[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Hi, everybody. Good morning.
[00:00:08] I'm Evan. I'm one of the senior pastors here. And today we're in our series on big questions. We've been asking some big questions that come from a life of faith. And today's question is, can I have doubts?
[00:00:20] Can I have doubts? I think this is a real normal part of. Of being a person of faith, is that doubts come with the territory. And oftentimes we feel like we're alone in those doubts.
[00:00:33] We come into a space like this. And maybe you feel this way today, that you have some doubts about what this is all about, what you believe. Maybe you have doubts about the stories of the Bible.
[00:00:45] Maybe you have doubts because you've faced some trouble in your circumstances. It feels like the prayers you've prayed have not been answered. Maybe you're experiencing loss or a diagnosis. And these situations bring you to a point where you start to have some serious doubts about what you believe, about who God is or if God even exists.
[00:01:08] And I was thinking back. You know that children's book, it's an older children's book now. It's called Everybody Poops. Sorry. Sorry for saying that in church. I apologize, everybody. And what it is, is a book for preschoolers to essentially say, hey, we don't talk about this, but you don't have to be embarrassed. Cause it's, like, very normal. Everybody's in the same boat, okay? And it really helps if you're four years old to understand these things. For us, I feel like we could have a book called Everybody Doubts. Right? And we don't really talk about it, but everybody has doubts. And if you don't have doubts today, if your faith is in a place where you really don't have any doubts about who God is or his intention towards you or his reality.
[00:01:52] Give it time and you will. Right. That's not a threat, by the way. Some of you are like, whoa, Evan, chill out. No, this is what life does, is that we will experience circumstances in our lives and in our stories that will cause us to feel distant from God.
[00:02:08] And what I've come to understand is that wrestling with doubt oftentimes is not a sign of a weak faith. It's a sign of a robust faith that is maturing.
[00:02:19] Because if we take our faith seriously, we will come to the place necessarily where doubts come.
[00:02:26] And how we wrestle with that will determine, I think, both what we believe about God and how we will live. And I don't want to ever have a church or a community that refuses to tolerate doubts. In our community, there are really two kinds of communities or leaders of communities that don't tolerate doubt. There's dictators, cult leaders, right?
[00:02:52] Jesus of the Gospels is neither of those things.
[00:02:56] And for all of us who are trying to follow him, if we create communities that do not tolerate doubt, that require a certain performative certainty, we will cease to look like the church that Jesus intended us to look like.
[00:03:10] And so we are invited into a community where we can bring our doubts, where we can bring our wondering, where we can bring feelings of maybe even feeling abandoned by God or that he is a million miles away, that that's actually allowed in the community that Jesus set up.
[00:03:29] I have a friend, a mentor in my life. He's been a pastor longer than I've been alive, and especially in the early years here at Westside in my ministry in youth. And then as I've continued serving in these ways, I'll have conversations with him. And I remember in the early days, I would sit down, we'd have coffee, and we would talk about ministry and faith, and God and I would have questions. And he was always there with the answers.
[00:03:56] I mean, full of wisdom and experience. And so I would say, what about this and how do we do this? And he has such great answers. And I've noticed this as the years and now decades have gone by. When we talk, he has fewer and fewer answers. It's as if he's kind of started to not have good answers anymore.
[00:04:17] This is not decline, okay?
[00:04:19] This is my friend, my mentor, who has grown into his faith in such a way where he is now more comfortable with what he doesn't know than he's ever been before.
[00:04:30] That his faith has grown to a place where he is so comfortable with doubt that he's allowed that doubt to come in and be part of his faith journey. Because he understands that doubt comes with a life of faith.
[00:04:49] Because as we talked about last week, we're called to live a life by faith, not by sight.
[00:04:54] And if you can't see, you're going to have some doubts about what's next. But as my friend would encourage us, be curious and stay in the game of faith even when doubts are present? Because could it be this? That wrestling with doubt is part of our journey into the mystery that is a life with Jesus?
[00:05:15] The author, Richard Rohr, says answers are the way out, but that is not what we are here for.
[00:05:22] Oftentimes we want to come into places like this and Say, I have some questions. I have. I need some answers so I can settle that and then get back to what I was doing. And the invitation of Jesus, actually, is to come into a community where we have these big questions. And oftentimes we realize actually there are no easy answers.
[00:05:40] This series that we're in is not called Big Answers.
[00:05:44] Wouldn't that be nice?
[00:05:46] I'm gonna go to that church.
