To be undecided or skeptical is not necessarily a path towards failure it may be the genesis for learning. The blind, deaf and very wise Helen
It need not discourage us if we are full of doubts. Healthy questions keep faith dynamic. Unless we start with doubts we cannot have a deep-rooted faith. One who believes lightly and unthinkingly has not much of a belief. He who has a faith which is not to be shaken has won it through blood and tears-has worked his way from doubt to truth as one who reaches a clearing through a thicket of brambles and thorns.
Most of us can relate to children whose frequent word is not “yes” but “why?” Henry Drummond wrote in Listening to the Giants, “Doubt is the prelude of knowledge.” H. W. Shaw said, “The less we know the more we suspect.” There is such a thing as healthy doubt and good intentions may flood the questioning voice.
But what if Doubt daily embraces Unlikely, Fear and Distrust the tenebrific children of Gloom? The words of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen reveal danger, “. . . man hid from God in the garden; now man hides within himself.” The man who constantly feeds doubt may have a tiny God. The man who feeds his faith is unafraid of a tiny self.
Meditation
Luke 1:13,18—But the angel said to him: “do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. . . . Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
Our propensity as humans is to doubt. There are at least three reasons why this is true: 1. We focus on our limitations. Zechariah did not believe Gabriel in the passage above. Nor did Sarah believe the angel who told her husband, Abraham, that she would bear a son (Genesis
2. We prefer our ways to God’s ways. Often the motive behind questioning is an unwillingness to budge. As my friend Todd explained, the passage in Psalm 95:7 that says “Today, if you hear His voice” in the Hebrew can also mean “O that you would obey.” The Israelites repeatedly experienced the supernatural leadership of God in rescuing them from
3. We don’t think that we really matter to God. In the throes of heartbreak, defeat, sickness or what seems like a boring life, we forget that because of His great love and mercy, God miraculously made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in sin (Ephesians 2:4,5). In the middle of the bog of uncertainty is a Rock we are meant to stand upon! On that Rock called Jesus a holy temple is being built. The caption on the Cornerstone says “I love you!” “In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit” (Eph.
