Believe first, doubt later

Choose to believe, rather than to doubt. This is a simple, but difficult way to live. Understand, I clearly believe in God. I have faith in Jesus Christ. Where this principle gets tested is in the nuances of the life of discipleship. Do I believe that God speaks to me? Do I believe that God heals? Do I believe that God actually loves and cares for me so much that he "knows the numbers of the hairs" on my head? Do I believe Jesus when he says, "anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these"?

If I'm honest with myself, my first inclination with any of these is to doubt. Understand, doubt can be a healthy thing. God created us with intelligence. It is healthy and often wise to question before blindly accepting. It is not God's intent that we mind numbingly attribute every action, every consequence of an action, every happenstance to God. I get it. We shouldn't have to dumb ourselves down in order to believe. However, if our initial stance is always to doubt, we run a great risk. We may eliminate any possibility that God is working in our lives. We write off an answer to prayer as a product of coincidence. We dismiss the words of someone claiming to receive a prophecy as the conscious imaginings of subconscious impulses. Worst of all we move through life expecting that God is really quite inactive and uninterested in our lives from day to day.

Here's the thing. That mode of living is completely incongruous with what we learn of God in the Bible. The apostles lived with the absolute expectancy that God was, is, and always will be working right in the midst of the lives of His people. Yes, sometimes that did mean that God was working through unseen channels in subtle pushes and pulls. But, often God was a lot less obscure than that. Often, God was downright brazen in His insertions into the lives of His followers. People were healed. Prophecies were given. The dead were raised. We're told in the Book of Acts from the Bible again and again how many, many miraculous signs and wonders were done through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Yet, so often we seem to believe that God can't or won't do these things now. However, entertaining such thoughts carries with them some devastating results in our ability to have faith in God. If we believe God can't, we undermine his authority. God is the creator of all, the king of the universe. To suggest that there is something that "lords" itself over God, that he has no power to overcome, is to make him something less than God. If we say that God won't, we undermine God's character. God calls us to see Him as our Father in heaven who wants all good things for his children. To suggest that God will not act in our lives is to characterize God as uncaring, distant, even callous. He becomes more a resentful judge than a loving Dad. Either path, believing God can't or God won't, leads to some difficult conclusions.

So, what choice are we left with? Believe. Have faith. Dare to err on the side of anticipating, expecting God to be brazenly involved in your life, rather than cautiously erring on the side of seeing God in little or, as it often happens, in nothing. Believe first and doubt later. Yes, sometime you will be wrong. That dream you thought was from God really was just the pizza you had the night before. But, sometime you will be right and that makes the risk worth it. Why? Because in the end this is not just some theorem, this is not merely a science experiment or a philosophy to be tested. This is God and the very nature of having faith in God means that we believe he is bigger, more important, and more real than our doubt.