Slaying the Giant of Doubt  | John 20:24-29

Message Description: If you wrestle with doubt, you’re in good company – some of the greatest heroes of the faith did, too! But there are right and wrong ways to deal with doubt. Dr. David Jeremiah shares examples of each, along with biblical tools for handling those nagging questions you’ve been struggling with.

If you go through the scriptures, you will find often that when people got discouraged, when they didn’t know what to do, when the answers weren’t playing, they often doubt it out loud in prayer to God.
If you read the Psalms, you’ll see it everywhere.
Do you need to tell God so that He can find out?
No, you need to tell God so that you can hear yourself telling God what’s going on in your heart.
Once again, that makes it more understandable to you as you try to figure out what’s going on in your life as you pray.
And then you need to analyze the evidence diligently.
Just understand that if God’s put it down in your heart, it’s a little motivational program to get you going in a study so that you can learn something.
You didn’t know. The whole secular educational program is built on the evolutionary foundation, not just in the science courses, but in history and in every other course, it is all tainted by the humanistic evolutionary thought process, but you have never been in a better place to search out the true answers than you are here.
There are hundreds of books you can understand that will take you to creationism in a way that you will be able to debate with anybody on any level.
I’ve watched some of the champions of creation science go up against the evolutionists and I’m telling you what, you don’t wanna mess with them.
I’ve never known them to lose. Why is that?
We aren’t sitting back here poor little Christian people with no answers to the questions that people ask.
The real issue is, do we have enough enough fortitude to go and get the answers because they’re there?
If we want them, the answers are here in the word of God and the answers are clearly understood.
If you want to know them, nothing is as profound as the word of God.
And now Doctor Jeremiah has a Bible for every member of the family.
There are numerous versions of the Jeremiah study Bible. Perfect for adults and teens.
And the airship genesis kids study Bible will bring the truth of God’s word to the young ones in your life.
For more information or to order, go to David Jeremiah dot org slash Bible.
Go forth faith to face foes, greater and mightier than ourselves.
Giant, great and tall giants, cunning and cruel.
But let us not run from the battle, run to victory for our God goes before us as a consuming fire that we may fight.
The giant of fear, destroy the giant of discouragement, be liberated from loneliness.
Win over one guard ourselves from guilt tame the giant of temptation, attack, anger, disarm doubt when we feel overtaken and find freedom in defeating failure.
Our God will slay the giants in the land and bring them down before us through His power.
We shall drive them out and destroy them quickly. As the Lord has promised us, do not be afraid.
Our God will be with us. He will empower us. We can defeat our giants.
We can win the battle, we can live victorious through the Bible.
God has promised to provide the tools we need to overcome every fear, every failure, every temptation, every giant remind yourself of God’s promises with turning points.
Giant Slayer scripture cards. Each card features specifically selected verses to help you overcome the giants in your life, full color and bookmark sized.
These powerful reminders can be tucked into your Bible or displayed on your desk as you gear up for battle each day request yours today.
Although no one was near enough to hear it.
It ultimately echoed around the world. None of the passengers in the DC four ever knew what happened.
They all died instantly. That was February 15 in 1947 an Avianca airline flight bound for Quito Ecuador crashed clumsily into the 14,000 ft high, towering peak of El Taso not far from Bogota.
And then it dropped a flaming mass of metal into a ravine.
Far below there was a young New Yorker by the name of Glenn Chambers who was on that plane.
He was flying to Quito Ecuador to fulfill a lifelong dream to be a missionary through the Voice of the Andes.
Before leaving the Miami airport.
Earlier that day, Glenn Chambers wanted to write a note to his mother.
So he grabbed the piece of paper that was available in the airport and wrote his mother a note.
Unfortunately, the scrap of paper was once a printed piece of advertisement with the single word.
Why printed across the face between the mailing and the delivery of that note chambers was killed.
And when the letter did arrive with his notes on the front beneath his writing, his mother saw that great big word.
Why of all the questions? It is the most searching the most tormenting.
It is a graphic picture of the doubts that come to us when tragedy comes or when unexplained experiences and circumstances happen.
And if we’re honest, all of us have had doubts at one time or another, the Greek words in the New Testament that are translated by the word doubt primarily have behind them.
