Doubts

Do you ever have doubts about God, about spiritual things, or about His will for your life?  

I just happened to be reading through Luke 1, and something jumped out at me.  Zacharias was a well respected priest, a man who God specifically labeled as righteous, and the passage tells us that God listened to his prayers.  Today, we would probably call him “really spiritual,” in a good way.

One day, Zacharias was in the Temple, doing his thing, when an angel showed up and told him that the Lord had heard his prayers, and that he and his wife would have a son.  The angel also told him that his son would be a truly great man, preparing the way for the Son of God.  Wow.

Now, as much as it freaked him out to have an angel showing up and talking to him, he couldn’t bring himself to believe that God was really going to give him a son, because he and his wife were pretty old. 

A mildly careful reading of the passage shows real humanness in Zacharias.  First, he had been praying for this very thing.  Yeah, they were old, but they still were asking God to do this.  Second, the presence of this angel scared him enough that he clearly knew that was no ordinary guy.  But still, he could not believe.  “How will I know this for certain?  For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”

This was a step backwards in trusting the Lord, and it made his life harder for a while.  However, God used this to strengthen him down the road.

It is easy to see this as a moment of weakness for Zacharias, and it is.  We see that even very strong Believers sometimes wrestle with God’s truth and His promises.  It is the same moment of weakness that most of us who follow Jesus have from time to time. 

“Lord, will You really be guiding me when I make these tough decisions that are in front of me?”  “Are You really hearing me when I pray?”  “Do You really understand what I’m going through?”  “Are You really everything the Bible says You are?”  “Are You really there?”

Faith and trust often mean relying on what we’ve read in Scripture, and might have even experienced in the past, but it looks unlikely or impossible now.  Other times, it means stepping out in action, when you are not sure, or even think the opposite might be true.  Most Believers will wrestle at times (maybe all will).  In those times that we choose NOT to walk in faith, or do what we should there is grace and forgiveness.  However, this usually means that, for a time, you will be moving further away from where you were created to be.