[00:05:49] But actually, I'm quite suspicious of religious folks that seem to have all the answers, because Jesus, even in the Gospels, he would invite people into the mystery of f, not the certainty of knowing all the answers.
[00:06:02] And so it is for us.
[00:06:05] So it is for us. Tim Keller writes that faith that has wrestled with doubt is often stronger than faith that has never faced it.
[00:06:11] A faith without some doubts is like a human body without antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or. Or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.
[00:06:40] A faith that has never wrestled with doubts is often weaker than one that has. And so today, here we are. Maybe you have your doubts.
[00:06:49] Maybe those doubts have to do with a specific belief about the Bible or the story or what we believe. But what I want to explore in depth today is a doubt that comes from when our circumstances cause us to doubt, the closeness and the kindness of God. So let's pray. Lord, we're in this place. We're showing up, and we bring our doubts. And I hope, Lord, today, that we would, by your grace, feel the ability to be honest in this place where we have faith, where that faith has doubt, and that we would, as a community, carry each other and our burdens together. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:07:34] Amen.
[00:07:36] So I want to tell you a story from the Old Testament, and then we're going to read a portion of it out of 1 Kings 19.
[00:07:43] Way back. And this is generations and generations before the time of Jesus, there was a man named Elijah. And this is like so, so far back in the history of the nation.
[00:07:55] And he was a prophet. He would hear from God, and then he would speak what he heard from God to people in power, to people not in power. He would walk around on foot. And oftentimes in the story, there's miraculous things that would happen, as this man, Elijah would walk around and he was such a big figure, a hero in for the Jewish people and their faith, that even when Jesus is sitting with his disciples and he asks his disciples, who do people think that I am? Who do you say that I am? Peter says, well, actually, some people think you're like Elijah, come back. I mean, that's how large Elijah lived in the minds of the Jewish people. And so he's a big deal.
[00:08:35] And one of the most dramatic stories from the life of Elijah is the one I'm going to tell you about today.
[00:08:43] He has been placed on the bad list with the king and queen. And this wicked queen has made him like public enemy number one. And at the same time, there's this massive drought in the land. People are dying of starvation. And so they're getting desperate. And so they're turning to all these different gods and they're crying out for rain and nothing seems to be happening. And so in the middle of this drought, Elijah says, well, here's what we should do. We should have a showdown and see whose God is more powerful. And at the time, the popular God was this God named baal. And BAAL was the God of fertility and crops. And so it made sense to do a showdown between the God of Israel, Elijah's God, and this God, Baal. And so Elijah sets up this showdown. And 450 of the prophets of this, this idol, this God Baal, show up. And they build an altar on the top of this mountain. And then next to it, Elijah, all by himself, builds an altar of his own. And from the morning into the evening, these 450 prophets make all kinds of commotion and noise. And they're crying and they're praying and they're singing and they're waving their arms. They're trying to get the attention of their God. And it says, there was no response. No one answered, no one paid attention.
[00:10:02] And so Elijah starts mocking them, which is a bold move when there's 450 of them. And one of you, he said, well, maybe he's sleeping. Cry louder. Maybe you got to wake him up. This is great. Elijah gets to evening and nothing's happened. And so Elijah says, okay, it's my turn. He says a simple prayer and fire falls from heaven and consumes the altar that Elijah set up. It's a dramatic display both of the power of the God of Elijah, but also the legitimacy of, of who Elijah is, that he is the real deal. Now, for a prophet, this is his whole life, this is his whole career. And his calling is to Represent God. And so when God shows up in such a dramatic way, this is like the peak, the pinnacle. This is. He won the Super Bowl. He got the Oscar. He's at the top of his game.
[00:10:51] So you would think, like, Elijah's got to be feeling great.
[00:10:55] Instead, when the queen hears about what Elijah has done in besting the prophets of baal, she sends a messenger to him that says, you're a dead man. I'm going to kill you.
[00:11:07] And I would think, well, Elijah had just seen this display of God's power. Surely he's not afraid of a threat like that.
[00:11:14] And yet Elijah immediately sinks into a dark depression.
[00:11:19] He flees, and he goes into the desert. He sits under a tree and he prays this prayer. This is a day after he had just seen the pinnacle of the power of God working on his behalf. Here he is the next day, he's sitting under a tree in the desert and he says this prayer. He says, I have had enough, Lord.
[00:11:41] And for the very first time in the entire story of Elijah, Elijah does something relatable right now. If you relate to him, if you're like, oh, yeah, no, I just bested the prophets of BAAL up on Bachelor this weekend. It was lovely, beautiful day. Good for you. I cannot relate to most of Elijah. Elijah's life.
