Have you ever felt like God skipped town on you? Have you ever felt like He wasn't hearing your prayers? Have you ever begged to hear His voice, only to hear the disheartening sounds of silence instead? I used to be afraid of what others might think of me if I admitted that I have known what it feels like to seek the voice of God and seemingly end up with nothing but confusion. Many times I've found myself languishing in prayer, pleading with God for the strength and faith to continue until He chose to reveal His answers to me. Sometimes it was over simple decisions that I wanted assurance were the right ones to make, other times it was over impossible circumstance that only God could rescue me from.

Sometimes I've seen prayers answered amidst these doubts in ways that can only be attributed as  a miracle from God. Other times, I have been left standing with my hands in the air, waiting indefinitely for God to supernaturally intervene. Sometimes God has chosen to reveal His authority over all of the earth by altering my circumstance, but more often, God has not provided the answers in the form that I have sought them. In times like those,  I have no control over how God chooses to act, but I have full control over how I react. I can decide to feed my faith or feed my doubts. Whichever one I feed the most will almost always dominate. More times than  I can number, I have lost this battle and required God to restore me. Even in many of those defeats, I can see how the God who holds the universe in the palm of His hand personally stepped into my life and used negative episodes to create a bigger picture, one that grows my faith and points other to Him.

Though I've often wrestled with the insecurities that arise from having to place 100% of my faith in God for answers that I may never know or understand, I've struggled most with trying to decipher what Jesus meant on the cross when He, God in the flesh, screamed out "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me."  The Bible is very clear when it states that God will never leave us, nor forsake us, so what in the world did Jesus mean?  Honestly, I've never cared too much about the theology of  that statement (something that many who are bent on theology have accused me of being borderline blasphemous), I care about the practicality of it. What did my Lord mean when with His last breath he uttered what seems to be words of extreme doubt?  Jesus was without sin, even to His death, so I know that, whatever the motive, He was not sinning. So Jesus wasn't sinning, but was His statement a statement of doubt? Is doubting God, in and of itself, a sin? Or is doubt simply a human response to that which cannot be explained, which carries with it the potential to become sinful?


Colosians 3:16 reminds us that "There is none like [God] and He will not allow His word to return to Him void."  Statements such as these can be found throughout the Bible, and it's statements such as these that I need to be chewing on and digesting in my times of doubt. Life doesn't always make sense, and the Bible is God's perfect way of communicating His plans for us here on earth and in all of eternity, therefore, I can't expect all of it to make sense. Doubts do not negate faith. Life will never make perfect sense. It is understood that "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" ( 1 Corinthians 13:12)