Is that not enough? Will those who are thirsty say to the sea, “You are not enough”? Do those who are hungry curse the bread which has been given to them? What traveler who is weary refuses a bed on which to rest?

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Hope in God!

The bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear Bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory
But on my King of grace.

Anne Cousin, The Sands of Time are Sinking

A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless (Tim Keller, The Reason for God xvii).

I have struggled with much of my own doubt. Doubt is painful. It blinds your eyes to Christ, and it robs you of your joy. It causes you to question God. It makes the small joys sin offers seem great (Genesis 3:1-6). However, as painful as it has been, and as much as I have stumbled in the midst of doubt, I am glad for much of it. When Jesus predicted Peter’s faithlessness, he commanded him, “When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32). I have learned invaluable lessons through some of my hardest nights. To doubters, from a doubter, here are some of the things I have learned.

Do not be afraid of doubt.

One reason many people ignore their doubts is because they are afraid. It may sound scary even to admit you have doubts long enough to look at them. Yes, there is a high price to pay for rejecting Jesus. But, if you do not examine your doubt, you will have a hard time following Christ to the extent that he calls. And anyone who says, “I follow him,” but is not willing to put a cross on his own back, is not following him where he went: to be crucified.

If you have doubts, don’t be afraid to examine them. Repent insofar as you find sin in your doubt, and beg God to help you with them. Seek help from wise Christian friends and leaders. But don’t fear your lack of understanding. Take it to the cross. Jesus died for doubt, too, and he demonstrated great forgiveness for those with doubt during his ministry.

When Thomas doubted, Jesus was not harsh toward him. Nor did Jesus appoint a new apostle to take his place. Jesus came to him and showed him his wounds (John 20:24-29). When a father came to Jesus with his mute son, Jesus told him he could heal him if he only believed. In despair, the father cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”  And what did Jesus do?  He healed his son. Not because he had perfect faith, but because Jesus had mercy on him (Mark 9:20-27). If God command us to “Have mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 22), how much more mercy will he have on those who doubt and come to him for help?

God is not impressed by the strength of your belief. What delights God is a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 51:17). So go to him with your doubt. Be broken before him, and plead for his help.

Do not focus on your doubt.

Dealing with your doubt is one thing, but do not let your doubt become your focus. The focal point of Christianity is the person of Jesus. Look to him!  In his autobiography, Charles Spurgeon described his conversion this way,

Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” What a charming word it seemed to me! Oh! I looked until I could have almost looked my eyes away (CH Spurgeon Autobiography, Volume 1 88).

It is those who look to Christ who are healed, and none others (John 3:14-15).

Where to go from here

Trace your doubts back to their roots. Try to identify where they come from. Are your doubts objective (you don’t believe Jesus) or subjective (you wonder if you are a genuine Christian)?  If you can get a handle on the nature of your doubt, you will be better able to seek help.

I have listed some things below you can do to deal with your doubt and provided some information on where to go from here:

• Read your bible, and spend time evaluating the person of Jesus. The crowds Jesus spoke to were astonished by his teaching (Mark 1:22). They said, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46). So go to him. See if you find the Jesus in the gospels to be a trustworthy person who speaks with authority.
• Also evaluate the character of Jesus’ followers. Similarly, Jesus’ followers gave up everything they had to follow him. Paul was a respected Pharisee before he converted to Christianity and suffered tremendously for Christ’s sake (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). Why was Paul willing to suffer so much for Christ?  Spend time reading the words Jesus’ disciples (Paul, Peter, John, etc.) wrote and see if you find them to be credible witnesses.
• Wrestle with huge theological problems. When you have a theological difficulty (for instance, the problem of evil), work on it; try to find explanations for the paradoxes you come across. Don’t feel you have to solve it soon; rather resolve to wrestle with it for months or years if that is what it takes, and find good, trustworthy theologians who can help you through your questions. John Piper and Tim Keller are two of the ones who have been most helpful to me.
• Spend time with Christians. Find some trustworthy Christians who are trying to follow Jesus with all their hearts and get to know them. They will make a lot of mistakes, but if they truly love Jesus, you’ll be able to see something different in them (1 John 2:15).
• Reflect on the witness God has given in creation. Romans 1:19-20 says God has made himself plain to the world through creation. I know it may not always seem that way because sinful people try to suppress this knowledge (Romans 1:18), but it is everywhere. You just have to humble yourself and open your eyes. Be amazed at the world God has created!  And ponder things like the moral law, which God has given us to bear witness to himself.
• Read helpful books. Tim Keller’s The Reason for God is a good place to start. And this may sound strange, but I can’t recommend Charles Spurgeon’s All of Grace enough. Though it simply repeats the claims of Christianity over and over (rather than offering evidence and argumentation), it helped me out immensely during some great doubt in my life. There is truth to the fact that the Holy Spirit works through the proclamation of the gospel to create believing hearts. Immerse yourself in the gospel more than anything else. Facts won’t make you a lover of God, but the gospel will. Biographies of radical lovers of God are helpful as well.
• Get away from distractions. Our entertainment-saturated culture isn’t helpful for pointing us toward God. Develop better ways to use your time that point you to God. Spend time outside in his creation. Spend time in your room, alone in prayer. Many times it’s good just to be quiet and ponder things that you wouldn’t have time to ponder if you sat in front of the TV all day.
• Preach the gospel to yourself every day. The primary problem in your doubt is likely not an intellectual issue but a moral issue. No matter how hard you try to believe, you won’t unless God works in your heart. You can work yourself up into a sweat trying to believe, but it won’t get you anywhere unless the Holy Spirit brings you faith. Get on your face before God and beg him to send you his Spirit. Do not just do it once. Do it a thousand times. It may take years of doubt before you begin to feel confidence in your faith again. Resolve not to give up, but to endure through your doubt. Put the gospel in a sentence you can take with you to recite to yourself. “God justifies the ungodly” is as helpful as anything I’ve ever come across.