[00:11:59] I can relate to a moment when he feels alone and he sits out in the desert and he cries out to God and say, God, I've had enough.
[00:12:08] Can't do it.
[00:12:10] Can't do it.
[00:12:13] Something about the life of Elijah brought him from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, where he feels both abandoned by God and all alone in his calling and his faith.
[00:12:28] And I've heard someone say that you can be right at the center of God's will and still feel like God has left the building. Have you been there where you're doing all the stuff? You know, you show up to church every week.
[00:12:43] You signed up for, you know, Kids Day Camp to serve and
[email protected] volunteer.
[00:12:53] You did all the stuff right, and yet you feel like God is so distant.
[00:13:01] You prayed the way you were supposed to pray. You read the scripture you were supposed to read, and it feels like God is not on the other end of the line when you pray.
[00:13:10] And so we find ourselves in these desert seasons where God is distant and our prayer mirrors the prayer of Elijah. It doesn't matter how good it's been in the past, Today, this is how I feel, God, that I've had enough.
[00:13:23] I don't know where you're at.
[00:13:27] And maybe, like Elijah, we get to the point where even if we don't doubt that God exists, we start to doubt if it matters whether he exists or not.
[00:13:39] Elijah goes to sleep, which is a good idea if you're tired.
[00:13:44] The story says that an angel wakes him up and says, elijah, you need to eat. You're in a bad, bad spot.
[00:13:49] Provides some food. He eats, goes back to sleep. How many know that whatever you're facing, food and sleep may not be the answer, but you're never going to get to the answer unless you have food and sleep. Come on, now.
[00:14:02] So he wakes up and then he begins to pray out to God, his frustrations.
[00:14:07] And I think we learn very quickly in the stories of the Bible that those that take their faith seriously seem to have no problem being really honest with their frustrations with God.
[00:14:21] And that gives us permission to do the same.
[00:14:24] The psalmist in one passage says, I pour out my complaint before the Lord. If we have this feeling that God can only accept and handle us when we are being polite and grateful and, you know, deferential, then we'll miss out on the honest relationship that he desires for us, where we can pour out our deepest frustrations and feelings of aloneness before him.
[00:14:49] And Elijah cries out to God and he says, listen, I'm all alone. There is nobody else left. It's just me out here on my own God. Which is actually not true.
[00:15:01] Which is not true. There are thousands, actually, that have not bowed the knee to baal.
[00:15:06] And yet in desert seasons and in the wilderness moments, oftentimes we will feel more isolated than we actually are. And this is the trick of the desert is to make us believe that we've been abandoned in ways that we actually have not.
[00:15:20] And I think it is so critical that we know that the function of a community like this is that when I have lost sight of my faith, when I've become disillusioned, and when I've become surrounded by feelings of abandonment and isolation, that when I can't believe for myself, I need you to believe for me, that we carry each other's burdens, and especially in desert seasons where we feel all alone, that we remind each other that we're not.
[00:15:54] And so God tells Elijah, now that he's had a snack, to stand on the side of the mountain.
[00:16:00] And in 1 Kings 19:11, it says, Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shuttered the rocks, shattered the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind There was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
[00:16:18] And when Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. And then a voice said to him, what are you doing here, Elijah?
[00:16:27] Very fascinating and kind of mysterious the way that the story goes and that God shows up and all these crazy things start to happen in these violent expressions of power, right? A wind and an earthquake and a fire. And they're the kind of violent things that Elijah just experienced on top of that mountain when the fire fell from heaven. And I'm imagining Elijah's hunkered in his cave saying, I can't handle that kind of thing. God, he's probably assuming God is mad at him for moping around here in the desert.
[00:16:57] And so he's hiding out until a gentle whisper.
[00:17:02] And I'll tell you what. Oftentimes we assume in seasons of doubt, disillusionment and isolation, that the only response we get from God, if he's really there, is one of anger, frustration, and shame.
[00:17:18] But God's response again and again and again and again to doubt and disillusionment is gentleness.
[00:17:26] One of the disciples after Jesus is resurrected is with the others. And they've seen Jesus, but Thomas hasn't. And so Thomas says, I can't believe it. I saw him be killed. I can't believe that he's alive.
[00:17:39] Unless I actually see the wounds and touch the wounds in his hands and his side, I won't believe it.
[00:17:45] And in the mercy of Jesus, he shows up to Thomas. He says, here, okay, you can see it's really me. And it's a gentle expression that restores Thomas faith. And Jesus. After that moment with Thomas, he turns to the rest of him. He says, thomas has believed because he's seen. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet still believe. And I don't think that was a dig on Thomas.
