It is not a sin to doubt what God is doing in your life during the dark, quiet moments. We are human, and through our frailties, we will have moments and sometimes seasons of doubting his existence in our lives, crying out like Jesus, “Lord, why have you forsaken me, why are you so far from saving me?” Psalm 22:1. But like Jesus, we will eventually say, “not mine, but your will be done.” Mark 14:36. It is during these times that our faith is either fortified or wanes.
Consider this – When we doubt, we are in a period of growth. We are not in our comfort zone; we are preparing for our next big step. Doubt creates the process of gestation.
(Doubting) Thomas
Thomas was one of Jesus’ disciples. He lived and worked with Jesus; he saw miracles, was informed about what to expect during Jesus time on earth. Yet, when Jesus was crucified, Thomas began to doubt. He knew the story, the purpose of Jesus time on
earth, but in reality, if Jesus was the Son of God, he should not have suffered as he did. Jesus was not supposed to die as forecasted. When he was resurrected, Thomas could not fathom Jesus reappearing as a spirit-man. He told the spirit-man to prove he was Jesus. After he touched the wounds, he believed. His faith was restored, it was fortified.
Thomas became a radical believer through doubting, not through walking with Jesus and not through observing miracles. Witnessing these things did not fortify him beyond doubting the reality of the resurrection. After Christ said to Thomas touch my wounds, he knew it was Christ resurrected and no longer doubted. Because he moved beyond doubting, he traveled outside of the Roman Empire to spread the Good News to a foreign, distant part of the world. Would he had done so, if he did not doubt? Perhaps not, his fellow disciples stayed closer to home. The doubting was the catalyst for change. He no longer hoped, he knew that Christ was his Lord and Savior.
Mirroring Thomas, Finding Our Strength
We do not have the advantage of physically experiencing Jesus’ life on earth. Ours is a spiritual relationship. Doubting is part of the process of knowing. It eliminates blind obedience. It reinforces our faith, because during these times we must in faith believe for the change, the miracle, the growth. We cannot faint not, we have to stand.
We must say to the devil, “he that is in me, is greater than he that is in the world.” 1 John 4:4. My circumstances are temporal, my relationship with the Lord is eternal. This too will pass. These trials are just that, trials. I am an overcomer through Christ, who dwells in me. My doubting is leading me to victory. It is part of the process of becoming a radical Christian, a Christian Warrior thoroughly embedded in our relationship with the Lord.
Crucifixion and Resurrection in a Nutshell
The crucifixion and resurrection marked time. God sent his son to serve as our example and experience what it is to be human. Through this process we are saved through Gods grace. He also left us a gift to help us live a Christian life in Jesus’ absence.
Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit who resides in us. He’s the nudge, the quiet voice that tells us not to veer but stay the course. He’s also the voice that tells us what to say in interviews, to loan officers and friends in need. Luke 12:12
Listen for his voice and recognize his nudge. We often ignore them to our detriment. Like me, we live, and we learn.
Today, think about three instances when you did not listen and the consequences and three times you did listen and the outcomes.
It is through Christ that we live life with purpose. It is through His purpose for our lives that we will join Him in heaven.
“For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time,”
I Timothy 2:3-6 NKJV
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Scriptures – Bible.com, Biblegateway.com
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There are times when we are dormant, in a space of inner thoughts and meditations. A time when we either voluntarily retreat or changes occur in our life, i.e, illness, loss of a job, family breakup, natural events – storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires and flooding to name a few, events that cause us to retreat and close out the world. There are times when our Lord needs to get in touch with us and prepare us for upcoming events and jobs He has for us. This happened to me, He called often over a ten year period. I heard Him and kept putting His request for a stronger relationship off, choosing to spend a few minutes here and there with Him. Then one day, the opportunity to voluntarily choose no longer became an option, it became a command and I was forced to withdraw from the world and focus on Him, His Word, and His plan for my life.
when we can evangelize to others. We have developed a command of the scriptures. It is a time of sharing the Good News and a time when the Holy Spirit glows through our being. It is a time of sharing our relationship with the Lord through writings, blogging, speeches, and conversations. It is the time of blooming.
