Ten Steps To Dealing With Doubts

I'm going through a crisis of faith.  It seems every time I pick up my Bible I find another frustrating question I can't answer.  It's uncomfortable, but I'm not worried.  I know doubts can be a steppingstone to a stronger faith.  I'm going to come out on the other side of this valley in a better place.  

But there are specific steps I need to take to do that.  If you're having the same kind of struggle, here are some suggestions from a kindred spirit:

Dealing With Doubts:

1.  Don't ignore or deny your doubts.  Turn around and face them head on.  Otherwise they will niggle away at your faith and keep you from the joy God wants you to experience in relationship with Him.  Be proactive, and be totally honest with yourself and with God.

2.  Investigate the reason for the doubts.  Is there a spirit of rebellion or pride behind your questioning?  Are you involved in a habitual sin that is pushing you away from God?  If so, confess those sins.  (I John 1:9)  You might find your doubts instantly dissolve when you do this.  If they don't, go on with the following steps.   

3.  Bring your crisis of faith to God in prayer.  Don't just whine about it to Him in passing as you go through your day.  Speak to Him deliberately, preferably on your knees. Lay all your dark thoughts out before Him and release them.  Ask Him to take them and bring good things out of this experience.  (If you have any reservations about doing this on your knees, go back to number 2, above, and dig deeper.)

4.  Recognize Satan's involvement in your doubts.  The Devil is the doubt-seed planter.  He did it first in the Garden of Eden, and he continues to do it today.  Doubts are not necessarily a bad thing.  God gave us minds and He expects us to question things.  But Satan would like to take that good thing and twist it.   When your doubts come, he sees a vulnerable place in your spirit and he will move in to distort God's truth.  Confront Him.  Tell him to get lost, in Jesus' name. Then deal with your doubts before God alone.

5.  Recognize the effect of the world's culture on your thinking.  Satan exerts enormous power and influence in our world today.  Everything in your humanistic environment is designed to push you away from faith in God.  Be on guard.  Face the fact that your world is going to constantly challenge your faith.  You're swimming upstream.  Be prepared to resist the current.

6.  Accept your limitations.  Recognize that many things in life, and in God's Word, will not have answers you can understand this side of heaven.  Accept that fact.  God is too great to be understood totally by minds that are housed in physical brains and restricted to a four-dimensional awareness.  It just won't happen.  Now we see through a glass darkly.  One day we will see face to face.  Anticipate that day!

7.  Focus on foundational Truths.  There are basic, undeniable realities.  It may be hard to accept that God is good when we focus on the evil in the world around us.  But there is no explanation for the good things in our world if there is no good God.  A mother's love.  A baby's smile.  A kind word.  A beautiful sunset.  These things have to come from somewhere.  There is a God and he is good.  When that one issue is settled, we have a secure foundation to stand on while we deal with other questions.

8.  Go to the Word.  Though this step is number 8 in this list, it is the most important one in the process.  God's Word is the antidote to doubt.  Questions may come as you read the Bible, but the solutions are there too. The Holy Spirit is beside you, wanting to lead you into truth.  Ask him to show you passages that you need to see. He may lead you to specific answers to your questions, or He may not.  But if He doesn't, He will lead you to a place of peace and trust in your good God.

9.  Remember your past.  If you have been walking with God for a long time, you have a rich history of His blessing in your life.  If you have just found Him, you have the fresh memory of how He revealed His love to you.  These experiences are roots that can go down deep into the soil of God's love and nurture your faith.  Let it happen.

10.  Anticipate the end result of your struggle.  It will end, and many good things will come out of the process.  Your relationship with God will be deepened through the experience; Your faith will be strengthened; and God will bring you into a place of richer ministry because of this crisis. You will be better prepared to encourage others in the faith.  The end is worth the struggle.

Where to go in the Word to deal with doubts:

The Psalms are a great place to run to when you're feeling besieged by anything, including doubts.  If your doubts are specifically about the Bible, meditate on Psalm 119.  There is something supernaturally reassuring about David's declaration of his faith in God's Word in this Psalm.

