Overcoming Doubt 
By George Halitzka
Listen to an audio recording of this sermon
"Overcoming Doubt" is a message presented by George Halitzka at the Highland Vineyard Church on July 12, 2009. Follow this link to read the underlying Scripture text.
During the worship service, this message was preceded by a short drama entitled "Testimony." It features a character named "Andrea" who is referenced during the sermon. To read the drama script, click here. (Note: In the published version of this monologue, the character is named "Andrew." We changed his name to "Andrea" to accommodate a female actor.)
Overcoming Doubt
He was a product of the great outdoors, living in the wilderness since he his teens. He reveled daily in the beautiful sunrises and sunsets over the desert. And John the Baptist loved the freedom of his simple life: his constant preoccupation was preparing the way for Christ.
John baptized all comers, fearlessly proclaiming repentance while condemning those who shunned God’s plan. He freed all who would renounce their slavery to sin—freed them for God’s grace, arriving in the form of his own cousin. Then when Jesus came on the scene, John began to voluntarily humble himself so Jesus could be exalted, even sending his own disciples to follow the Rabbi.
But that was before Herod’s soldiers came with proof that no good deed went unpunished. You see, John had condemned Herod for adultery after the Roman governor married his brother’s wife. But no one could tell that arrogant ruler he was sinning against God! So when John dared, Herod immediately took action. Furiously, he sent his soldiers to imprison the Baptizer in his dungeon.
There, the lover of open spaces; the fearless spokesman of God; lay in squalor. This was no American prison with a daily exercise period in the yard and cable TV. John likely sat 24 hours a day in a filthy underground room, hands and feet in shackles with unhealed open sores from the constant pressure of metal on skin.
And it was there, in the dimness of a dank cell, that John knew his life would probably end—it was no secret that Herod wanted to silence his accusing tongue. Only the governor’s unfailing instinct for self-preservation kept John alive: the tyrant was afraid to kill him because the people thought he was a prophet.
A fire for God had always burned in John’s heart, compelling him to live for nothing but preparing the Messiah’s road. Now, he was left without a reason to go on. Certainly, on the occasions when his few remaining disciples were allowed to visit, they reported great deeds from his cousin Jesus. Clearly John had prepared the way. But apparently, God had used him, then tossed him aside. Apparently, God was perfectly content to reward his chief and final Old Testament prophet; his Elijah coming again to the desert; with a miserable end.
Then the dark thoughts began to creep into John’s mind. This man who had never before questioned the Divine began to wonder whether his life had been worthless. Was Jesus really what he claimed to be? Were the vague rumors his disciples brought—about healings and walking across the lake like it was a city street—true? Or were they were just that: vague rumors? He wondered if his own cousin, the kid he’d grown up playing hide-and-seek with, could possibly be the Promised One of God.
One day, John couldn’t stand the uncertainty any more. He sent two faithful followers to find Jesus; find him with the burning question that haunted John’s darkest hours of the night: “Are you [really] the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?”
In other words, “Are you the one we’ve been longing for; God Himself who’s come to earth? Or has God forgotten us—forgotten me? Just be honest with me, cousin: are we always going to be spitting in one hand and wishing in the other for God to deliver us?”1
The Strange Story of John
John the Baptist is the last person in Scripture we’d expect to doubt. He was a prophet who proclaimed the coming Kingdom with fearlessness, and even ferocity! Yet he found himself in prison with no hope of release.
So perhaps he had a few things in common with Andrea, the character in that drama we saw earlier. It’s not that Andrea didn’t want to believe. She wished she could get the fire back from her youth—reclaim her passionate faith in a healing God! But after her experience with Dad, her faith was gone. She was so sure that her prayers for healing were being answered . . . until it became obvious that the cancer had won, and her father was left with only weeks to live.2
So is it any wonder that Andrea—that John—had a few questions for the Almighty? Is it any wonder that Andrea threw away her beliefs and John thought his Messiah-Radar had malfunctioned?
