What Do You Do with Doubt?

Written by Becky Toews

“I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John….” (Luke 7:28)

Have you ever struggled with doubting God? Where is your goodness, God? Why did you let this happen? When will you come? Cynicism erodes our hope; skepticism infiltrates our faith. Add to this a heavy dose of guilt for doubting in the first place and you’ve got a hard load to carry.

We should know better than to doubt, but circumstances we weren’t prepared for seem to short-circuit the memory of past faithfulness. I would guess most of us have questioned either God’s love or sovereignty at some point in our Christian walk.

John the Baptist certainly did. Languishing in prison, he who was once so filled with certainty found himself perplexed as to whether Jesus really was the Messiah. His growing doubts culminated in sending his disciples to ask Jesus the most pointed of questions: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Luke 7:19) The “voice in the desert,” the “preparer of the way,” the “baptizer of the one on whom he had witnessed the Holy Spirit descend” was having second thoughts. Whoa!