When in Doubt

I tend to believe that I'm a smarter man than I actually am. Most of the time I think that given enough information I can use my basic reasoning skills to understand a situation, and most of the time this proves to be right. However, there are concepts which I cannot seem to wrap my mind around or rationalize, and my first instinct is to disregard them as false. I believe that if I cannot fully understand or explain away an idea, I would never be able to put my faith in it. Yet as we learned on Sunday, there are several ideas in which most of us don't understand, but in which we still put our faith in such as: airplanes, cell phone technology, radio waves, etc... So, if we can trust that an airplane is not going to fall out of the sky, even though we don't know how it works, why is it that we can't trust God's Word?

Although, it is important to note that there is nothing wrong with doubting your beliefs, in fact it's necessary for faith to be doubted (otherwise it's knowledge, not faith), why is it that we refuse to believe some of the stories from the Bible? We accept the things we can understand, and at the same time discount the rest of the book we base our lives on. I fall prey to this same mindset often. I've believed since I was young that God created the universe and that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but for some reason I want to try and rationalize certain parts of the Bible (like "Balaam’s Donkey"-Numbers 22, "Daniel and the Lion's Den"-Daniel 6, etc...). I want God to reveal all of his secrets to me, so that I'll understand everything. But is faith truly faith when I know all the answers? Although, Christianity isn't blind faith, God does reveal Himself to us through many mediums, there are areas where logic must take a backseat to faith. Sometimes we have to just take God at His word.

So, what do we do when we doubt? Well, we don't have to completely throw reason out the window in order to believe in the Bible. There have been many times throughout history that scholars question the validity of stories in the Bible, and time after time scientists and historians verify God's Word. Therefore, is it not "logical" or "reasonable" to trust that if many of the things we once believed to be false have been proven true, that maybe more or even all of what the Bible claims could be true? Examine the evidence. We know for a fact that Jesus Christ was a man, and that He died. We also know that hundreds of people claimed to see Him walking around forty days after he was killed. Through persecution and even many of them being murdered, His followers continued preaching of His resurrection. There are countless other facts that support Christianity, so, first, lean on what you know. Finally, you have to begin to trust that God is who He says He is, and that if that's true, nothing is impossible for Him. Although, we cannot understand it sometimes, that does not make it impossible. If we choose to always deny the things we can't comprehend, we might miss out on Moments of Truth that God wants us to experience.

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Pray
That God will help you to trust in Him, instead of leaning on your own understanding.