When we question God’s existence, or his power and love, our real problem is not usually those intellectual doubts that seem to be our chief complaint. Doubt is not usually the disease. When we’re plagued with unanswerable questions, they are normally the symptom of another problem.
Really, our doubts come from emotions damaged so severely we wonder if we’ll ever recover from anxiety or despair. They come from an experience we had—like John and Andrea had—that simply doesn’t sync up with our picture of a loving God. They come from a story we long to wrap our lives around that seems much more compelling than God’s story. In other words, we elevate a romance with another person above the Divine Romance, or become so passionate about something that the idol crowds God out of life.
If you’re suffering from doubt, you may well have honest questions in your mind that require answers. But chances are good that the questions really began somewhere else.
Ultimate Concern
Theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, in his book Dynamics of Faith, offers an interesting explanation for why we struggle to trust God. He defines our objects of faith as “Ultimate Concerns.”
An Ultimate Concern can be anything in which we place our trust; anything you center your life around. When you were little, it was Mommy and Daddy. Then maybe it was friends at school . . . or practicing for your future career as an NBA star. Maybe after that it was building a career, or that hot chick you fell in love with and married. My guess is that if you’re sitting here in church today, you finally decided that the only worthwhile Ultimate Concern for your life was Jesus. His truth became the center of your life.
But think about it—every other object of Ultimate Concern you ever had has let you down. Dad and Mom were great, but turned out to be light years from perfect. Your friends at school hurt you—and you never quite made it to the NBA. Even that chick you married, the one you thought would “complete you”—she isn’t everything you were hoping for on your wedding day.
So it’s only natural that our minds start to associate God with all of our other Ultimate Concerns—the ones that have failed us—and because of that, we start to fear that he’ll let us down, too! That’s why doubt comes so easily to us. Then when something unexpected happens—your husband demands a divorce or you get laid off or God doesn’t heal Mom’s cancer . . . it becomes obvious that the Lord is just one more Ultimate Concern unworthy of trust. We end up abandoning him like all the other empty promises.3
But what if God is nothing like a vending machine who, when you deposit three quarters, a candy bar pops out? What if he’s bigger and wilder than anything we imagined—and we will find him faithful, but not in the way we expected?
Christian psychologist Larry Crabb has asked the question, “What if God gave you a choice? You could live a happy, fulfilled, contented life . . . but you won’t ever bring God as much glory as you could. Or you can live a life full of heartache and pain . . . but you will bring God as much glory as is possible for any human being.”4 Which would you choose?
Is it possible that somehow, God is using our hugest disappointments with him; those times when he seems to have left without a forwarding address; to mold us into the image of Christ? Is it possible those are the times we learn to love the most; to trust beyond our petty selfish ways and become a beautiful heavenly creature instead of one better suited for hell?5 What if God uses those dark moments to draw us closer to him?
What if he can use even our doubts for good?
Doubt is Common
Sometimes we are overwhelmed by guilt—positive that God is furious with us for daring to doubt. Asking questions about faith is surely the worst sin under heaven.
Now, it’s true we should strive to overcome doubt. And if it causes a lapse in our Christian commitment, it’s sin. James writes in chapter 1 of his book (and I’m paraphrasing), “Don’t entertain any doubts when you ask God for wisdom. If you’re being tossed and blown in the wind—if you’re dividing your loyalties between God and the world—don’t expect to receive anything.” Doubt is not a place to get comfortable. It’s a battle we fight our way through.
But the greatest sin under heaven is not asking questions: rather, it’s refusing to put our trust in Jesus.Feeling like the heavens are vacant; thinking that God isn’t everything he claims to be; will not keep you from inhabiting the Celestial City. The only thing that can block you from heaven is your stubborn will—being so full of pride you refuse to surrender to Jesus as Savior and Lord.