The meaning of uncertainty in Webster’s dictionary, the word doubt is defined like this uncertainty of mind, unsettled opinion or belief, lack of conviction, doubt is not the opposite of faith oftentimes it is the opportunity of faith.
It stands at the edge of past understandings and longs for more truth.
It should not surprise us to discover that in the Bible, there were many people who doubted if you read through the Psalms or you examine the lives of men like job or Solomon, particularly as he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes or even in the reading of the Psalms of David, you find out that great men and women often went through times of doubt when you come to the New Testament, one of the most prominent characters at the beginning of the New Testament scripture is a man by the name of John, the Baptist.
And John the Baptist was a man who on one occasion expressed a very serious doubt.
He sent two messengers to Jesus to ask him this question recorded in Matthew 11 3.
He said, are you the coming one or do we look for another?
In other words, Jesus, are you the Messiah or should I keep looking now on uh at first blush, that doesn’t sound like that’s much of a deal.
I mean, why would that matter? What, what is the importance of that question?
The importance of the question is wrapped up in the fact of the identity of John, the Baptist.
Jesus said of John the Baptist that he was the greatest of all of the men born to women.
Think of it for a moment.
Jesus said, this man who was the greatest man born of women and he’s doubting the Messiah.
And when you put that together with the fact that just a few days before this, John had been involved in the baptism of Jesus.
And in Matthew 3 17, while he was baptizing the Lord Jesus God almighty spoke from heaven and said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
And yet here’s John saying, Lord, are you the one or should we keep waiting for somebody else?
Doubts are normal experiences even for great Christians.
And I like to say that especially because we have so many young people here because I remember as I was growing up going through my teenage years, there were times when I struggled a lot with the doubts of my faith.
I think that’s especially true for those of us who grow up in Christian homes.
Sometimes we wonder if we’re truly Christians or if we’re just conditioned to be who we are.
And so we wrestle with these questions.
And if we’re not careful, we begin to think that maybe our doubts are some sort of a sickness or maybe it’s sin.
I want to tell you that doubting is not sin.
Some of the greatest people who ever lived, some of the great people of the Bible were people who experienced serious doubts.
And I’m convinced that God respects the probing questions of his Children that he delights when we don’t just take things on the surface.
But when we go beyond the surface to find the answers that are available, so then doubt is the act of questioning it is uncertainty.
It is the humility of a mind asking questions and seeking real solutions.
And there is a difference between doubt and unbelief.
Perhaps it’s best summarized this way, doubt asks the sincere questions, unbelief won’t hear the answers.
So if you struggle sometimes with questions about your faith or about your life as a Christian, let me just encourage you to relax a little bit and understand that we all go through periods of doubt.
And in order to illustrate the principles of doubt, I would like to turn your attention to the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel where we have the record of a Doubter.
In fact, with tongue in cheek without doubt, he is the greatest Doubter in the Bible.
His name is Thomas. He’s one of the Lord’s disciples.
His name appears in the scriptures, oftentimes with another name attached to it.
Have you ever seen it in the scriptures?
Thomas did a lot of people think that means Thomas the Doubter, but the word is a word which means the twin.
So Thomas was a twin.
I don’t know anything about the other twin, but I know that Thomas was a twin.
In fact, the word is a word that is translated sometimes in the English language.
If you say the word that means double. But we also know that Thomas was a Doubter.
He had a lot of questions. He was uh a person who was very melancholy in his spirit.
If if he were living today, we would say he was a pessimist.
You know what a pessimist is, a pessimist is someone who feels bad when he feels good because he’s afraid he’ll feel worse when he feels better.
Do you ever know anybody like that?
They feel bad when they feel good because they’re afraid they’re going to feel worse when they feel better.
Thomas was that kind of a personality from what we can gather in the references made to him in the scripture.
For instance, on one occasion, when Jesus had indicated, he wanted to go be near his friend Lazarus who was very sick and was dying when Jesus wanted to go back to Bethany, which was just two miles from Jerusalem.
Here was Thomas’s take on it all, John 11 16.
Then Thomas who is called the twin said to his fellow disciples, let’s also go that we may die with him.
This guy is a real winner, isn’t he?
I mean, a lot of people think that was a statement of devotion and perhaps it was.
But how many of you would have thought of that? That was Thomas’s first thought.
Well, let’s go back there with him and we will just all die.