Recommended Resources

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are precious to me not because they turn my life into a string of successes but because they keep me from collapsing under my string of failures (John Piper, Radical Effects of the Resurrection).

• • •

Some professing Christians . . . are given to a grievous censorious and critical attitude toward everything and everybody. As one man I knew has said, “Some people are born in the objective case, the contrary gender and the bilious mood.”. . . For one to profess to know Christ and have real religion and at the same time to manifest a sour, critical, negative attitude is disgusting and ab­horrent even to the ungodly. Certainly anyone with such an unsavory nature could never hope to be a “savour of life unto life” (Bill Piper, Dead Men Made Alive).

If righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (Galatians 2:21).

One of the things I like most about Martin Luther is that he was a sinner.  He was shockingly honest in his writing about his own sinfulness, and he needed to be for the sake of people who constantly forget that Christ died for the ungodly.  Let me give an example of what I mean:

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter, are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign (Sämmtliche Schriften, Letter 99, emphasis added).

And Luther was no imaginary sinner.  He wrote this questionable advice to a younger friend, Jerome Weller, “Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles.”

That doesn’t mean Luther took sin lightly.  He often lamented over his indwelling sin.  His great sinfulness, his recognition of it, and his despair over it made him a good companion to sinful people.  And his understanding that God was the only one who could free him from his sin made him totally reliant on God and his grace, just like Augustine a millennium before him who prayed, “Command what you will, and will what you command!”  Indeed, Luther was an Augustinian monk, so he was likely quite familiar with this famous passage from the Confessions.  Luther wrote of his own struggles:

I sit here at ease, hardened and unfeeling—alas! praying little, grieving little for the Church of God, burning rather in the fierce fires of my untamed flesh. It comes to this: I should be afire in the spirit; in reality I am afire in the flesh, with lust, laziness, idleness, sleepiness. It is perhaps because you have all ceased praying for me that God has turned away from me . . . For the last eight days I have written nothing, nor prayed nor studied, partly from self-indulgence, partly from another vexatious handicap . . . I really cannot stand it any longer . . . Pray for me, I beg you, for in my seclusion here I am submerged in sins.

Perhaps Luther’s deep understanding that the gospel was solely for sinners made him so free to talk about his sinfulness.  As he himself once said, “Sin cannot tear you away from [Christ], even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders.”  The church could use more sinners like Luther.

His dying words fit his life and teaching so well, “We are beggars.  This is true.”

My dear friends, I want you to understand something this morning. I speak to all of us here this morning who profess to be the children of God:  The only reason you and I have not fallen into sin, gross sin, terrible sin — maybe not this sin here, but gross and terrible sin nevertheless — is not because of a lack of desire on our parts; it is because there has been a lack of opportunity.

God in His graciousness has put a hedge about us, preventing us from doing the thing that we otherwise would do. I want you all to understand that this morning. Every day, every single day we need to thank God that we have been spared from falling into certain sins not because of a lack of desire on our part, but because desire has not coincided with opportunity. And it was all of God’s doing. It was His sovereign providence. It was His graciousness. . . .

