When We Doubt

Oswald Chambers said, “Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong. It may be a sign that he is thinking.” There is a difference between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is a matter of the mind. Unbelief is a matter of the heart. Doubt is when we cannot understand what God is doing and why He is doing it. Unbelief is when we refuse to believe God’s Word and do what He tells us to do. We must not confuse the two.

Remember the discouraged disciples on the Emmaus road? In their minds, Jesus had failed in His mission and had been crucified. Jesus joined them on that road and began to speak with them. In the end, they said, “Didn’t our hearts feel strangely warm as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32). God dealt with their doubt through His Word. And God will deal with your doubt through His Word. When you are facing doubt, that is not the time to close the Bible. That is the time to open it and let God speak to you.

Maybe you have been doubting God’s ways in your life. Maybe you have been asking “why” a lot lately. Maybe His timing doesn’t seem to make any sense. The Bible says, “All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now” (1 Corinthians 13:12). It all will be resolved in that final day when we stand before God. God doesn’t ask us to understand everything. He asks us to trust Him and follow Him.