He just kind of had that approach to life and he was just a little bit morbid sometimes in his thoughts, you know, in the upper room, Jesus was trying to prepare the disciples for his departure and he said and where I go, you know, and the way, you know, and Thomas was the first one to speak up.
He said, Lord, we don’t know where you’re going.
How in the world can we know the way you kind of get a little bit of a picture of this guy.
He’s a very questioning person, a probing a personality to try to find the answers.
Now, the thing I want you to understand is that Thomas was not without faith.
He was not an unbeliever. He had every reason to believe he had walked with the disciples.
He had seen all the miracles that Jesus did.
He had heard the Lord’s predictions about his death, burial and resurrection.
And Thomas had many facts to back up his faith.
And yet he doubted the record of his major experience of doubt is recorded in the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel.
A passage we often look to during the Easter season as we examine his doubt, we can begin to see some of the things that cause us to doubt because he is no different than we are a man of like passions.
Notice, first of all, that doubt develops in isolation, it is interesting that we first learned about Thomas’s doubt when the disciples had gathered together in the, in the room.
And Jesus came after his resurrection to see them and to, to be in their midst, the scripture says he just appeared in their midst and the and the interesting fact is everybody was there except for, you know, who Thomas, he wasn’t there.
He was absent. Perhaps he was still trying to deal with his overwhelming sorrow and his response to what had happened.
It is very interesting that he was alone apart from the rest of the disciples when doubt settled into his life.
Now, let me just express something to you and we’ll come back to this in a few moments, doubt flourishes in isolation when we are isolated.
When we’re the only ones, if we can’t find anyone else who believes as we believe about God, sometimes the doubts can come.
If you go back to John the Baptist for a moment.
It’s interesting when John the Baptist sent his messengers up to Jesus to find out if he was the Messiah.
Do you know where he was when he sent that message?
Well, if you remember the story of John the Baptist, he was in trouble with Herod because he had made some denouncing remarks about Harrod’s marriage.
And so he got thrown in prison.
And when John began to doubt about the Messiah, he was in prison, he was isolated from the rest of his friends.
He was in prison, left alone to think about, you know, what is this really Jesus or is this really the Messiah?
Whenever we’re struggling with? Doubt, it’s always good to take our emotional temperature because sometimes doubt comes alongside in parallel with our mood swings.
Sometimes when we’re feeling discouraged or we’ve had a very difficult time where we’re going through loneliness or fatigue or sickness.
All of those things can begin to happen.
One of my favorite sayings is that our souls and our bodies live so close together, they catch each other’s diseases.
And sometimes when we’re not feeling good physically, some of those things can spill over into our lives spiritually.
And this is often true, doubt can flourish during times of isolation.
CS Lewis, the great English writer said that he struggled seriously with doubt when he would go on trips and find himself alone in hotel rooms isolated from his family and from his friends.
That’s when he struggled most with his doubts.
Next, I want you to notice as you read the scripture in John chapter 20 that doubt demands evidence.
In verse 25 we read unless I see in his hands, the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails, put my hand into his side, I will not believe.
Now, remember this was the Thomas who had warned the other disciples not to go to Jerusalem.
Remember he said, don’t go down there because we’ll all end up dying with Jesus.
And now the worst has happened, Jesus has died and Thomas isn’t convinced that he’s come back from the grave by any means, he’s not convinced.
And when he gets together finally with the disciples, and they say, we saw the Lord, he’s back from the grave.
Thomas said, you know what? I don’t know that I believe that in fact, unless I can see it for myself, unless I can examine the evidence myself.
I’m not going to believe James Montgomery Boyce has suggested that Thomas probably said a few other things that day too that aren’t written in the Bible, in his imagination.
He has Thomas saying to the rest of the disciples, didn’t I tell you it end like this?
The Lord would have been better off if he’d listened to me.
Instead of going down there with all of his enemies, he’d probably still be alive if he listened to me.
And now that Jesus had died and Thomas had no proof that he’d come back from the grave.
He wanted to be sure before he would say anything about faith, he wanted to be sure that this Jesus was truly the one who had died and had come back from the grave.
You know, what were sometimes hard on Thomas because he doubted.
But I wonder how many of the disciples who were in the room didn’t have as much faith as Thomas did.
Thomas was honest and expressive about his faith and he wanted to go find out for himself sometimes what looks like faith is simply silence about our own personal doubts.
I really have to take my hat off to Thomas. At least he was honest.