Now, friends, you understand that there are times when God removes that hedge to test us, especially when we grow too big for our boots, especially when pride lingers in the heart, especially when we begin to think that we are invincible and untouchable. And woe betide us, then, when God actually provides the opportunity and says to us, ‘Have your way. Let’s see.’ . . .

You see, my friends, sin is deceptive. It doesn’t come up to you and draw out a sword and say, ‘I am your enemy, fight me.’ It doesn’t happen like that. Sin comes like Judas, kisses you on the cheek and says, ‘I am your friend. I will honor you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. I’ll make you feel good. I’ll make you a better person. I’ll gratify your most inward desires.’

Do you know what adultery is? John Piper says adultery is like casting Jesus in the title role of an X-rated movie. That’s what adultery is. You see, when we sin we take Jesus with us. If you’re a Christian, if you’re a believer, if you profess to know and serve the Lord Jesus you can’t leave Jesus outside the door like you leave your boots or your shoes outside the door, and then you come out and put them on again. You can’t do that. You are in union with Christ. Paul, in I Corinthians 6 — you know, if Paul hadn’t written it I wouldn’t have believed that this was possible — but Paul says in I Corinthians 6 about the Corinthians who were complicit in a sin as bad as this one, that when you sin, when you commit adultery, when you go and visit prostitutes (in the case of I Corinthians 6), you take Jesus with you. You bring Him into open shame. . . .

You don’t think that you could ever be brought to that position where you would commit a sin in willful defiance of what God says in His word. My friend, if you think like that, there’s a word from scripture for you: “Take heed, you that think that you stand, lest you fall.” Take heed if you think that you can stand all by yourself and that these sins will never ever darken your doorsteps, will never tempt and allure you. “Take heed, lest you fall.” David despised the Lord.

But look at the last verse of chapter 11:

“The thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”

David despised the Lord, and the Lord was displeased with David.

This is the heart of this story. Can a Christian fall into sin? Big sin, gross sin, terrible sin, awful sin? Of course. Of course, is the answer. It is all so dreadfully possible. 

This passage is here for many reasons, but it is here to warn us. It says to us, I think, several things. It says to us first of all we need to guard our minds. We need to guard our hearts. We need to make sure that the word of God is dwelling deep within our hearts. It’s telling us we need to make sure that we are keeping close fellowship with God. It’s saying to us that we need to have regular – regular – times of prayer and fellowship with God.

And if this morning I’m speaking to you and you are not the man or woman that you once were — your heart doesn’t sing for joy as it once did — you no longer sing, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear,” and you have begun to drift and to slip your moorings, then, my dear friend, you are in mortal danger. Do you understand that? You are in mortal danger. And this morning let this passage be a warning to you to pull you back from where you are and to set your course and sail in the direction it ought to be going. Don’t let this day pass. Don’t let this day pass until you have come to God and pleaded with Him to bring you back to where you once were and set your soul aflame for Him. . . .

Our gospel says to us this morning that the blood of Jesus covers all our sins, including these. What a gospel! What a Savior! I trust, my friends, that this passage will be a warning to you and to me today to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Derek Thomas, edited transcript).

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Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)

Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21-22).

If God commands us to forgive seventy times seven sins, how much more will he forgive us when we ask him?  In fact, in the parable following the above verses, Jesus bases his command on the fact that God does forgive us much more than this!

Tim Keller: Does God forgive sins you continue to repeat?
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Check out more Q&A with Tim Keller at the Redeemer website »

There had been false messiahs. What if Jesus was just another? So far Jesus’ ministry wasn’t exactly what John had always imagined the Messiah’s would look like. Could this imprisonment be God’s judgment? . . .

When Jesus had sent John’s disciples away, he said something stunning about John: no one born of women had ever been greater. This, right after John questioned who Jesus was.

In this age, even the greatest, strongest saints experience deep darkness. None of us are spared sorrow or satanic oppression. Most of us suffer agonizing affliction at some point. Most of us will experience seasons when we feel as if we’ve been abandoned. Most of us will die hard deaths.

The Savior does not break the bruised reed. He hears our pleas for help and is patient with our doubts. He does not condemn us. He has paid completely for any sin that is exposed in our pain.

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When you counsel and warn others, do it earnestly, affectionately, and thoroughly. . . . And, if you can with a good conscience, say how you in yourself are more unworthy than they (Jonathan Edwards, Advice to Young Converts).