[00:18:09] I don't think that was Jesus being like, well, this loser had to actually see for himself. But no, he wasn't digging on Thomas. He was kind to Thomas. He showed up for Thomas. What he was saying for all of us who would read that later is an acknowledgement that it's going to be really hard to believe when we don't see that there are going to be whole swaths of our faith life where we have to live out what we can't see and what we can't prove. And what we don't have, certainty. And he said, there's a blessing for those who hang on when doubts surround them.
[00:18:43] It's the gentleness of God that wakes something up in Elijah, doesn't change his circumstances.
[00:18:50] The queen is still after him.
[00:18:52] The majority of the country is still worshipping baal.
[00:18:56] He's still a wanted man. None of his circumstances change. And yet the gentleness of the voice of God changes something in the heart of Elijah.
[00:19:04] God speaks to him and says, hey, there's still 7,000 left. They haven't been in the need of Baal.
[00:19:10] I want you to go back and you're going to anoint a new king. Which is what the prophets would do in those days. He basically said, elijah, there's still work to be done. You still have a job, you still have a purpose.
[00:19:19] And through this gentle voice I'm going to restore you from this desert place back in to what you're destined to be and do.
[00:19:29] And I think we play a role in the lives of others who are experiencing doubt and disillusionment. Jude 1:22 says, Be merciful to those who are who doubt, Be merciful to those who doubt. I think this is the way of Jesus, is not that we would condemn and shame and bully and pressure those who experience doubt in their faith, but instead it is through the gentleness of God that we express that to those who are having doubts. And we see that faith, maybe it's just a spark come back to life.
[00:20:01] And so maybe this will give somebody hope. Whether you're facing doubt or you know someone who is and you're in a desert moment feeling distant from God. This is what we learn in the desert. Number one, you can be deeply faithful and still feel far from God. That's allowed.
[00:20:17] Number two, you can be tired and not a failure. This is so important.
[00:20:22] I think we put pressure on ourselves in our spiritual life that if we're really doing what God wants us to do, that we'll never be exhausted or tired, that we'll never feel feelings of being burnt out. And I think Jesus speaks so clearly to this in Matthew chapter 11 when he says, all you who are weary and heavy laden, come to me and I'm gonna give you rest.
[00:20:45] This is an invitation to anybody who's ever been tired.
[00:20:49] Do you ever wake up on Sunday morning like, ah, church again?
[00:20:52] Of course you don't. It's wonderful here.
[00:20:56] No, I get it, I get it. Sometimes we just.
[00:21:01] I'm tired today. God, man, you were in the sweet spot.
[00:21:06] You were in the Sweet spot of who Jesus looked out when he said those words for the very first time. And he saw people that were just burdened and weighed down by this feeling of needing to religiously perform. And he said, if you're tired and exhausted, come find rest in me.
[00:21:26] Number three, you can question and still be commissioned. Listen, Elijah's questioning of God's intention towards him did not disqualify him from being useful in his purpose.
[00:21:39] And so full permission to bring your doubts here.
[00:21:43] If you're afraid that doubts or questions will disqualify you from this place, this community, here's some great news.
[00:21:55] The more honest we are, the more welcoming in community we will be. For people who walked away a long time ago because of their doubts and for those that are considering walking away right now.
[00:22:07] When we create a space, a community, a church that is honest enough with our own doubts, it opens up the door wide to. To those who say, I don't even. I don't know what I believe.
[00:22:19] But if you're okay with it, I'd like to sit here, I'd like to be here, I'd like to be with you. I think this is what Jesus intended for our community.
[00:22:27] And then finally, the voice of God is the one that is gentle.
[00:22:32] Do you have an inner monologue?
[00:22:34] Is the voice in your head one that is critical?
[00:22:37] I know different personality types are different, and sometimes I'll talk to my wife even, and if we're arguing or something, and I'll say something that's lightly critical because she's perfect. But sometimes I lightly criticize.
[00:22:52] And I know for her and for Minnie, like, whatever I'm going to say, that inner monologue has already pointed out all the things that I would ever say critically.
[00:23:02] That inner monologue can sometimes be biting.
[00:23:05] And what it's easy to do, if that is your personality type, is to assign God to the most harsh and critical voices in your mind and your heart.
[00:23:16] And can I tell you that in seasons of doubt, the voice that is coming to bring shame, condemnation, accusation, that is not the voice of Jesus.
[00:23:27] The voice of Jesus is the one that is gentle.