And he said, what was in his heart. And he began to ask for the evidence that He needed.
And I’m convinced, as we’ll see in a few moments that when we seriously and sincerely seek for the answers to our questions, God will meet us at the point of our need.
Amen. He will. And that brings us to the third thing that doubt draws us back to Christ in the first meeting.
When Jesus came into that room, Thomas wasn’t there, but it is interesting that eight days later, those same disciples got together and this time Thomas was with them and Jesus came the doors being shut and stood in the midst of them and said peace be to you.
Thomas didn’t sit around and argue with the disciples about whether Jesus had come back from the grave.
He just determined the next time they get together, I’m going to be with them.
And if Jesus comes back, I’m going to check this out for myself and the Lord’s presence was there for Thomas to see, you know, Christianity is first and foremost about a person, not about doctrines and creeds.
If we express our doubts clearly to the Almighty God in prayer, if we read the four gospels carefully about his life, if we examine the evidence that is available to us, it will not draw us to the right answers, it will draw us to the right person.
And that person is Jesus Christ. That’s what happened to Thomas in his desire to find evidence.
He found the living lord. And you know, I like to just say this, especially because of, of the kids who are here and the young people who are here, sometimes we get so wrapped up in the things that we don’t know.
There are a lot of things that we don’t have answers to.
But you know, there are many important questions in life that God does answer and those answers are clear and we can know them and we don’t have to doubt about them.
We don’t have to be concerned about the reality.
The fact is the things that are questions to us often are just a very small percentage of the things that are really revealed to us in the word of God about God and the Christianity so that we shouldn’t.
Sometimes we think, well, I have this doubt and all of a sudden that doubt becomes the whole of our faith.
Someone has suggested one of the ways to deal with this is to believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts.
If you think about that for a moment that will help you.
Because if you’re not careful, Satan will get a wedge into your life with some little question, something that somebody asks in class, maybe some teacher brings something up about evolution and you don’t have the ready answer to it.
Let me just tell you something as someone who has studied this just a little bit you have just as many answers as they do and your answers are better.
It takes more faith to believe the evolutionary hypothesis than it does to believe in creation.
If you study it correctly, sometimes you may be disappointed because somebody has done something that they were a Christian leader or somebody you looked up to and they, they messed up and you look at their life and you say, well, if that’s Christianity, how listen, don’t let any of these things blow you off.
Course on your way toward the goal of really knowing Jesus Christ personally, the doubts that come to your life if you are careful and if you walk carefully and researching the answers will bring you back to Christ.
Let me suggest fourthly that doubts have the potential to deepen your faith.
It is interesting that Thomas never would have had the opportunity to see Jesus as he saw him.
Had he not doubted later on.
I can imagine someone coming up to Thomas and saying Thomas, do you believe that Jesus Christ came back from the grave?
And Thomas would say, you know what? I had my hands on his body.
I put my hand in the side where the spear went.
I looked right smack into the nail prints in his hands and I put my fingers in there and saw how did Thomas get that unparalleled opportunity?
Because he doubted and he followed his doubts through to their solutions on a separate occasion when the other disciples were together, doubt was met in the very same way over in the book of Luke.
In the 24th chapter, we are told this, that he said to them, why are you troubled?
And why do you doubt? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet?
That it is I myself, handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see, I have.
And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
I want to say something to you today that I hope will encourage you.
Honest doubts have the potential to build an indestructible faith.
If you will follow those doubts, just as Jacob wrestled with God one night and came out a different person when you wrestle with your doubts and honestly go after them that can lead you to a strong faith in Almighty God.
And sometimes we have to be honest about our doubts. We’ll talk about that in a minute.
Sometimes people say they have doubts and it’s just something they’ve decided they don’t want to believe.
So they chuck it over here and say, well, I have doubts. You know, a lot of people do that.
We need to learn how to be honest about our doubts.
One of the things that many doubters report is that when they begin to search for the evidence, the search does take them to the answer.
But in the process of searching for the evidence, they find a relationship with God, they never had before.
And sometimes I’ve heard them say at the end, I don’t even care about the answer anymore.
I found the Lord in a whole new way and the answer is there and I’m just going to rest and be sure of it and walk before our Lord.
Finally, the last thing I want you to know is you face doubts is that doubts can define your faith.