Old Testament stories.  The stories of people in the Old Testament who endured doubts and difficulties are encouraging.  Read about the lives of Abraham, Joseph, Daniel, and David.  Take heart from their experiences and the outcome of their difficulties.

Hebrews 11.  The lives of faithful saints are summarized in this chapter of Hebrews.  The writer admonishes us to remember those who have gone before us when we are discouraged.  They persisted in their belief in God through hard times and were rewarded in the end.

Above all, through it all, remember this admonition:

Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! 

Hebrews 12:2,3 in The Message

Top Five Christmas Picks

Two of my favorite bloggers often do posts where they simply share links to other interesting sites or useful information they've run across.  I thought I'd do that on this quiet Christmas Eve, before I tackle one last bout of Christmas baking to get the shortbread in the oven.

So here are my top five "Picks" for Christmas:

1. About.com. A great resource for information on just about everything, and Matt Rosenberg's geography newsletter is full of interesting little known facts about the world.  Today he gives us a history of Christmas, covering the Christian story accurately and explaining how it merged with, and eventually displaced, certain pagan practices in Europe.  Check it out at:

http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/The-Geography-Of-Christmas.htm

2.  Breakpoint.  Chuck Colson is in heaven this Christmas, celebrating the glorious event firsthand, but, thanks to technology, we can still read what he wrote and there's some great stuff.  This article explains the process of overcoming evil in a very well-worded nutshell, and includes a powerful testimony of Christian love in action.  A Baby vs. the World

http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/21083

3.  Ignitia Media.  A lighter version of the Christmas story, respectfully presented.  It moved me to both laughter and tears tonight in our Christmas Eve service.  Thanks, Trevor Chong, for your simple but powerful presentation of the good Christmas news.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sghwe4TYY18&feature=youtu.be

4.  Samaritan's Purse.  For several years now we've practiced a family Christmas tradition of choosing gifts from Samaritan's Purse catalog to give to people with fewer resources than we have.  Each of the grandkids is allowed to choose a gift from the catalog and Grandpa and Grandma pay for it.  If you're looking for a meaningful way to say "Happy Birthday" to Jesus, or to teach your children how to put Christ's love into action, look through one of these Christmas catalogs:

USA peeps go to:  https://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/Giving/gift_catalog/

Canadians go to: https://secure.samaritan.ca/catalog/Default.aspx

5.  Mary Did You Know?  Finally, my current favorite Christmas song, beautifully sung by Clay Aiken, and visually produced on Youtube by Chris P.  Thank you, Chris, whoever you are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1oHJR2g7Tw

May your evening be filled with an expectant hush, as we prepare to celebrate the first advent of Jesus into our world, and as we anticipate His second. 

The End of the World As We Knew It

December 21, 2012.  

A significant day for me.  If he were still alive, my father would be 100 years old today.  And tomorrow marks the 59th anniversary of his death.

From the beginning I planned to dedicate Zinovy’s Journey to my father, if only as a way to preserve his name. 

Walter Fred Saumert. 

The only son of the only Saumert living in the western hemisphere.  My father had only daughters.  When we married, and our mother died, the name died as well, so I preserved it on the dedication page of my book. 

The name is worth preserving.

I have only a few memories of my father, but they are vivid.  They’ve grown more vivid over the years, the details being absorbed, and gloriously transformed, I’m sure, from the jumble of vague impressions left in my childish heart the day he died.

I remember that day well.  I remember sitting with my sister and a babysitting neighbor in the car outside the field hospital at the army depot where he worked, watching the door my mother had walked through, waiting for her to come back to us, wondering what news she would bring.  Even at the age of seven, I knew it would not be good.

It seemed like hours before the door finally opened and my mother stepped out.  She turned back to speak to someone in the entryway and I saw what she carried in her arms.  I can still see it.  A brown bundle in the crook of one elbow, and my father’s work boots in her hand.

“Daddy’s dead,” I said to my sister. 

She wailed, flailing out at the harshness of the statement.  But I knew.  He would never walk away from that hospital.  The boots in my mother’s hands were proof.

Many times I heard the story of what happened in the hospital that day.  They'd taken her to the room where his crushed body lay.  She'd leaned over him, overcome with her shock and grief.  

