The Benefit Of The Doubt

The Benefit Of The Doubt

I am confident I will see the LORD’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD.

Psalm 27:13-14

I WANT YOU TO IMAGINE SOMETHING.

You’re supposed to be meeting someone for lunch. You arrive at the restaurant five minutes early. You’re asked if you’d like to get a table. You agree, sit down, and start looking over the menu. Finally, you look at your watch and realize ten minutes have gone by. Your friend is five minutes late. Another ten minutes go by and your friend is now fifteen minutes late. After another five, you come to the conclusion your friend isn’t going to show up.

Question: How do you feel about your friend?

Answer: It depends which friend it is.

Right?

You have some friends where you would think, Unbelievable! No, actually, this is totally believable! He is so unreliable. He’s an insensitive jerk! Why did I even assume he was going to show up? You would have real doubts about that friend.

But you have other friends where you would think, Wow, this is so unlike him. Maybe he’s sick. But he would have called. I hope he didn’t get in a car accident. You would give that friend the benefit of the doubt.

You wouldn’t decide how to respond to your friend’s tardiness based on that one incident. Your reaction would be based on what you already believe about your friend.

Where Is God?

One of the obstacles every Christian struggles with is doubt. It may be doubts about whether God exists. But more often, I think, our doubts stem from not understanding God. “Why isn’t he answering my prayer?” “Why did he allow that to happen to me?” “Why doesn’t he seem to care?”

It may help you to know that you’re not alone. Every believer has a little doubt mixed in with his or her faith. In fact—and this may surprise you—the Bible is full of people who believed in God and loved God but didn’t always understand God. People who had faith, but also had their faith challenged and had times of doubt and questioning God.

One of those people was Job.^a Job was a man who loved God and had great integrity. He believed in and worshipped God, and then the bottom dropped out. Job lost everything but his wife. And it turns out his wife was no treat. In fact, Job’s wife’s encouragement was, “Job, just curse God and die.”^b Thanks, honey!

Job didn’t curse God. He did struggle with God. He wrestled with God. He questioned God and even screamed up at the heavens.

We’re not alone. Even giants of the faith sometimes experience giant questions and doubts.

Job was confused and angry, but through it all, he trusted God. In fact, he said, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.”^c

As someone who sometimes struggles with doubts, I want to know, how did Job continue to trust God when he didn’t understand God at all?

I think Job was able to believe in God because he had already decided what he believed about God.

I’m not saying he understood God, because he didn’t. And I’m not saying he didn’t question God, because he did.

But in the days of crisis, Job wasn’t developing his picture of God. He had already formed that picture, and he was confident about it. His confidence probably didn’t make what he went through less painful, but because Job had already decided what he believed about God, he was able to give God the benefit of the doubt.

The same holds true for us. The best time for me to decide what I believe about God is not when I’m in the middle of some painful situation. The best time is now, because I’ve got a clear head now. So I need to develop an accurate picture of God now, and that accurate picture will help get me through my spiritual crises.

An Accurate Picture

The obvious question is: How do I develop an accurate picture of God?

It’s difficult, because there are all kinds of people pointing us to all kinds of pictures of God. You’ll hear that “God is mean and vindictive,” and “God is tolerant and accepts everyone,” and “God is running our lives like a puppeteer pulling the strings on a marionette,” and “God is an absentee landlord who doesn’t care what’s going on in our lives.”

So who do you listen to?

No one. You don’t listen to anyone. Instead, you look at Jesus.

One time Jesus was talking to people who wanted to know what God (the Father in heaven) is really like. He said,

“If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!”

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does his work through me.”^d

Jesus said, “I am your picture of God. If you see me, if you get to know me, you have seen God and know God.” He was telling us that our understanding of God should be centered on him.

The Bible says this time and time again: “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God”^e and “The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God.”^f

The more we know Jesus, the more we know God himself. The more we experience Jesus, the more we experience God himself. In the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Bible gives us a very detailed picture of Jesus, which allows us to develop a very accurate picture of God.

And I’m convinced that being certain that God looks like Jesus is what can help us get through those times when we’re confused.

Because when you look at the life of Jesus, you realize he was amazing. His character, his love, his compassion, the way he cared for those who were hurting and cried when his friends cried, the way he treated people with grace and tenderness—amazing.

If God is like that, I can trust him no matter what’s going on in my life.

And God is exactly like that.

That means when you have doubts, you can give him the benefit of the doubt.

Now What?

• Read Luke 7:18-28.
• This passage comes at a time when John the Baptist (who was the first to believe that Jesus is the Messiah) was in jail (for telling people about Jesus) and, apparently, he was struggling with some doubts. How did John handle his doubts about Jesus? How did Jesus handle John’s doubts? What does all of it say to you about the times when you question God?
• It’s been said that the most important thing about you is what you think of when you think of God. So praying for an accurate picture of God is really important. That should be something you regularly do. Why not start today?