Stop Doubting - Thomas

One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin), was not with the others when Jesus came. They told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”

John 20:24-25

Most people think of Mother Teresa as a faith-filled servant of God who devoted her life to caring for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. But in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, a collection of her letters to some of her brothers and sisters in the faith, she revealed that she sometimes endured nagging personal doubts.

Mother Teresa had a lot of company. The Bible includes accounts of men who struggled with doubt, the best known being the man we know as “Doubting Thomas.”

The eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel shows us a faith-filled, courageous Thomas who rallied his fellow disciples to follow Jesus into Judea, where his life had already been threatened. “Let’s go, too—and die with Jesus,” Thomas exclaimed (John 11:16).

That looks like a man of unshakeable faith, doesn’t it?

Skip ahead to the days following Jesus’ death. There you see an emotionally and spiritually drained Thomas who flatly refused to believe that Jesus was alive even though the other disciples had already seen him.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the end of Thomas’s story.

After eight of the most miserable, discouraging days Thomas would ever endure, his Master appeared to him. “Put your finger here, and look at my hands,” he encouraged Thomas. “Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” (John 20:27).

In his joy at finally seeing the resurrected Jesus, Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

Where do you go when your faith has weakened and given way to doubt? When you go through times like those, continue in your life of faith by humbly asking Jesus to reveal himself to you in a way that replaces doubts with faith.