Doubt is common: it happened repeatedly in the Bible! Remember when Peter stepped out of the boat to walk across the water—and Jesus had to grab his arm to stop him from swimming with the fishies? Why? He doubted! Thomas, who’d hung around with Jesus for three years, refused to believe the Master rose again until he got to feel the nail-scarred hands. And I could go on—in the Old Testament, Sarah and Elijah. In the New Testament, Nicodemus and Zechariah.
We’re only human; most of us will have questions. The real issue isn’t the questions, it’s finding the courageous trust that allows God bring growth from our doubts.
You see, Jesus is incredibly merciful to doubters! Yes, he famously criticized people for having a lack of faith. But we would expect that from a holy God. What we don’t expect is the mercy that always followed! Jesus didn’t let Peter sink to the bottom of Lake Galilee for his doubts. He gave Thomas what he needed to believe, he didn’t damn him to hell. Jesus would call his audience a “faithless and corrupt people” one minute, in a kind of righteous frustration. Then in the next minute, he’d perform a healing anyway!
In fact, look at how he treats John the Baptist in our Scripture passage today. John’s disciples come with John’s desperate, doubting questions: “Are you really who you say you are?” In other words, they bring a message that we condemn ourselves for wondering. But Jesus doesn’t send back a stern rebuke. He simply points to what he’s doing, which fulfills the Old Testament prophesies about the Messiah John knew by heart! Blind people see; lame people walk; lepers dance; the deaf hear and the dead come back to life as even the poorest of the poor hear about the Kingdom of Heaven!
Finally, Jesus sends a sentence not of rebuke, but of encouragement back to John: “God blesses those who do not turn away because of me.” I think it would be fair to paraphrase Jesus’ words like this: “John, I know my Father has left you in a dark place right now . . . but keep the faith. Keep the faith.”
Intellectual Doubts
So when we fall into that oh-so-common malady of doubt, what can we do? How can we overcome the dark thoughts and feelings threatening to overwhelm our trust?
I’m going to suggest practical ideas on ways to overcome different kinds of doubt that assail our souls: Intellectual Doubts, Doubts of Imagination and Sin, and Emotional and Experiential Doubts. We’ll start with what (in some ways) is the easiest one on the list: Intellectual Doubts. If you want a Biblical example, think about Thomas: he wanted hard evidence before he believed! If you’re a Thomas, here are two introductory books presenting the evidence for faith.
In Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, we get a taste of some of the philosophical arguments for the existence of God. Here’s one: If not from God, then where did our sense of morality come from? Lewis points out that moral principles has been remarkably consistent down through millennia in vastly different cultures, from the ancient Egyptians to the contemporary United States.
He uses an illustration to show what moral law is all about. Suppose you’re riding on the bus, and it’s standing room only. You’re trying to keep your balance hanging onto a strap when suddenly, someone stands up next to you, vacating a seat.
You quickly plop into it—but then the person protests that they were just stretching, that they want their spot back! And what normally happens next is quite remarkable, though we take it for granted. You will not try to deny the seat rightly belongs to the person who was sitting there! Instead, you will look for some “out” that grants you an exception to the Law of Bus Seating! “Move your feet, lose your seat,” you might say. Or “I’m bigger than you; you can’t make me move.” But no matter what, you won’t try to claim there is no law against Seat-Stealing!
I’m simplifying Lewis’ argument, but hopefully you see the point: all of us seem to be wired with an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong. Lewis asserts that this morality, hard-wired into the human DNA, could only come from God.6
Lee Strobel, in his book The Case for Christ, retraces the historical evidence for the existence and resurrection of Jesus. In fact, Strobel was once an atheist who converted to Christianity based on the evidence.
So why do we trust what the Bible says about Jesus? How can we actually believe someone rose from the dead? Is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Gospels?7 If you’ve ever wondered about those questions, pick up Strobel’s book. It’s an excellent resource.
