How Facing Doubt Leads to Greater Faith

Too great an emphasis on perfect faith actually blocks growth instead of facilitating it, creating the unconscious expectation that without perfect faith God will be disappointed and reject a person.

But God has more patience and maturity than that, for as Jesus said, a tiny mustard seed of faith is sufficient for the Lord to work within a person (Mt 17:20). The Trinity wants to help people face, feel, and process their doubts, which in turn leads to greater faith.

Even John the Baptist, whom Christ held in the highest regard, sent a messenger from his prison cell to ask Jesus once again if in fact he was the Messiah. Jesus sent back the answer that “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,” all signs from Isaiah’s prophecy attesting to the Messiah’s arrival (Lk 7:22).

John the Baptist

So if individuals are trusting Christ for their right standing with God, then God makes room for occasional doubts as they experiment with:

• how prayer does and doesn’t work
• what to do when they feel uninvolved in a worship service
• how to handle it when they can’t meet a homeless person’s needs
• what to do about behavior they feel is wrong but have to seek God’s help over months or years to overcome

Natural rhythms of faith and doubt ultimately bring people closer to the Lord. For all the doubts they endure, although people can’t always hold onto God, he nevertheless holds onto them. As Jesus promises, “No one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:28-30).

During Christ’s ordeal, Peter struggles with intense doubt about whether to claim friendship with Jesus or deny knowing him. He temporarily opts for denial just when Jesus needs him most. And after the resurrection, Peter reaches the point where he throws up his hands and says, “Come on boys, let’s go back to Galilee and start fishing.” He stands at the place all human beings know from time to time, even when they also know and love the Lord, where life just does not make sense. There are too many setbacks, too much confusion, and too little guidance from the Holy Spirit.

But then it does make sense. For Jesus follows his weary fishing crew to the Sea of Tiberius, and there he makes a little campfire on the shore and grills some fish, shouting to Peter and the others in the boat, “Have you caught anything yet?” (Jn 21:5).

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

Peter starts to yell back that the fishing is as dismal as his own life, when suddenly he recognizes Jesus and dives headlong into the sea to swim ashore. The Bible says the disciples don’t say much at that meal, perhaps too busy internally absorbing the rhythm of doubt and faith, crisis and deliverance, self-consciousness and joy—and feeling mostly awe, not only that they had been right in choosing to follow Jesus, but that they had chosen, for the most part, to believe all he had told them.

Rather than trying to secure a flawless platform of witness that one is adamantly Christian and proud of it, a wiser stance might allow that all human beings, including one’s self, hold even cherished beliefs somewhat precariously, and therefore stand in need of God’s continuous provision to remain close to him.

Once persons accept that they are both strong and weak, hardy and frail, capable of moments of shimmering faith and times where all seems lost, then they can relax, breathe, and trust in God’s faithfulness and providential care. Add to this the hundreds of scriptures that attest to the transcendent power whereby God saves those who hide themselves in him, and people can enjoy a degree of equanimity, knowing that Christ is there for them in faith or doubt.

In seasons of celebrating God or times of questioning, the “I AM” of God faithfully indwells the “i am” of the believer. For the same Peter who denies even knowing the Lord, later writes to all who would follow Christ, “Now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Pet 1: 6-9).

For more, read:

TRUSTING IN THE TRINITY:

A Self Compass for Humanity