Why do
people give up on God? There are a
variety of reasons. He is real. He is present. He is good, but it is hard for us to see His
goodness when we are faced with the evil that is in the world. The evidence of evil shrieks from news on television
or and from the microcosm of people we know.
Most of us use our own lives to determine if God is, whether he is good
or that He cares. We miss the fact that
God is so real, generous and full of affection that He is in the midst of our
fallen, broken world and reaches out with hope. His goodness is impossible to
drive out of our world, and especially by our doubt of Him.
Still the
majority of people find His goodness hard to see, or they have simply stopped
looking, believing His goodness or His existence to be irrelevant to their own. Souls in doubt are souls that are at the
precipice of faith. God deals with
people differently. Some souls need
doubt to grow. Some of our rejection of
God results in spiritual growth because we are actually doubting the God others
told us about. This makes us ready to
receive the God Jesus showed us.
God deals inside each of us in a personal way. People who are truly seeking God are going to
be unsatisfied with what they have been told.
They need an individual, dynamic experience of God’s love. Some accept the condemning, judgmental, if you don’t do it this way—you are going to
hell, kind of God. I need to accept
that God is bigger than any denomination.
God alone knows who does and who doesn’t know God. God is bigger and works in more mysterious
ways than I can understand.
Jesus came to show us what human
life is all about. He lived a human life
as an example for us to show us how to really live. His life was full of God’s goodness. His life was not immune from hatred,
accusations, death threats, betrayal and suffering, just like our own
lives. God the Father is not easy to
understand. In fact, He is impossible
for us to understand. Some don’t even
put in an effort to think of God.
Spiritually, it’s better to doubt God than ignore Him.
Because God is holy and because God
is someone my fallen, finite mind cannot understand, I have been given Jesus to
unite me to God. He helps me understand
what is humanly able to understand about God.
He helps me understand what God wants me to do and demonstrates to be
how to carry out the will of God while laying down my will. He shows me how to live with others and treat
every human being as the beloved child of God.
Doubt is a pathway to asking better
questions and coming to the end of yourself.
It leads to true worship. I love
how Thomas, known as the doubter, responded when He saw Jesus in His
resurrected form. Thomas didn’t even
need to touch His wounds; he knew that
He was indeed Jesus, the one who showed him how to really know God.
A week later his disciples were in the house
again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and
stood among them and said, Peace be with you! Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach
out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.
Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God! John 20:26-28
Doubt until you believe.
Copyright
© 2015. Deborah R Newman teatimeforyoursoul.com All Rights Reserved.
PS: Check out my
first ebook on Kindle
Jan 21, 2015
by Dr. Deborah Newman
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