past the frantic boy as they
raced to wait in line for a check out spot. The boy decided to stop yelling and
just look. So he walked to the front of each aisle and peered down the long
trek to see if his mother and her cart were present. He went to the first aisle
and saw nothing but potato chips and an old man in an automatic shopping cart.
He went to aisle two were three college kids were arguing over who would pay
for the stuff in the cart... but no mom.
As he walked to the
third aisle he began to wonder what had happened. He had just come from aisle
three. That's where all the fruit snacks were. He was looking at them and then
she was gone. He looked down the aisle and she wasn't there either. The little
boy got another pain in his stomach. It felt like bees were flying in his stomach
and were trying to get out. He started to cry a little more. "Mom where are
you," he questioningly cried out as he looked down aisle four. Had she left him at the
store all by himself? Had she decided he was too much trouble to feed... all he had asked
for was fruit snacks!? Had she left the store to head home and forgot all about him? He felt sad. He felt
scared. He felt a little angry.
Just as he reached aisle
five he noticed a man in a blue vest putting cans onto a shelf. He walked
silently up to the man who obviously worked at the store. Who else would be
putting cans on the shelf instead of taking them off? The little boy walked up
to him and just as he approached the man looked down. "I think my mom left me
at the store or got abducted by aliens or something," the boy said to the can
stacking wizard of aisle five. The man looked down at the boy with one eye brow
cocked higher than the other. The little boy started to cry a little. His mom
was gone and he couldn't find her. "Now what makes you think
that?" he asked as he knelt down in the middle of pallets of canned
peas.
"Well," the boy answered, "I was looking at fruit
snacks and then she was gone. I asked her if we could get some and then she
just was gone."
The man in the blue vest
slowly got up from his kneeling position. Ever so slowly. The boy heard him
grunt a little as he came to his feet. "Let's see if we can find
her." "We won't find her," the little boy said right away,
"I have looked all over the world and she is just plain gone." The
little boy pointed back the way he came. "She's not anywhere."
Doubt sees the obstacles; Faith
sees the way. Doubt sees the darkest night; Faith sees the day. Doubt dreads to
take a step; Faith soars on high.
Psalms 77:4-14 You kept my eyes from closing; I was too troubled to speak.
5 I thought about the former
days, the years of long ago; 6 I
remembered my songs in the night. My heart meditated and my spirit asked:
7 "Will the Lord reject
forever? Will he never show his favor again? 8
Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time?
9 Has God forgotten to be
merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?" 10 Then I thought, "To this I will
appeal: the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand. 11 I will remember the deeds of the LORD;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. 12
I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds."
13 Your ways, God, are holy.
What god is as great as our God? 14
You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the
peoples.
Isaiah 40:25-29 "To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?"
says the Holy One. 26 Lift up
your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the
starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his
great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. 27 Why do you complain, Jacob? Why do you
say, Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by
my God"? 28 Do you not
know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the
ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no
one can fathom. 29 He gives
strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
One of the things I love about
the Bible is how honest it is. The pages of Scripture don’t gloss over
the flaws and sins and weaknesses of people.
Even the great heroes of the faith
are not airbrushed or photo-shopped to make them look superhuman.
I also love that Scripture lets
us see the real struggles that people have in seeking to follow God.
One such person in the Bible is a
guy named Asaph. You can feel the angst in his soul when he wrestles with
the following questions.
Psalm 77:
7-9 Has the Lord rejected
me forever? Will he never again be kind to me? 8 Is his unfailing love
gone forever? Have his promises permanently failed?
9 Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he slammed the door on his
compassion?
If we are honest, we would have
to admit that we have our Asaph moments.
But thank goodness, the passage
doesn’t end in verse nine.
As we walk with Asaph we can
discover a couple of practices that are helpful to our soul when we find
ourselves in seasons of doubt.
I.
Remember God’s
track record
a. This is about gaining
perspective
b. . This is about
stepping back from your immediate circumstance and getting a look at the big
picture.
Psalm 77:11-12 I recall all you have done, O Lord; I
remember your wonderful deeds of long ago. They are constantly in my thoughts.
I cannot stop thinking about them.
c. I want you to notice
four words in these two verses…recall…remember… thoughts…thinking.
d. Memory is a friend to
faith. I can witness to this personally.
e. God has an amazing track
record in my life.
f. His faithfulness in the
past gives me confidence to deal with the doubts that come in the present.
Imagine yourself in an airplane flying
between Houston and Dallas. Now, ponder this for a moment. Here we are
flying almost 600 mph at 31,000 feet. There are about 200 of us in an
over-sized coke can hurtling through the air. You look out the window
and can’t see a thing because we are flying through the clouds. I look
around and not one person seems panicked or even nervous. WHY??
