Tests, Doubts, and Belief

The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, June 27, 2021.  The Bible verses used are James 1:2-8.

Have you ever had a crisis of faith?

            I suspect a lot of us have.  Now, maybe you did not think of it that way.  I mean, that phrase--a Crisis of Faith--sounds pretty melodramatic.  But have you ever had a time when it seems like things were going against you, or you were in a tough spot, and you had a hard time seeing a way out? 

Probably most of us have had that happen.  It’s part of life, really.  We’ll almost all have that happen to us at some point, if we live long enough.  Maybe the problem was one of your own making, or maybe it was not.  But either way, it was still a big problem.  And maybe you prayed about it, asking God to show you what to do, asking God to help you out of your situation.  And all you heard from God was--nothing.  Silence.  It felt like God did not hear your prayer, or if God did hear it God was ignoring it.

That’s a bad feeling.  I’ve described it before as feeling like your prayer does not go up to God, like it just hits the ceiling and comes back at you.  You can no longer feel God with you.  It’s like your whole connection to God has been cut.  Like that connection is just not there anymore.

I suspect most of us can think of a time like that in our lives.  Maybe more than one.  I can.  Maybe some of you are going through it right now.  Our faith gets tested in a time like that.  And it’s not much fun.

But James, in our reading for today, says we should be happy when our faith gets tested.  He says we should consider it pure joy when we face trials.

That’s an easy thing to say, of course.  I wonder if James really lived up to that.  I wonder if, when he faced trials, when his faith got tested, James really considered that pure joy.  Maybe he did, I don’t know.  I just know that, when I’ve faced something like that, I did not consider it pure joy.  I was not happy about it at all.

But I do think there’s a sense in which we can find joy in our tests of faith.  Because, as James says, the testing of our faith produces perseverance.  In other words, if we can meet those tests, if we can pass them, if we can keep our faith even in the midst of our bad times, if we can continue to trust God even when it feels like our connection to God has been cut, then we know that our faith truly is real.  And that is a pretty awesome feeling, to know that we’ve passed the test and that our faith is strong enough to persevere even in tough times.

Because the thing is that, until our faith is tested, we really don’t know how strong it is.  We’ve talked before about how it’s really hard to know how we would react in a situation when we’ve never actually been in that situation.  If we never had our faith tested, we would not know if our faith was strong enough to withstand a test.  That’s what James says that it’s only through the perseverance that those tests provide that our faith can become mature and complete.  It’s only through having times when felt disconnected from God that we can know that we will stay faithful to God anyway, and we will continue to trust in God until that connection is restored.

James goes on to say that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God for it.  And of course, that’s something we need to do all the time, because we all need more wisdom.  No matter how wise we may think we are in human terms, none of us is anywhere near as wise as God.  And James says that if we ask God for wisdom, God will give it to us, because God gives generously to all.

But then, James says this:  “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.  Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”

“When you ask, you must believe and not doubt,” because a person who doubts “should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.”  That seems like a pretty tough standard, you know?  I mean, I agree that the goal is to not have doubts about God.  But--I think a lot of us do have doubts sometimes.  I’m not saying everyone does.  I’m sure there are people--maybe including people here--who are absolutely, one hundred percent certain that God exists, that Jesus is the Savior, that those who believe in him will be saved and have eternal life.  There are people who have absolutely not the slightest doubt that is true.  And that’s an awesome thing.

But a lot of people are not in that category.  A lot of people do have doubts sometimes.  It’s not that we don’t believe, exactly.  It’s that a lot of us are like the man in Mark Nine, Twenty-four, “Lord, I do believe.  Help me overcome my unbelief.” 

And that includes some of the people we consider among the greatest Christians ever.  Mother Teresa admitted that she had doubts sometimes.  Does that mean Mother Teresa should not have expected to receive anything from the Lord?  Again, it just seems like really extreme statement.  We cannot just ignore it, not if we claim to believe the Bible.  But are we to take it literally?  If not, how are we to take it?

Well, I don’t claim to be able to read the mind of James, what with two thousand years separating us.  And I certainly don’t claim to be able to fully know the mind of God--I don’t think any human can do that.  But I’ll tell you what I think.

I think God understands when we struggle with our faith sometimes.  God understands why we may have doubts sometimes.  God created us with brains, with the ability to think for ourselves.  God intends for us to use those brains and to use that ability to think.  And when we do that, we’re going to consider lots of possibilities.  And that includes considering the possibility that God is not real, or that God is not who we commonly think God is. 

God could have created us without the ability to think for ourselves.  God could have created us without the ability to have doubts.  But God did not create us that way.  When God created us the way He did, God knew that occasional human doubts were part of the deal.  That’s a feature, not a bug.

I think it’s okay to have doubts sometimes.  But we cannot live in our doubts forever.  At some point, we need to make a decision.  We need to decide whether we believe in God or we don’t.  We need to decide whether we believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior or we don’t.  We need to decide whether we will trust the Lord our God or we won’t.

And that gets us back to where we started.  We will have times when our faith gets tested.  Some of us already have.  Some of us may be having one now.  If you never have, the chances are that you will.  And those are the times we our decisions are made.  We can no longer sit on the fence, believing and yet not believing.  Those are the times when we either give in to our doubts, or we persevere in our faith. 

            So the question is, what will our decision be?  Will we decide for God?  Or will we give in to our doubts?

I said earlier that it’s hard to know what we’ll do in a situation when we’ve never been in that situation.  But there are things we can do to get ourselves prepared.  And the most important thing we can do is to get as close to God as we can before the situation comes.  Don’t take our faith for granted.  Don’t take God for granted.  Get and stay as close as we can to God before we have one of those times when our faith is tested.

How do we do that?  You probably know what I’m going to say.  Pray.  Read the Bible.  Think about the things we read in the Bible.  Attend church.  Make sure we have friends who are Christians, friends we can go to when we have questions or doubts about our faith.  Keep your eyes and ears open.  Try to see and hear how God may be speaking to you.  Keep your heart open, so God’s Holy Spirit can come in.

If we’re prepared, we stand a much better chance of staying with God when our faith is tested.  We have a much better chance of persevering.  Then, we can have that complete, mature faith James talked about.  Then, we can ask with confidence, believing that God does and will give generously.

We never look forward to our faith getting tested.  But we can find joy in it.  If we’re prepared for the test, we can pass it.  And then, we can let go of our doubts, and be confident in our faith in God.