Doubts of Imagination and Sin
Now, there’s a different kind of doubt that is more dangerous—and harder to cure—than the intellectual kind. It happens when we let our imaginations run away from us. We find something that looks more appealing than God—a story we’d rather wrap our lives around than the tale of the Nazarene who commands servanthood and obedience. We find a new Ultimate Concern that seems better than anything he has to offer.
In the Bible, I think of Peter. Here’s someone who said he would die with Jesus, then later that night, denied he knew the guy! What happened? I think Peter’s fears ran away with him. Instead of trusting God with his life, he decided Jesus couldn’t really protect him. And if the Rabbi was being crucified, maybe he wasn’t really God anyway . . . so clearly, the thing to do was save one’s own skin! What happened? Peter’s fear of men instead of God—that is, his sin—dragged him down into doubts about who Jesus was and whether God would take care of him. Now he lives in infamy for making a rooster crow too much.
I have a friend who was a committed Christian—let’s call her “Nicole.” Nicole led my friend “Jessica” to embrace Jesus as Savior when they were teenagers. But then a few years ago, Nicole decided to walk away from God. And she wasn’t content to do it herself—she tried to take Jessica with her! Nicole repeatedly sent Jess web links to articles by atheists and agnostics, with a condescending tone that suggested Jess needed to get past the Jesus fairy-tales.
Now, Nicole did have honest intellectual questions . . . but I’m not sure she walked away for strictly cerebral reasons. You see, she had recently left her husband and was trying to build a life without him in another town. Could her sin have had anything to do with why Nicole was thinking—dare I say hoping—God didn’t exist?
That’s what I mean when I talk about doubts of imagination and sin. You can also lump in the alcoholic struggling against drink and the unmarried couple living together. On a more mundane level, let’s talk about guys’ struggle not to lust after hot co-eds, or the sin of gossip, or failing to love our neighbors. Each of these can cause us to slide into doubt, because they lead us towards stories for our life that seem more compelling than Jesus.
On the face of it, however, they should be easy to overcome! All we have to do is . . . never do it again! Never take another drink; never check out another girl in a tank top. But that advice is so logical, and I am a scumbag with powerful feelings and weak willpower. As Brennan Manning, a recovering alcoholic, quips in The Ragamuffin Gospel, “[Philosophers say] I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.”8
So if you’re struggling with an idol in your life, it’s not enough simply to pray and resolve never to be naughty again. Those are good things—please do them! But by themselves, they’re not enough.
Look at it this way: if you empty your life of ice cream in the name of losing weight, you’ll probably go back out and buy some within a month. You need to find something besides the ice cream; something your body needs—say, fresh strawberries—to take the place of junk food in your life.
The same principle applies to the spiritual life: you can’t just cut out sin, you must feed your craving with the things God intended! So when an idol in your mind looks more appealing than God, don’t starve yourself! Instead, feed your imagination; start creating a story of what your life can be like when you follow Jesus!
If you’re struggling with an addiction, join AA. Let the people there who have found sobriety help you imagine what your life can look like without your drug of choice. You’re not giving up alcohol—you’re gaining a rich new life!
If you have doubts about God’s love, read books—first and foremost the Scriptures, but you might also find other writers that give you compelling pictures of the Savior. Pick up C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia: he paints such a winsome, compelling portrait of Jesus that it’s hard not to fall in love with Christ again.9
Whatever your sin of choice, read what the Bible says about it. Take time to imagine what your life can be like without gossip or lack of compassion or whatever. Then share your vision with a friend who won’t just ask you if you’re behaving yourself (that’s the Spanish Inquisition)—but will also remind you what God can do in your life as you overcome temptation!
When you struggle with an idol in your life that seems greater than God, doubts will often follow. But you don’t just need to pitch the idol: You need to replace it with Jesus. You need a compelling vision for your life that takes the place of whatever sinful idols you’re filling it with now.
