The Storm of Doubt and the Assurance of Christ
“God doesn’t require well connected or influential people to do his work here on earth. Nor does he require impressive resumes, high IQs, brute strength or superpowers. What he does need are men and women who are completely open to him, people who don’t put conditions on their commitment. He needs people who are willing to do what others will not…those who will go the extra mile, even when it costs them personally to do so…those willing to surge forward when they are exhausted and everyone else has folded… those who look pain in the eye and still muster the motivation to keep going… those who are willing to wrestle with a problem until it is solved… those who allow failure and rejection to make them something better than they were before. God isn’t looking for perfection, he is seeking men and women with faith greater than fear.”
- Michelle Asad in “Breaking Cover”
I don’t know about you, but there have been times in my life where doubt seemed to loom over every corner of my life. What started as a small whisper in a tide pool of my life quickly spread like cancer to every part of my life. I went from assurance to questioning. As doubt consumed me, I hesitated, and eventually, I stopped. I was so consumed with my doubts, I didn’t even realize I was no longer moving. My walk with the Lord became stagnant. My passion for the work God had given me cooled. Everything seemed impossible, while I felt stretched too thin, like a rubber band about to pop.
Then God would show up and my doubts would evaporate like morning fog on a hot day. Suddenly my passion would burst back to life, the way before me was suddenly possible and I felt vibrant and energetic about the paths to come. Then, a little way down the road, doubt would creep onto my horizon like clouds over a calm sea. Before I knew it, a hurricane of doubts would consume me again. Each storm battering my defenses, each wave threatening to ruin me. And in the deep of the storm, God would show up again.
And so the cycle went; back and forth, round and round. This was 2020 for me. The year God asked me to start Undercurrents. Throughout the entirety of last year, I yo-yoed between excitement and joy for God’s direction in my life and utter despair from all-consuming doubt. It was a very paralyzing and exhausting year and by the beginning of 2021, I had no heart for the work. I felt like a sailor who had escaped the clutches of the sea and was dragging herself onshore.
Then I came across Hebrews 3: 7-19, which says,
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
When I read this passage I realized that the author likened complaining to rebellion and rebellion to disobedience and disobedience to unbelief. That means that grumbling reveals that you do not trust God and that your heart is not submitted to God’s will. I paused and realized that this was true in my own life. I hesitated and disobeyed God’s leading in my life because I did not believe him. This led to me grumbling that God was asking too much of me. So my complaining actually revealed that in my heart of hearts, the secret places that only I know, I was actually in rebellion against God. My actions looked righteous, my motives appeared pure, but the very depths of my heart were still defiantly rebellious to God.
God saw my heart and he was calling out my doubts and complaining for what they really were- rebellion. My doubtful words did not fool God, no matter how prettily I weaved their song of woe to flatter myself. God knew my heart.
“For the LORD sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” - 1 Samuel 16:7b
For years I have incorrectly believed that my emotion of anxiousness in regards to the unknown was doubt. And so I could never understand how to untie myself from its coiling clutches. I have since learned that though I might experience the emotion of fear of the unknown, a choice is still before me. Whether fearful or fearless, I choose if I will rebel against God and doubt him or if I will submit myself to God and trust him.
The author of Hebrews reminds us, O children of God, that we have the Holy Spirit who warns our hearts when we are entering the dangerous territory of rebellion. So listen to his quiet voice! Don’t harden your hearts to the conviction of sin, but repent and choose to trust God. Choose to believe him. Choose to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Rebellion is a choice, just as submission and belief is a choice. This is how a whole generation of the nation of Israel could physically see the mighty works of God (as alluded to in Hebrews 3) and still find something to doubt and complain about.
As Michelle Asad said in her book Breaking Cover, “God isn’t looking for perfection, he is seeking men and women with faith greater than fear.”