[00:23:31] And it's through his gentleness and his kindness. Romans says, it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance, that leads us to turn back to our faith.
[00:23:40] It's the gentle voice of Jesus.
[00:23:44] Today's big question about doubt could have been one of the many questions that doubt leads to.
[00:23:51] Questions like, why do bad things happen to good people?
[00:23:57] Why doesn't God heal the person I love?
[00:24:02] Where is God Right now in Texas, in the floods feels senseless.
[00:24:11] And if God is all powerful and all loving and all kind, then why?
[00:24:19] And my answer to that is, I don't know.
[00:24:25] Don't know.
[00:24:29] I wish I had the answers.
[00:24:32] I wish I could tell you why bad things happen to good people. I wish I could, could get a whiteboard up here and make it all make sense.
[00:24:41] But I'm up here to tell you that I don't have the answers to questions like those.
[00:24:49] Instead, what I have is a life of watching those who have come before me walk through terrible tragedy and yet choose to hope in the face of despair.
[00:25:03] To choose belief when their world fell apart, to lean into community when they felt isolated and abandoned. I remember we were living in Portland. I was working at a church and we had this older gentleman as part of the church, and he would come in most weeks.
[00:25:23] I remember him always wearing like a brown three piece polyester suit.
[00:25:28] Whether that's true or not, I don't remember. But that's how I envision him. Okay?
[00:25:31] And he'd come in and he'd. Big personality, big guy. He'd, you know, look you right in the eyes. He'd shake your hand and say, how you doing, Al? And he said, I'm too blessed to be stressed.
[00:25:44] See the next time, how you doing, Al? Shake your hand. I'm too anointed to be disappointed.
[00:25:51] I'm sure there was more.
[00:25:52] The world is full of rhymes. I'm sure he found them all.
[00:25:56] I remember even back then, kind of rolling my eyes a little bit, feeling a little like, okay, what's the cliche today?
[00:26:06] But then I learned Al's story. And a few years before that, Al and his wife Andy had lost their daughter. She was killed in a car accident in her late, late teens.
[00:26:19] And so what I thought was just empty platitudes from a church guy that had spent too much time, you know, around the communion table or whatever.
[00:26:29] It was actually somebody who had walked a path of loss and grief in a desert, in his own faith. And out of that had come something resilient that was not an empty platitude. It was a choice he made every day in the face of despair. To choose hope and to choose belief.
[00:26:47] And I wouldn't recommend the suit, and I don't even know that I'd recommend the cute statements.
[00:26:56] But here's what I learned from Al, is that you have a choice to believe when everything about your circumstance would push you out the door.
[00:27:05] And when questions come without answers, to stand up from that Desert place.
[00:27:13] There's a power in choosing faith and belief.
[00:27:18] So are doubts allowed? Can we doubt? Yeah, I do. I bet you do too.
[00:27:27] The invitation of Jesus is to bring them here and to hold them up.
[00:27:32] Say, I don't know with certainty and yet, Jesus, I'm going to trust you.
[00:27:41] Philip Yancey, the author, wrote, the only thing worse than disappointment with God is facing disappointment without God.
[00:27:48] I love that.
[00:27:50] And I don't want to live a life where my feelings that God has gone far away lead to a place where I just face that reality on my own.
[00:28:03] I want to live in a place where with all my doubts and with all the seasons of feeling far from God in the desert times, that what follows that is a commitment and a clinging to Jesus, believing that he is big enough and strong enough to not only hold my disappointments, but to carry me along with it.
[00:28:28] I'm going to close with this portion of this Psalm from Psalm 73, another one of the great psalms of disappointment.
[00:28:37] Yeah. By the way, if you think the Bible is just filled with, you know, only pleasant things shouted towards God, read the psalms. They're just filled with such honesty.
[00:28:49] Asaph, the psalm writer, writes this. He says, what's going on here? Is God out to lunch?
[00:28:55] Nobody's tending the store.
[00:28:58] The wicked get by with everything they haven't made. Piling up riches. I've been stupid to play by the rules. What has it gotten me? You been there.
[00:29:09] He ends the psalm and this is out of the NIV with this beautiful phrase. He says, my flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
[00:29:20] Here's my prayer for you. We're going to pray in just a moment. My prayer is that on the days, and maybe it's today, when you feel like God is out to lunch, that he would hold you and keep you, and that at the end of your journey of faith, at the end of your life, you'd look back and say, it wasn't always easy. I wasn't always certain I had to walk by faith and not by sight. But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
[00:29:50] Amen.