Somebody has said that there is more faith believe me in one doubt than in half the creeds.
And what that means is that when we follow a doubt all the way through to the resolution of it in our heart, that gives us the ability to say like Thomas said, when he finally saw the Lord and touched his body and saw the nail prints and put his hand in his side.
Do you remember what Thomas said?
One of the greatest statements of declared faith in all of the word of God.
He said, my Lord and my God say it out loud, my Lord and my God.
I wish I could have been there for that moment when the doubts of Thomas were once and for all put away, he sought for the answer.
He followed hard after the evidence.
And when he finally stood in the presence of the Lord Jesus, put his hands on his body and saw the nail prints and the side wound, it suddenly hit him.
Yes, he did die in Jerusalem. But he’s back from the grave.
My Lord and my God, it’s almost worth going through doubt to be able to say it with that kind of conviction, isn’t it?
You know, there’s a kind of faith we have in Bible, teaching churches like this one where you get the Bible in Sunday school, you get the Bible in Christian school, you get the Bible in church in the morning, you get the Bible in church at night and you grew up in your family and you got Bible at home and everybody’s a Christian.
Everybody you know, is a Christian and all of a sudden you just are a Christian because you’re just like everybody else.
Somebody has said that the way you describe faith like this, it’s formaldehyde faith.
Just think about that for a moment. Do you have formaldehyde faith? Faith?
That’s just kind of pickled, just kind of store it up.
And if you ever need it, maybe it’ll be there.
You don’t want to have that kind of faith, living faith takes you into the questions about your faith.
And let me tell you something that’ll help you.
You don’t have to lay awake at night thinking that you’re gonna come up with the one question that’s gonna pull everything out from under Christianity and it’s all gonna come tumbling down.
I know we have some smart people here and some of y’all have great I Q S but I promise you you can follow any question, your heart desires about Christianity.
And when you get to the answer, all it will do is make you stronger in your faith.
It won’t destroy your faith. I have a library where I study four walls full of books.
I don’t know, thousands of books written by men so smart. I can’t even understand half of them.
They have all gone down all the roads of doubt that I’ve ever experienced.
And they’ve come out with strong, vibrant faith.
And therefore I know that God will give me the latitude and the boundary to search for the answers I need and he’ll do that for you.
So how do you fight the giant of doubt?
First of all, you face it and then you fight it.
Let me just give you four or five practical things.
First of all, you need to admit your doubts personally.
You know, it’s not very much fun to go to a testimony meeting when everybody else is standing up saying, you know, I’m all excited about what God’s doing in my life.
And you know, God is great and life is great and witnessing is great and my prayer life is great.
And you’re sitting back there with doubts.
You don’t feel very good about saying up standing up and saying, you know what, let me give you my testimony tonight.
My testimony is, I really question God. I really doubt God.
Nobody’s gonna say amen and they’re gonna look at you and some of the glow will come off of your halo.
I promise you. But that’s where it starts, isn’t it?
Doubts that are buried often come back in agnosticism.
But doubts that are dealt with will lead you to a greater and stronger relationship with Almighty God.
The first thing you need to do if you’re struggling with doubts is admit that to yourself.
I’ve got some doubts and then you need to articulate your doubts clearly. Why do you doubt?
What is your doubt? Some people say, well, I’m just a Doubter.
Well, about what you see, it’s so easy for us and Satan loves to do this, paint these broad brush pictures in our minds and if we don’t crystallize our thinking and articulate what’s really going on in our lives, we will out doubt itself without ever defining it to destroy us.
So, what do you doubt? Do you doubt the reality of the resurrection?
Do you doubt that there is a God? Do you doubt that the Bible is the word of God?
Do you doubt that Christianity is the one way to God?
That there is only one way to Christ, to God? And that’s through Jesus Christ. What are your doubts?
And why do you doubt? Is it because something you heard in class upset you something you heard from a secular professor who is out to do everything he can to undermine the faith of the people who study in his classroom.
If you just sit down for a moment and say, I’ve got these doubts and you begin to crystallize them and write them down and articulate them.
The more clearly you can articulate your doubts, the easier it will be for you to deal with them and then acknowledge your doubts prayerfully.
Here’s the most important thing I want to say today based upon the scriptures and I want to put it up on the screen so you won’t miss it.
Here’s what you do with doubts.