are cyclical and hence seasonal. There are times of rest, times of challenges and times of victories. There are times of inactivity and times of activity. There are times when our pace is slow and time of quantum jumps. We cannot rest thinking we will always ride the wave of good fortune. If we did, God would not have prepared ‘the way’. Our experiences establish our relationship with Him. Our experiences, good and bad, intentional and not, are the soil that feeds us.
and think it expresses our cycle of Christian growth, the Making of a Christian Warrior, very well. It is a great summation of this post.
atmosphere, the second heaven is the evil ones’ headquarters, and the third heaven is where God lives. (Derek Prince, pp 128)
enemy, like it or not. The battle is between good and evil, and we are the prize. Satan desires to keep us from all that God wants for us. He is the enemy of all people, followers of Christ or not.
It is our responsibility to learn to discern the battleground and figure out our strategy to succeed. Do we give up our time in prayer with the Lord to address the chaos the evil one created around us, or do we get up earlier, use our lunch time and go to bed a little later to maintain our prayer time? We have to learn to distinguish with our spiritual ears and eyes what is moving around us. “Discernment for the believer is seeing and understanding as God sees and understands. It is the ability to make godly judgments and right appraisals.” (Charles Stanley, pp 53)
and people lives are affected by our praying. Each of our prayers is requesting blessings and resolve to life’s situations and circumstances. The failure to pray for others and you leaves everyone prey to the evil ones’ plan for our lives, to remain slaves to him and the world.
or may take another form as God sees fit to advance you into the kingdom. Our prayers may be answered right away, sometime in the future, or not at all, but every prayer has impact and outcomes. We may see some answers to prayers and may not see others. It is all dependent upon how God sees fit to include us in the blessings.
have addictions, and failed. Generally, in these circumstances, we hear ourselves saying, ‘I blew it, God will not have anything else to do with me’. People are self-righteous, and self-condemning thinking we know how God will respond to our failings. We feel God is far from us and our mistakes have created a gulf between our Savior and us. We often second guess God, however, – the Lord clearly expresses that He thinking is not like ours,
As humans, we stumble and fall, and as Donnie McClurkin sings, ‘we fall down, and we get back up’. It did not say we get back up on our own. The truth is we are helped up by the hand of God. God does not run from us when we fall, he runs to us. If we run away, he runs after us. He has always been with us. Jesus parable stated that the sheepherder went after the one stray sheep and left the ninety-nine alone to recover the one. He did so because he wanted to save the stray, he wanted to restore it to the flock (Matthew 18:12; Luke 15:4). God works in the same way, He wants to retrieve lost, misguided people and He accomplishes this through (his earthly disciples) people. He may send someone to give you a word of knowledge, to sure you up at your lowest moment, to encourage you, to dust you off and help you recover.
times to allow us to learn to trust in Him. He allows adversity to mold and shape us. Like a child learning to walk, we must let them try to stand and walk on their own. They will stumble and fall, we will pick them up and steady them, and then let them go. We are there with our children and God is here with us.
Warriors. God does not see us as we see ourselves. He sees a saint sometimes struggling, sometimes falling, but justified, redeemed, forgiven, and reconciled to Him. He sees a saint full of His unconditional love, indwelt by His presence, sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, whose name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. He sees someone in whom adversity can never take up permanent residence”. (John Gill)
cheated, yet when Jacob repented, he changed his name to Israel (which means new beginnings). He takes his imperfect people; the single sheep straying away from the flock and restores us. He blesses us through our newly found obedience and dependency upon him as our Father, our Lord, and our Savior.
in Jesus’ hand before he believed he was speaking to Jesus; he was nicknamed Doubting Thomas because of disbelief) to disciple 3,000 people in India after the death of Christ. All were sinners and sought after by Christ because He wants everyone to find salvation through Him. The Bible is replete with sinners that have found their way to Christ. Our God is a God of second chances. His mercy is bigger than any mistake we have made. All he asks is that we have a heart for Him. He wants us to love Him as He loves us. He wants us to depend on Him and be obedient to His Word.
the way we’ve been going, we can turn to God.
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Love is the most important Fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5:22. Without agape love, Christ-centered love, we cannot show the other Fruit listed. It is through the action of Love that all other Fruit of the Spirit is given life.
If we unpack the scripture, we read:
Lisa’s Daily Inspirations 