Take Your Doubts to Jesus
There are some questions Christians feel guilty about asking. Why did God allow this to happen? Why hasn’t He answered my prayer? Why did someone else receive the breakthrough I have been praying for? Why does God seem to rescue everyone else while I remain stuck in the same difficult place?
Sometimes we assume that having questions like these means our faith must be weak.
But Matthew 11 gives us a remarkably different picture. John the Baptist had questions of his own. Sitting in prison, he sent his disciples to Jesus with a question that was both simple and profound: “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”
John didn’t hide his uncertainty. He didn’t pretend everything was fine. And, importantly, he didn’t allow his doubts to drive him away from Jesus.
He took them to Him.
That is one of the most important lessons in this passage. Jesus is not frightened by honest questions. He does not respond to John with anger or embarrassment. Instead, He responds with patience, pointing John back to Scripture and to the evidence of what God was already doing.
There is a difference between taking our doubts to Jesus and allowing our doubts to take us away from Jesus. The first can actually strengthen our faith. The second can gradually destroy it.
When doubts come, we can pray honestly. We can open God’s Word and ask the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom and understanding. We can acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers while continuing to trust the One who does.
And sometimes, even after we have prayed and searched the Scriptures, we won’t receive the explanation we were hoping for. John didn’t. Jesus didn’t release him from prison. His circumstances remained difficult.
But John received something perhaps more important: reassurance that Jesus really was who He claimed to be.
So if you’re carrying questions today, don’t be ashamed of them. Take them to Jesus. He can handle your doubts. And more importantly, He can handle you while you have them.
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