You might be surprised, as you seek Christ with your mind and heart, how your doubts begin to recede.
Emotional and Experiential Doubts
There’s a sense in which I’ve saved the hardest part of this message for last. Intellectual doubts are handled fairly easily—apologetics will bolster your faith. Doubts of imagination are tougher, but they can be overcome when you fill your life with better things; things of God.
But what can you do if your doubts are borne on negative emotions and experiences that are even worse? What about when you find yourself in the place of John the Baptist, who did nothing wrong and still ended up in prison? Jesus encouraged him in his faith, but never did get him out. Soon afterwards, Herod chopped off the Baptizer’s head.
What if God let you be raped, or slide into the black pit of depression? What happens when you end up like Andrea in our drama this morning? When you prayed harder than you’d ever prayed before, and you desired only the best for someone else, like your Dad . . . but heaven turned a deaf ear?
I wish I could give you answers. In the opening section of the message, I tried to offer what few I have. Yes, bad things can happen to us for God’s glory; good will come from your pain. But that isn’t a very satisfying answer, and it won’t restore your faith. The reality is, I don’t have a solution to your pain . . . or a foolproof plan to find God again.
True story: Doug and Mary Burnett were high school sweethearts. They met and married, and Doug would tell you they were truly best friends. They raised two twin girls and looked forward to growing old together. They were very active in their church—Southeast Christian here in Louisville—and ran a successful business. Doug and Mary were, it seemed, a model Christian couple.
Then the unthinkable happened: Mary was diagnosed with a very rare, incurable form of breast cancer. She was given six weeks to live.
Now, Mary did defy the medical odds. She lived almost six years instead of six weeks. But along the way, she suffered through endless rounds of chemotherapy, radiation treatments, open sores all over her body that wouldn’t heal, and above all, excruciating pain. Towards the end of her life, she couldn’t even walk.
Why? Why did this happen to her? Why to a mother with young children; why to a follower of Christ? Why should she live in misery on her way to dying before the age of 50? Why, to add insult to injury, would God allow—in the same year Mary was diagnosed with cancer—her husband to suffer a fall that resulted in a brain injury? (To this day, Doug lives with double vision in his every waking moment.) Why, in that same horrible year, would God allow one of Doug’s daughters to be diagnosed with epilepsy, which sent her into grand mal seizures? Why, after all that, wouldn’t a good and loving God provide healing to Doug’s wife of 28 years?
It’s enough to make the most committed Christian ask some serious questions about the God they’ve chosen to follow—for most of us.
But apparently, not for Mary Burnett.
I interviewed Doug not long ago for an article I was writing, and he told me that instead of questioning why God did this to her, Mary would ask, “Why not me?” After all, she knew Jesus—she believed in heaven. She gave a profound example of faith to her two daughters and anyone else who would listen.
Doug tells of a time, during her many treatments, when a nurse—shaking her head at Mary’s plight—said, “I guess God's on vacation in the Bahamas, huh?”
Mary replied, “No, he’s never left me and he never will; he’s going to be with me through this whole journey. I’m going to take every opportunity to glorify God through this.”
Doug says her outlook was so positive that people didn’t guess how much pain she was enduring. “She was cheerful. She was a joyful person,” he said. Mary gave her testimony to a group of students that her daughters knew shortly before her death—she said, “If you put your trust in Jesus Christ, you can handle any trials that you face.” And she was speaking from a hospital room, as she depended on an oxygen mask to stay alive for a few more days.
“She didn’t blame God for what happened to he—she didn’t turn away from him,” said Doug. “[Yes, I know God] could’ve saved my wife,” he admitted. “But that wasn’t his plan. . . . It sounds like I’m putting her up on this pedestal, but she never—at least to me—questioned why she had to go through this. . . . Maybe her impact was greater because she lost her life.”