Because we had faith in the airline’s track record. We had faith
that someone had built the plane well. We had faith that someone had inspected
the plane and that someone had put fuel in the plane. We had faith that
there were pilots in the cockpit (although I never saw them) and we had
faith in the instruments they were using to fly the plane.
g.
When I step back and reflect on God’s track record, my doubts
diminish.
Asaph says “these wonderful deeds are
constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about them.”
h. These events are true.
God’s track record is historically verifiable.
If God can deliver 2 million people
from Egypt and he can part the Red Sea and he can make the walls fall down at
Jericho and he can let Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego come out of the fiery
furnace unharmed and he can keep Daniel from being eaten by the lions and Jesus
could rise from the dead… then he certainly can take care of me.
i.
Let me give you a practical step
you might take here.
j.
If you are going through a time of doubt, spend some time reflecting
on God’s track record.
II.
Choose to trust
God’s character and power
Psalm 77:13-14 O God, your ways are
holy. Is there any god as mighty as you? You are the God of miracles and
wonders! You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations.
a. Our God is a God of
miracles and wonder and power.
b. That truth is seen
spectacularly in creation.
Isaiah 40:26 Lift your eyes and
look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry
host one by one and calls them each by name. Because of his great power
and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
c.
Think for a moment about the
neighborhood we live in called planet earth.
Our sun is 93 million miles away
and it is just an average size star in Milky Way Galaxy. And it is
perfectly positioned at just the right distance to sustain life on this planet.
The sun is 333,000 times the
size of the earth and it is so powerful that it takes its light and heat only 8
minutes to travel from surface of the sun to touch your skin.
Every sunrise is a reminder of God’s
faithfulness. With amazing precision and majesty, the sun keeps showing
up every day.
d. It hangs up in the sky
as a testimony for God’s bigness and power and creativity.
Psalm 19:1-4 The heavens tell of
the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship.
e. When I meditate on God’s
majesty and when I consider his creation, it helps me overcome my doubt.
f.
There is freedom in coming to
terms with your smallness.
g. Even though your world
may seem out of control, the universe isn’t out of control.
h. The great big God of the
universe can be trusted. He is not powerless or negligent.
i.
If you are the crowning
achievement of all his creation, don’t you think he is going to take care of
you?
III.
Exercise God’s Strength and
Power in Your Life
Psalms 22:19-22 But you, LORD, do not be far from me. You are my strength;
come quickly to help me. 20
Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. 21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
save me from the horns of the wild oxen. 22
I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you.
a. There
is power through our relationship with God.
John 14:9-13 Jesus answered: "Don't you
know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who
has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
10 Don't
you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I
say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living
in me, who is doing his work. 11
Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and
the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works
themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the
works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these,
because I am going to the Father. 13
And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that
the Father may be glorified in the Son.
b. When
you were saved, the Holy Spirit took up residence in you.
c.
GOD IS IN YOU WHEN YOU INVITE GOD
INTO YOUR LIFE!
… The man in the blue
vest took the little boy by the hand and headed towards aisle six. There were
in fact twenty aisles in this grocery store warehouse. "So what makes you
think that your mom left without you?" "Because I don't see
her" "Has she ever accidentally left you anywhere before" the man asked. "No." "Has she ever been
abducted by aliens before," the man asked as they passed
aisle seven. "Not that I know of." "So why would you doubt
her now? I am sure she is here and we just have to find her," the man said as he
walked up to a small stand at aisle ten. He talked with a super tall man with a
bushy mustache who also had on a blue vest, but had a huge button on it with
all kinds of stickers. The guy also had a radio attached to his belt. After a
minute, an announcement came over the store that echoed down the aisles. It
sounded crackly and garbled. He thought he heard... "boy... lost...
ten..." Just as the announcement was blasting over the store...
announcing to the world that his mother had left him to fend for himself with
nothing but a box of fruit snacks to eat... his mother appeared with her full
cart around the corner of aisle fifteen. His baby sister was bouncing up and
down in the seat of the cart sucking on a bottle and sporting a different
outfit than she had on when they entered the store. "Mom!" the little boy cried out
and sprinted down the four aisles to meet his mother. "Mom I thought you left
without me" the little boy said as he hugged his mom beside the cart. The
man in the blue vest walked up then too. "See," the man with the blue
vest said, "there was no reason to doubt. Here she is and all is
well." "Honey I have never left you anywhere before... have I," his mother asked. "No." "Well
then I hope you learned something about me today," his mother said as she
looked down at her now non-frantic son.
Hebrews 13:5-6 … God has said, "Never will I leave you; never
will I forsake you." 6 So
we say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. …
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