{"id":3030,"date":"2008-06-06T11:51:53","date_gmt":"2008-06-06T16:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/james-mcdonald\/doubt-vs-faith"},"modified":"2008-06-06T11:51:53","modified_gmt":"2008-06-06T16:51:53","slug":"doubt-vs-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/2008\/06\/06\/doubt-vs-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"Doubt vs. Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>NR<\/h3>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#160;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"182\" alt=\"The Weekly Walk\" hspace=\"hspace\" src=\"http:\/\/www.walkintheword.com\/images\/article_image128.jpg\" width=\"250\" align=\"right\" \/>Hebrews 11:6 <strong>Without faith it is impossible to please [God].<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#160;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Christians don&#8217;t generally set out to doubt God. They don&#8217;t bring their faith into question without reason. For most of us, life&#8217;s pain simply catches us off guard. The reality of hardship trips us up. We spiral fast when we&#8217;re left on our own to entertain doubting questions and stir our circular reasoning&#8211;or even worse, when we&#8217;re left alone in the company of other doubters or bitter people.<\/p>\n<p>Someone has said that doubt is cancer of the soul. Like a machete to your garden, and like a match to your house, doubt is the toxin that eats away at the fabric of the most important thing about you&#8211;what you believe about God. <\/p>\n<p>However, if in times of doubt we take our questions directly to the Lord, our faith increases. God&#8217;s Word and God&#8217;s character can stand under the most microscopic scrutiny. When you say, <em>I don&#8217;t know exactly what God is doing, but I know He&#8217;s doing something for my good<\/em> &#8212; that&#8217;s the unseen evidence of trusting Him. Don&#8217;t feel foolish waiting upon God to meet your needs. I certainly don&#8217;t. God has proven Himself faithful to keep His promises. <\/p>\n<p><em>Doubt is a lack of confidence or assurance that God will keep His promises.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Faith is an active confidence in God.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Faith is substance. Faith is evidence. Faith is the power of a vibrant spiritual life. In fact, &#8220;<strong>without faith it is impossible to please him<\/strong>&#8221; (Hebrews 11:6).<\/p>\n<p>So is &#8220;having faith&#8221; the important thing in life? Contrary to the opinion of a lot of sincere people&#8211;no. Faith for faith&#8217;s sake doesn&#8217;t go anywhere. Faith doesn&#8217;t have any magic. Faith in itself doesn&#8217;t save you; it can&#8217;t help you; it doesn&#8217;t give you anything you need to overcome trials. But <em>faith is the thing that gets you to God<\/em> &#8212; and not faith in His promises, but faith in Him. <\/p>\n<p>I love the song we sing as a church called, &#8220;All Things Are Possible.&#8221; A while back, a man came to me and said, &#8220;You know that &#8216;all things are possible&#8217; song? People just get too rowdy when they sing that song. If you don&#8217;t stop singing that song, I&#8217;m going to have to leave the church.&#8221; And I was sorry to see him go. I don&#8217;t think any of our problems are that we&#8217;re too fired up about the promises of God as it relates to our faith. I don&#8217;t think God looks down on us and says, &#8220;Tsk, tsk, tsk, you guys are just a little too excited about Me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Put your doubts aside. All things are possible in Christ. Oh loved ones, if we would lay hold, even for a moment, of all that He would like to do for us if we would just believe Him!<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<\/p>\n<p><b>&#169; 2008 Walk in the Word<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NR &#160; Hebrews 11:6 Without faith it is impossible to please [God]. &#160; Christians don&#8217;t generally set out to doubt God. They don&#8217;t bring their faith into question without reason. For most of us, life&#8217;s pain simply catches us off guard. The reality of hardship trips us up. We spiral fast when we&#8217;re left on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}