To give a new twist to a much-overused saying, “A little doubt is a dangerous thing.” As a young Christian, I found things in the Scriptures that, so far as I could tell, contradicted actual events. At one point, Christ tells his listeners that “this generation will not pass” before all of his predictions concerning the end of time happened. To me, the phrase “this generation” necessarily meant the people he was addressing. Later I understood that he meant that all of the things he predicted about the end times would occur before the generation of that time passed. For a long while, though, this was a source of real confusion and doubt for me.

Doubt and confusion are first cousins. Some people have doubts about the reality of God and the truth of the Gospels simply because they don’t really understand the meaning of either. This is particularly true in an age when most people know little or nothing about the Bible and never go to church except for some special occasion or another. In their ignorance, people readily accept any lie of the liberal press about conservative, or Fundamentalist, Christianity. When a cult comes along promising a more attractive way to find happiness and salvation than the church presumably does, millions jump at the opportunity. The sad truth is that many people think that some cults, like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons, are actually Christian organizations, including many of their members.

The first weapon we have against doubt is knowledge, both of the Word and of the person and nature of Jesus Christ. Many of the people who fall into cults come from Christian homes, but they have so little knowledge of the truth they eagerly swallow a lie. To quote another worn, but true, expression, “If you don’t know what you stand for, you’ll fall for anything.” The core of the Gospel, of all Scripture, is that most memorized of verses, John 3:16. If you truly understand what that verse means, and believe it with all of your heart, you understand the most basic truth of our faith. The reality of Christ, the reason for his death, and the truth of his resurrection, are beautifully summed up in Paul’s magnificent confession in I Corinthians 15:2-8. We must know what we believe not only for our own sakes, but for the sake of those who don’t know Christ. As Peter said, “…be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.”

Even if we have a thorough knowledge of the scriptures, and of the truths of God, we can still have doubts. One area of doubt in my life that I always pushed down whenever it surfaced goes to the very core of my faith. This is the center of it all, the kernel of the seed. It is so basic that all the layers of belief that surround it have no meaning if it remains. All through my life, ever since I was a child, I have had this nagging “what if” in the deep recesses of my mind. What if it’s all a lie? What if, when we die, that’s all there is? What if God is, after all, something we invented in order to cope with our own mortality?

This so flatly contradicts everything else I believe, and a lifetime of experience as a Christian, that I can not even comprehend how it continued to exist at the same time. Yet, no matter how solid my faith appears on the outside, it would collapse under pressure if doubt remained at the core. I sometimes wonder if I’m the only sincere Christian with this particular doubt, but the fact that the Lord wants me to share it with you tells me I’m not. The only reason I share it with you now is that the Lord has dealt with it in me.

The first key in dealing with any doubt is to confront it, not cast it aside in hopes it will go away. Admit to the Lord that it’s there, then ask for his help in overcoming it. Beyond that first step, the real secret of overcoming any doubt in our faith is in our relationship with our Lord. I believe the truth of Scripture, with my mind, but I know that God is real because of my relationship with him in Christ. Knowing facts about someone is vastly different than actually knowing him or her as a person. I believe that Christ is real and that his promises are true not just because the Bible claims it, but because I know him.

It is natural and normal for doubts to crop up in our faith from time to time. What is not natural or normal for a Christian is to let doubt give way to denial. Peter denied Christ, but he repented. If we deny the work and power of Christ in our own lives, we should do no less. A Christian who denies Christ without changing his or her mind later was never his to begin with.

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JESUS IS the Bridge Ministries

Beneath His Wings Devotionals - Vol. 1