Watch this, turn your doubts into questions, turn your questions to prayers and turn your prayers to God.
You say you mean I’m supposed to tell God that I doubt Him when I get zapped.
No, he won’t get zapped.
I’ll tell you what if you read the scriptures, you’ll find out that many of the people whose lives are described in the word of God.
They doubted. I think of Gideon. You remember old Gideon?
Now, the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you.
You mighty man of valor. And Gideon said to him, oh my Lord, if the Lord is with us, then why is all this happening to us?
And where are all his miracles which our fathers told us about saying did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?
But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the mite.
And that’s a great statement of faith, isn’t it? You know, Lord, what’s going on here?
I don’t understand why this is happening in my life.
God had told Abraham and Sarah, they were going to have a son and they were both pushing 100.
I mean, that could cause you to doubt could it not.
But we’re not talking about just anybody saying this.
This was almighty God saying this is anything too hard for God, Sarah, not only doubted kids, she laughed at God.
I mean, I don’t suggest that what she did. She laughed at God.
When God told her she was gonna have a baby, she laughed out loud and she didn’t know God was listening.
Let me tell you something. God’s always listening and he said, you laughed and she said, no, I didn’t.
And God said, yes, you did. I heard you. What was she doing?
She was doubting God. I hate to tell you this.
But my, my, my namesake, Jeremiah doubted in the book of lamentations.
In the third chapter, Jeremiah said this. He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out.
He has made my chain heavy. Even when I cry and shout, he shuts out my prayer.
He has blocked my ways with Huns stone. He has made my paths crooked.
If you go through the scriptures, you will find often that when people got discouraged, when they didn’t know what to do, when the answers weren’t plain, they often doubt it out loud in prayer to God.
If you read the psalms, you’ll see it everywhere.
Do you need to tell God so that He can find out?
No, you need to tell God so that you can hear yourself telling God what’s going on in your heart.
Once again, that makes it more understandable to you as you try to figure out what’s going on in your life as you pray.
And then you need to analyze the evidence diligently.
Just understand that if God’s put it down in your heart, it’s a little motivational program to get you going in a study so that you can learn something.
You didn’t know the whole secular educational program is built on the evolutionary foundation, not just in the science courses, but in history and in every other course, it is all tainted by the humanistic evolutionary thought process, but you have never been in a better place to search out the true answers than you are here.
There are hundreds of books you can understand that will take you toward creationism in a way that you will be able to debate with anybody on any level.
I’ve watched some of the champions of creation science go up against the evolutionists and I’m telling you what you don’t want to mess with them.
I’ve never known them to lose.
Why is that we aren’t sitting back here poor little Christian people with no answers to the questions that people ask.
The real issue is do we have enough enough fortitude to go and get the answers because they’re there?
If we want them, the answers are here in the word of God and the answers are clearly understood if you want to know them, analyze the evidence diligently.
And then I want to be real careful here.
But let me just say this, you need to accept limitations humbly.
And I want to talk about two limitations that you need to accept.
First of all, accept your own, you know what?
You’re probably not the smartest person who ever lived.
I know I’m not and there’s a lot of stuff I don’t understand. You know, I study a lot.
That’s what I do. My, you know, I spend hours every week reading and studying and, and I love to do it.
But you know what I do, the more I study I, I think I’m just now finding out how much I don’t know, the more I study, the more I become aware of my ignorance.
And there are, there are areas where I get going in some research project for a message or something and something will open up to me over here in another area.
And I’ll realize I don’t know anything about that.
And I just have to sometimes bow before Almighty God and say, Lord God, I want to understand this the best I can.
But I know you’re working with flawed merchandise here, you know.
Um, I only got so much hard drive in this computer and Lord God, you’re going to have to take this flawed human being and help me to understand, to the best of my ability and keep giving me greater understanding.
But lord, I understand that there’s a lot of stuff I don’t understand. Amen.
That’s where you have to start your own human limitations.
But let me give you one other and this is one, I’m really frightened because I’m afraid somebody’s going to misunderstand this.
You need, you need to also accept the limitations of the Bible.
Whoa, I bet you can’t believe.
I said that I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God that it is true from cover to cover.
I believe that it is plea inspired and verbally inspired that it is authoritative. I believe all of that.
I, I spend my whole life in the word of God. But let me tell you something, listen carefully.
The Bible has all the truth that you need to know, but it doesn’t have all the truth that there is.