Then she heard a voice say, "Why are you standing here crying?  The angels are singing."

The question was so powerful it stopped her tears.  She straightened and turned to tell the doctor standing behind her what she'd just heard.  When she turned she discovered that the doctor was gone, but she wasn't alone.  She said the room behind her was flooded with the brightest light she'd ever seen.

Skeptics will say what she really saw was the play of the hospital lights on her tear-filled eyes, but my mother insisted it was something more.  And I believe she was right.

That vision comforted us all.  It lifted our eyes from the cold darkness of that snowy December day to the eternally bright realm where my father had gone.  The place where the angels sing. 

Yet it was still hard, for all of us. The many re-tellings of the story by my grief-stricken mother burned the details into my memory, the immediate, tragic history all but erasing what few recollections I had of the seven happy years of my life before that day.  Gradually, over the years, I’ve remembered some things, fleeting moments or impressions. 

When I step out of the bath I remember that he’s the one who taught me how to sling the towel across my back and pull it back and forth to dry the places I can't reach. 

I remember the 50-gallon barrel of water that sat above our shower shed in the front yard, warmed by the sun in summer, so we could bathe in relative comfort, two of us at a time, one parent and one child, to conserve water. 

I can still feel the trickle of tepid water falling on my hair and running down my back, and how we turned the spigot off while we soaped, then on again to rinse, because our water had to be hauled from a spring down the road. 

I remember being tossed up in the air, laughing, carefree in the intuitive knowledge that daddy would always catch me when I came back down. 

But I also remember the dreams I had soon after his death.  The one of him clambering over the low roof of the back room he had just added onto the cabin that had been our rural family home for the last five years.  A bear clawed the eaves, reaching up for him.  He moved everywhere, trying to escape, but the bear followed.

The dream ended before the claws came close, but I knew the bear would win in the end.  My childhood ended as well, with this newly dawning realization that fathers are not invincible.

In the days that followed I dreamed of walking along the highway at night, digging up graves in the ditch, one by one, looking for him.  Finally seeing him in our local town, from a distance, crossing the street, going away from me, deaf to my calling as I ran after him.

It was years later I had the last dream, the one that finally allowed me to put the vestiges of my grief away.  The vision was a simple one, another grave, open at my feet, with dust motes floating up into the sunlight.  They seemed to glisten with the reflection of the glory that had filled the room where my father's body lay that day.  The day when the world, as we knew it, came to an end.

"Precious [of great value; highly esteemed or cherished]

in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints."   

Psalm 116:15

Frightful Possibilities

Frightful possibilities loom on our horizon these days. 

Politics is scary.  International terrorism is scary.  Morality is scary.  Economics is scary.  The pressure to be afraid is on, now as never before, because our technological advances allow evil to happen on an increasingly global scale, and, also because of technology, we cannot ignore what's going on around us anymore.  

There is no place to hide.

Wait.  There is One place.  One secure place.  One only.  And because of that, for the Christian, fear is a wrong reaction, now more than ever. 

God has been so faithful for so many millennia.  He will not change.  In this world of ever-increasing threats and challenges, He is still in control.  He knows the end from the beginning, and He is not worried.  He has already established the outcome, and, as His creation was good in the beginning, so will his outcome be in the end.  

He rides in triumph over the tumultuous seas of our world, and of our lives.

But lately, in spite of these truths,  I have managed to live on top of the fear only by breathing the commands of Joshua 1:9 to myself constantly. 

God says to Joshua, and to us,

"Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."

As Christians, we are the only ones who need not fear, no matter what comes.  Because of Jesus, our souls are firmly anchored in a glorious, eternal future.  As we stand tall in that security, we are a testimony to God's goodness and faithfulness.  We are beacons that God will use to draw others to Himself.

What Bible verses do you rely on to give you strength and courage as you face today's challenges?  There are so many good ones.  Let's collect them.  If you comment with your favorites, I'll re-post.  We need to remind each other and ourselves of the great goodness and wisdom and power of our God, more and more as we see the day approaching.