That’s not to say that there was no grief. Mary and Doug talked before she died a lot about what would happen to their daughters without a mother. Doug said one year later, the holidays, like Mother’s Day, are incredibly difficult. It’s not that Doug didn’t weep and mourn.
But he and Mary both believed what Andrea in our drama today couldn’t quite bring herself to believe—that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Doug believes he’ll see his wife again someday. Mary believed to her dying day she was going to be with Jesus. And that made all the difference for Mary. It allowed her to make her life—even in dying—a thing of beauty.10
And perhaps, when we look at our greatest moments of suffering, when we choose whether we are going to turn towards God or away from him, the beauty of living faith should be part of what motivates us to try the difficult road of trust. Perhaps we can find faith again, even in our deepest pain, if we look for the beauty Christ can bring into suffering. Perhaps, although we’ll never know for certain short of heaven, while we’re in this valley of tears called life, whether we were right to keep believing . . . we can find just enough faith to keep trusting God in the hurt.
Perhaps we can resonate with the words of the great author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He was a man plagued with doubts; with times of suffering in prison; with addictions and mental illness. Yet he wrote in a letter:
"[I] believe that there is nothing more beautiful, profounder, more sympathetic, more reasonable, more courageous, and more perfect than Christ. And not only is there nothing, but I tell myself with jealous love that never could there be. Moreover, if someone were to prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, then I would prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth."11
When everything seems lost; when God allows us to suffer and we wonder if he’s there and whether we can trust him, let’s remember the words of Dostoyevsky. Let’s remember Mary Burnett. Let’s remember that a life lived for Christ is the most beautiful thing in the world. And perhaps when we remember, we will discover that the beauty of faith is just enough to sustain us through doubt.
“God blesses those who do not turn away because of me,” said Jesus to John the Baptist.
Or in other words: “Child, I know my Father has left you in a dark place right now . . . but keep the faith. Keep the faith.”
1Whenever I research a passage of Scripture for a sermon, I consult a range of commentaries and translations, both in print and online. Sometimes, one of them is particularly helpful in guiding my writing. In retelling this story of John the Baptist, I'm indebted to The Bible Exposition Commentary, Volume 1, by Warren W. Wiersbe (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1989). Wiersbe includes some helpful background material on John's ministry, and also provides suggestions of the things John may have been thinking and feeling during his time of doubt.
2During the worship service at which this message was first presented, the sermon was preceded by a drama entitled "Testimony," by George Halitzka. Published in Real Time: Scripts Inspired by True-Life Stories (Kansas City, MO: Lillenas, 2009). "Testimony" may not be performed without the payment of a royalty. Visit www.lillenasdrama.com to purchase the drama.
3The concept of Ultimate Concern is taken from Dynamics of Faith, by Paul Tillich (New York: HarperCollins Perennial Classics, 2001). Originally published 1957.
4This paraphrase of Dr. Larry Crabb's concepts is drawn from a talk he gave in the late 1990s at Moody Bible Institute during Founder's Week. I don't recall the date.
5C. S. Lewis develops this idea of souls being fashioned for heaven or hell in his essay The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperOne, 2001). Originally published in 1949.
6For all the details of Lewis' argument, see Book 1 in Mere Christianity (New York: Touchstone/ Simon and Schuster, 1996). Originally published in 1952.
7See The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998).
8From The Ragamuffin Gospel, by Brennan Manning (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000), 26.
9See The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). Originally published as seven separate novels from 1950-1956.
10The details of this true story are drawn from the author's interview with Doug Burnett on 5 June 2009 (Louisville, KY).
11From a letter by Fyodor Dostoyevsky to N. D. Fonvizina. Quoted in Dostoyevsky: His Life and Work, by Konstantin Mochulsky, translated by Michael A. Mihihin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 152.
This manuscript was written to be used for oral delivery. Therefore, it reflects the unique strengths and limitations of that medium. Copyright © 2009 by George Halitzka. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations are taken (or adapted) from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.