Taboo for Christians

Raise your hand if you have ever had any doubt about God.

Raise your hand if you are too scared to raise your hand because you're not supposed to doubt God.

I bet you raised your hand for the second one. I know I did.

Doubt seems to be a taboo subject for Christians. It seems that the common perception is that a good Christian never has any doubt about God. But that's not true! Nearly every Christian I know has experienced doubt, myself included. It's a lot more common than you think. But doubt doesn't have to destroy your faith. It can actually make it stronger than ever. Let me tell you about my time of doubt...

I took a giant leap of faith and went on a mission trip with people I had never met in a place I had never been. It took a lot of prayer and faith to go, and I was more confident than ever in God's power. I saw His Hand everywhere we went, from town to town, and I felt His Touch on me as He opened my heart to the language there. If you had asked me then if God was real, I would have told you He was, without a shadow of a doubt. Flash forward 2 weeks, and I would have told you I wasn't so sure.

At the end of my time on this trip, I became severely ill, to the point of not being to get out of bed for 2 days. Imagine the worst food poisoning you've ever had, doubled. Yeah, it was that bad. After 2-3 days of being too sick to eat, it finally broke and I thought it was over. Then the worst came. My hands and feet began itching and broke out in thousands of little red bumps. I kept scratching and scratching, but the itching wouldn't stop. They were itching too bad to even sleep. I remember lying on my stomach in my bed, my hands clenched together under the pillow so that I wouldn't scratch them or my feet, tears streaming down my cheeks, begging God to just give me enough relief to sleep. It never came. It was the worst night of my life. The next morning, I was able to acquire some itch cream and I nearly drowned my hands and feet in it. The itching let up just enough where I could function, but I didn't understand why God couldn't stop the itching when a man-made medicine could. After 2 days of this, the itching stopped and my swollen hands began to return to normal. 2 weeks later, the bumps had become brown spots that just peeled away from my body like a blister, leaving shiny new skin underneath. To this day, no doctor has been able to tell me what happened. But the impact to my faith was devastating.

Instead of returning from my mission trip full of the Holy Spirit with a soul on fire, I came home with a broken heart. I couldn't understand why God hadn't helped me, why He hadn't answered my prayers. I had felt so alone when I was sick, like an abandoned puppy. If God was real and He cared about me, why didn't He relieve me? I knew that I shouldn't doubt God, but I also knew that I couldn't help but feel that doubt. And the events occurring in the world around me, the shootings and the riots, only grew that seed of doubt. I was so ashamed of myself. I had been a strong Christian all my life, and it took one week of suffering to make me doubt. "What a hypocrite!" I thought to myself.

But I knew something wasn't right. I knew the doubt inside of me shouldn't be there. I knew I had to fix it. So I reached out to a local minister. I told him everything I was feeling, and the first thing he said shocked me. "The fact you know that something isn't right is the first step to fixing it." He was saying the I was already on the way to destroying my doubt just by realizing that it shouldn't be there. Not that it shouldn't happen, because it will happen, but that it shouldn't stay. He told me to throw myself into the Word of God and prayer. So I did. But my doubt continued to grow. I thought I was hopeless.

Six months later, my doubt was stronger than it had ever been. I got a phone call. They were running tests to see if my sister had a blood clot on her brain. I've never been so scared in my life. It was then, at that very moment, that I broke. I fell to my knees and cried out to God. I begged Him to save my sister. I begged Him to take away the blood clot they thought they saw. A few hours later, I got another phone call. They didn't understand it but whatever they had seen was gone. THERE WAS NO BLOOD CLOT. And that's when it happened. My doubt was destroyed and my faith restored. After six months of fighting my feelings of abandonment and hopelessness, the Lord had won my battle for me.

But because of those six months, my faith has become stronger than ever. I know God exists. And I know He loves us. And I know He hears our prayers. Sometimes, the answer is going to be no, but that doesn't mean He stops loving us.

You see, you are going to have doubt. Let me say that again. YOU. ARE. GOING. TO HAVE. DOUBT. It's because we're humans. We can't help but doubt everything around us, even if it's only a little bit. But it's not about whether you have doubt, it's about what you do about it. When doubt comes your way, you can either give into it and turn your back on God, or you can fight through it until God brings you out of the darkness, new and refreshed. Yes, it will probably be the hardest time of your life, but I promise you will not regret it. Because I experienced that doubt, because I felt that abandonment, I can now witness to others experiencing the same thing. I can connect with them, and tell them that it's going to get better. Because I've been there.

But the first thing you have to do is talk about it. Don't be afraid to ask your brothers and sisters in Christ for help. Let them help you delve into God's Word and prayer. And one day, when you're standing in the Light of God's Presence, you're going to look back on your time of darkness, and you're going to smile to yourself because it was there that God taught you how to FULLY RELY ON HIM.

God bless you. I hope my testimony helps you.