There are a lot of things, the Bible doesn’t address a lot of things.
The Bible doesn’t touch on wherever the Bible touches on anything.
It’s always true, but the Bible doesn’t give you all the answers to every specific question you may want to ask.
And if you don’t understand that, you may say, well, I’m, I’m a Bible, Christian and I went to the Bible and doesn’t have the answer.
There are some things the Bibles are not supposed to have the answer to.
But listen to me carefully. When you get all done with that, you need to realize this, that all truth is still God’s truth.
If it’s true, it’s from God.
He may just not have put it down in the word of God as a part of the revelation he wants to give to us.
I see sometimes kids really get discouraged and adults as well because someone will come and say, well, what about this?
Well, there’ll be general principles in the Bible about that, but there won’t be specific answers because that information is not there.
I believe this book is the answer to every need I have in my life.
And if I study it and, and make it a passion to know it better, I will be able to do life as God wants it done.
But there are some things, the Bible doesn’t speak to some issues that aren’t found in the word of God.
And you need to understand that finally last but not least you need to adjust to the complexity of the world.
How many of, you know, this world is really complex and we’re just finding out about it, we’re just finding out about this world and it is so complex that the simple answer is there is no simple answer.
Isn’t that true? We’re finite beings and we cannot always understand God’s ways.
And let me tell you that’s the way it should be.
Somebody say, well, you know what kind of God is that?
If we can’t understand his ways, it’s the only kind of God a God could be.
Because if you could understand God, he couldn’t be God.
If God was down on your level where you comprehended everything about Him, he would no longer be God.
Thank God. He revealed himself to us through his written word. Thank God.
He revealed himself to us through the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the word, the Lagos of God.
But I don’t understand a lot about God.
I’m telling you when you plumb the deepest resources of who God is, it’s like you’ve just discovered a whole new galaxy.
And sometimes I, I find people, they want to put God in their own package.
They wanna be able to understand everything there is about God. Please hear me today.
There is so much about God. You will never know. Paul wrote to the Romans in Romans chapter 11.
He said all the depths, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past, finding out for who has known the mind of the Lord and who has become his counselor or who has first given to him and it shall be repaid him for of him and through him and to him are all thanks to whom be glory forever.
What is Paul saying? God is awesome. He is awesome. So awesome.
You will never be able to comprehend even a small portion of who he is.
If he had not revealed himself to us, we would never be able to know Him.
Isaiah, the prophet put it this way for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways.
My ways sayeth the Lord for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
My friends, I worship the incomprehensible God.
I worship the awesome God spent my whole life trying to get to know Him better and I can know Him through his son Jesus Christ.
But I will never be able to plumb the depths of His greatness, nor will you.
And when doubts come in that part of the complexity of the universe and the knowledge of who God is, you just have to relax and understand that you’re in the same category with everybody else.
Some unknown poet put it this way.
He said, the world will never adjust itself to suit your whims to the letter.
Some things will go wrong your whole life long and the sooner you know it, the better it is folly to fight with the infinite and go down at last in the wrestle the wiser man shapes into God’s plan, like the water, shapes into the vessel.
Do you hear that? Lord? I don’t understand all of this.
I know it’s you, but I’m just gonna fall in line with where you’re going along the way.
If you want to give me some more understanding, that’ll be great. But I know it’s you.
I know who you are. You’re an awesome God. I love you.
I want to worship you and what I don’t understand, I will worship falling down before the awesome nature of God.
So when the plane crashes, and the note comes to your heart and written across the face of the note is the word why you may never know the full answer.
But your questions and your doubts will lead you to a deeper understanding of what you do know.
And perhaps even the vistas of knowledge, you never ever dreamed you would visit before in walking with God and walking through doubts.
You come to know Him better and I trust you can come at last to the place where Thomas did and say my Lord and my God, which giant is intimidating?
You perhaps fear has your number. Maybe loneliness. Has you locked out?
The reality is that you never walk alone and never have to live defeated.
You can overcome debilitating sin and temptation slaying the giants in your life is designed to help you stand against the giants that seek to destroy.
You remind yourself of God’s promises with turning points.
Giant Slayer scripture cards, each card features specifically selected verses to help you overcome the giants in your life, learn to recognize and banish giants from the promised land of your life and walk in victory.
Request yours today.