In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul says: 

I don’t think, friends, that I need to deal with the question of when all this is going to happen. You know as well as I that the day of the Master’s coming can’t be posted on our calendars. He won’t call ahead and make an appointment any more than a burglar would. About the time everybody’s walking around complacently, congratulating each other—“We’ve sure got it made! Now we can take it easy!”—suddenly everything will fall apart. It’s going to come as suddenly and inescapably as birth pangs to a pregnant woman.

But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you be taken off guard by any of this? You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart. People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.

God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we’re awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we’re alive with him! So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. I know you’re already doing this; just keep on doing it.

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, from The Message (MSG), via Bible Gateway:

3 Reasons To Be Acts-Age Christians In a New-Age World

I've been reading in Acts lately and discovering things I never noticed before.

Such fun!

ACTS-AGE CHRISTIANS

The book of Acts has much to say to those of us in the 21st century who want to influence our culture for good and for God.  Some things haven't changed in 2000 years, and we can learn from Paul's experiences as he introduces the pagan world of his time to God's truth.

Acts 17:1-4 gives an account of Paul's presentation of the Gospel in Thessalonica, where "a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women" became believers, and verses 5-9 describe the opposition to Paul's preaching.

It's interesting to note the parallels between the two sections of the story. Both involve actions by people designed to change other people.  Both succeed in bringing about change.  But the contrasts between the two halves of the story are even more striking.

The choice of verbs in both passages casts the two events into stark relief.

In the first part of the story, Paul, preaching in the synagogue, reasons, explains, proves, and proclaims his message.  As a result, people are persuaded.  Changes in the hearts of Paul's converts come about voluntarily as a result of Paul's approach--his thoughtful, rational arguments.

In the second part of the story, "other Jews," in the marketplace, "rounded up some bad characters. . ., formed a mob, and started a riot in the city." They rushed to the house where Paul was staying, they dragged the homeowner to the civil authorities, they shouted their accusations, and "the city officials were thrown into turmoil."  They made the men post bond and then let them go.

The first approach is rational and thoughtful.  It gently and reasonably persuades. The second is irrational, passionate and violent.  It brings about change by force.

OUR NEW-AGE WORLD

This kind of violent and unreasoned response to the Gospel is rampant in our age.  It flourishes on the internet, where random and thoughtless rants are so easy to spread "in the marketplace."  

The mob that is firmly attached to the world wide web is so huge, so uncontrollable, and so easy to stir up, that I believe Christians proclaiming the Gospel today are going to suffer more vicious attacks in the next few years than they did in Nero's time.

Scary?  Yes.  But just as human nature has not changed in the last 2000 years, so has God's character not changed.  His promises still stand.  The encouragement he gave to Joshua as the Israelites were moving into the Promised Land is ours to claim as well.  God said to Joshua, "Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1:9) 

We do not need to be afraid.  We just need to trust and obey.

THREE REASONS

If we're looking for specific things to take away from the story in Acts 17,  here are three:

1. First, we need to be aware of this reality so we aren't surprised when the persecution comes to us. 

2. Second, we should cultivate in our hearts the same desire Paul had under the circumstances: "that I should never be in any way ashamed, but that now, as always, I should honor Christ with the utmost boldness by the way I live, whether that means I am to face death or to go on living." (Philippians 1:20)

3. And third, we need to be careful that we don't become a part of the raving, maniacal, internet mob.  The other day I, wise, careful, critical thinker that I am, sent out a warning to my Facebook friends that turned out to be a hoax.  And that's not the first time I've done something like that.

So much for the intellectual and spiritual pride, full of disdain for the foolish mob, that has crept into my heart since I've become internet savvy.  I may have escaped some of the wrong-headed thinking out there, but I have absorbed more than I'd like to believe of the critical, cynical attitude that pervades the secular worldview "proclaimed" on the internet.  

We, as believers in this unbelieving age, need to be "as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves" as we move in and out of the synagogues and marketplaces of our world.  We need to "speak the truth in love." 

We need to become Acts-age Christians in our New-age world, for Jesus' sake and for the sake of people around us who belong to Him but don't yet know it.  

P.S.  Here's an interesting news item that illustrates how mob mentality might be being used by violent, angry people to throw our present day world into turmoil.