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Tuesday, July 1, 2014

How Doubt Is Part Of Exercising Faith

And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:23-24)


Whenever you're facing a stressful situation in your life, such as the loss of your job or a large unexpected expense, you might feel as though you've been punched in the stomach. As you're left to wonder what's going on, you find yourself calling out to God, telling Him that you love Him and trust that He's got it all under control.

As time keeps ticking away and nothing seems to change except for the bills piling up around you and shutoff notices being pegged to your door, you find that the faith that you boldly proclaimed just a few weeks ago, both in your heart and in your prayers, is now turning into pangs of doubt. Whenever this happens you may find yourself feeling guilty about the doubt that you're experiencing. You may even feel as though this means that you're failing in your faith walk.

The good news in all of this is that you're not failing at all. In fact, you may be surprised to learn that doubt is a very important part of your faith. While you may think that this really doesn't make any sense at all and that doubt is the opposite of faith, you should know that the two of them actually go hand in hand.

One of the best things about God is that those things that seem to make perfect sense to you and I are not what makes sense whenever you look at the principles of God's Word. If you take a look at the verse we are considering today, you will see that the Father had a son who was possessed by demons. The Father took his son to see Christ's disciples but they weren't able to cast out this demon. Nevertheless, the Father still had enough faith that he sought out those who would and could help him and his son.


Jesus told this Father that he'd need to have faith in order for the demon to be able to be cast out of his son. To this the Father then replied that he did have faith but he then went on to ask Christ to help him with any of his unbelief. So, while the Father believed that God was able to answer his prayers, he still had a little bit of doubt within him. Jesus never rebuked the Father for this statement. Instead, he went on to cast the demon out of his son.

There were also 3 Hebrew children who boldly told King Nebuchadnezzar that they'd never bow down to the golden idol. These children believed that God would deliver them but even if He didn't, they said that they still wouldn't bow. So, while they too had some doubt, they stood firm even though they could have been burnt up.

Faith doesn't mean that you have no doubt. Instead, it means that you believe in God and choose to move forward even with those doubts still there. God realizes that you're only human and that this means you're going to experience some doubt whenever you're faced with trials. However, to make your faith stronger you need to move forward, trusting in His Word, in spite of any doubts that you may have. By doing this your faith will become stronger and you'll see this when the next trial comes your way.

Living For Jesus Alone Ministries is dedicated to providing you with real biblical teachings concerning how to live a life pleasing to God. To find out more about having Bible reading plans you can visit our site at https://www.living-for-jesus-alone.org.

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