It’s funny how doubt seeps into the day to day. Doubt is a
leaky faucet. In the noise of work and disciple-making it can’t be heard. But,
when you lay your head down to rest it all starts *drip*……….. *drip*……… *drip*.
Maybe you’ve been there. Making a HUGE, life-altering
decision, and wondering weeks or months later if it was the wrong one. A
decision that, at the time seemed so certain. Maybe you imagined yourself, as I
did, like the person who has built your decision on the rock, only to later
feel like you are surrounded by sinking sand.
The comical aspect of decision-making is that, as humans, we
only begin to question them when things don’t “feel right.” We have this
abstract sense of how the future is going to feel, and when the future doesn’t
match that abstract feeling, we panic.
“This isn’t what I had
in mind…” “It was supposed to go differently.”
For me, dealing with doubt, has come down to recognizing
whose voice is speaking. There are generally three options, the enemy, my own
voice, or God. Based on a myriad of theological reasons, my steady conclusion
is that the voice of doubt is almost always my own.
I love control. Admit it, you do too.
I have a vision for how things should go. I want to see
things happen just the way that I imagine them. God grants me opportunities,
daily, to join His work, but I often miss them for blindly following my own
meager vision of how it should happen. And really, the difference between God’s
plans and my plans are like crumbs versus a royal feast. But, I keep picking up
the crumbs, because I think the crumbs are the way to go.
When I go through an entire day and I didn’t seem to find
the crumbs, my little vision, I panic. I begin to doubt. “Why am I here?” “What
am I really accomplishing?” As if, in some cosmic sense, God is just so blessed
by the presence of my paltry vision, and can’t figure out how to go about
things on His own.
My voice of doubt has little to do with God’s plan, God’s
vision, God’s purpose, and has everything to do with my inability to even
execute my tiny, little, crumb-like vision.
But, the beauty of it is this. It is in that moment of
desperation and doubt that each of us are invited to God’s table. You and I
both have the freedom to leave the doubt and the crumbs behind, and pull up a
chair to the feast at God’s table. He’s the one preparing it. Stop looking for
the crumbs. Stop fueling your own self-doubt at your own un-realized vision.
Rest in the arms of your sovereign creator and sustainer. Believe it or not, He
knows what He’s doing.
