Doubting Christians Have Help Available
Barbara Henderson
John the
Baptist was a miracle child. He was a gift from God to his parents and to the
world. John was the voice crying in the
wilderness. He heralded the coming of
Jesus Christ. Christ Himself said there
was no greater than John the Baptist.
John probably
did not look like a gift to the world to most of those looking at him. He probably looked more like a homeless
lunatic. After all, he lived in the
desert instead of town. His diet may not
have been kosher. Honey is probably
kosher, but I don’t know about the locusts.
Besides, kosher or not, bugs is bugs, and most people do not want to eat
them. His clothing certainly left a lot
to be desired. He was covered up, but that’s about all you could say for his
clothes. (It is interesting that John’s
clothes were the same clothing that Adam and Eve wore – animal skins that
required that an innocent animal die.) But, there was something about
John… He preached repent for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand. And people
listened to him! They came to him. They
listened. They followed him right down
into the river of Jordan to baptized out of their old religion and into the new
religion that John preached was coming.
It is really
not speculation to say that John the Baptist’s parents had told him all about
his own miraculous birth as well as the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ. The thing is that while John had the books of
the Bible from Genesis through Malachi, he did not have Matthew through
Revelation as they had not yet been written.
So, he didn’t have everything necessary to understand the details of
events of his exact time.
Let’s take a
look at things from John’s perspective. He knew who he was. He knew that Jesus was the promised
savior. John had no visions of
grandeur. That was pretty obvious by his
lifestyle. Probably, like Moses, he saw
far beyond the material things of the world.
He knew a better world was coming.
He also knew that while he was the prophet of the day, that his
following would shrink as the followers of Jesus grew in number. What John didn’t know was exactly how Jesus
was going to bring in the kingdom for which John longed with all his heart.
Then…. Jesus
began to preach. Jesus took some of
John’s disciples as His own selected twelve.
And John, well John continued to preach.
His preaching got him thrown into prison. He was in prison month after weary
month. During his months in prison the
demon of doubt assaulted John. All the
things John ‘knew’ about Jesus did not seem to be compatible with the current
situation in John’s life. He was an
innocent man. He preached the unchanging
truth of the Holy Scriptures. He was
unjustly imprisoned for telling the truth and calling for repentance. So, from a human viewpoint, something was not
going right! John may have thought,
‘Well….. mom and dad were old when I was born.
Maybe their thinking was a little bit messed up by the time they got
around to telling me that story. Those
who saw the events leading up to my birth are dead or too old to be sure their
thinking is clear anymore, so I don’t have anyone to ask. And Jesus, the story surrounding his birth is
a little odd to say the least. Maybe I
just misunderstood something somewhere.’
Of course we
don’t have any idea of what was going on in John’s mind. Maybe it was nothing of the sort. We do know what John did. He sent his disciples to ask Jesus. He didn’t have the Holy Bible complete with
the New Testament, but John did have Jesus Himself. So to deal with his doubt John sent his
disciples to ask Jesus, ‘are you the One?
Or should we look for another?’
It may have been that John himself was quite certain that Jesus was the
One, and there was no need to look for another.
His disciples may have been the ones doubting and in need of
assurance. In that case John was doing
what all strong believers should do. He
sent his disciples directly to the source.
It may have been a little bit of doubt on both John’s part and the part
of the disciples. The outcome is the
same either way. John’s disciples went
to Jesus and asked the question, ‘Look Jesus.
John is in prison, and they aren’t very nice to him there. In fact they hate him. So we just want to know. Tell us the truth. Are you the One, or is
there another we are to look for?’
Instead of speaking an answer Jesus showed them the answer. They saw Jesus do miracles that could only be
the work of God. So, the disciples of
John had their own doubts put to rest, and they took the news to John who would
have been comforted tremendously by what they told him.
And here we
are today. Christians know Jesus Christ
is the Savior promised to the world in Genesis.
He is the One. We know it. We trust our eternal destination to Him. Through Him, we know we will enter the
kingdom of heaven and spend eternity in the presence of God. What a relief!
But, here we
are, stuck in this present reality. Our
most perfect day is not a really perfect day.
If we are having a good hair day spent in the company of pleasant people
that we love, it is probably also a day where we have to wear our fat jeans and
a little extra makeup to cover blotchy patches on our skin. Or, on that perfect day for a guy, there is
probably a little too much grey in the beard for stubble to look cool and there
may be a thin spot or receding hair line to go with it. And there is probably that hangover to go
with it. You know – your belly hangs
over your belt and there is no way you can keep your stomach sucked in all
day. And then are the really serious
things. Someone you love is facing a
dire situation and that is on your mind even though you are having a good
day. Someone you love is not with you to
enjoy you good day. They may be far
away, and they may be so far away they are not even on earth. There really is no perfect day. There are always things that may cause us to
wonder what God is up to, and potentially to doubt God. And, we have no disciples that we can send
directly to Jesus to ask Him what is going on.
So what are we supposed to do?
We are
supposed to do exactly what John did. We
are to go directly to Jesus Christ with the problems, the doubts, and the
fears. We do this through reading the
Bible and prayer. That is how you get
through doubt and difficult times. It
never changes. God is there with
comfort. He is a very present help in
times of trouble. It is often true that
while we may not doubt heaven, we doubt our daily bread. Our doubts can so overwhelm us that we are
not able to function. The sin is to not
deal with the doubt. And the way to deal
with is through prayer and Bible Study.
I read
somewhere that our prayers are sometimes not answered because we are using the
shotgun approach. We throw everything at
God like the pellets from a shotgun shell, but we really don’t have a specific
request. So, I began to think, ‘What is
the most important request that I make to God?
What do I want most when I pray?’
This may not be the most unselfish request I could make, but my most
important request at this time is ‘Help me to trust You more.’ That is what I want to do. Call me slow, but it has taken me this full
year up to know to narrow it down to that one request. I still make all my usual prayer requests,
and I know that God hears me. But trust
is the major request. John the Baptist
and his followers were basically asking for the same thing. They wanted to understand what was going on,
but they also wanted to simply trust Jesus to be the One in Charge. We don’t have to understand it all. We don’t have to know all the answers. We simply need to trust God more. When we don’t know what is going on, when we
don’t know why something happened, when we can’t understand current events, we
can still have confidence that God knows all the answers and that everything is
going according to His plans.
Barbara
Ps. Something I thought of regarding John the
Baptist is that while he spent a months in prison his death was speedy. They just chopped off his head and it was
over. He didn’t have to suffer through a
crucifixion.
http://hellogoodday.com
