I Think Therefore I Doubt

Last week, we began a stretch of four Sundays where we are looking at the last thing Jesus said to his friends. Matthew 28:18-20 tells us that he gathered his friends around him and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

To be sure, Jesus was asking a lot of his friends. Basically, if our faith in Jesus has made any difference in our lives, then it would follow that we would want others to experience that as well. And yet, what might just be my favorite verse in the entire Bible immediately precedes this: "And when [Jesus' friends] saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted." (emphasis added)

I find such freedom in knowing that these friends, who have spent three years of their lives with Jesus - who have watched him walk on water and heal many sick people and die and return to life - doubted him. It's not that I have a fascination with failure; nor am I trying to compensate for my own weakness. But it's encouraging to me because I often have doubts and these guys who had less reason to doubt than me also doubted.

It is easy to fall into the thinking that the life of faith is the life that rejects doubt. But it isn't. Rather, I've come to learn that, if I don't doubt, I have no faith. Faith believes in the face of doubt.

And what I find amazing about these verses that we're studying this month is that, while Jesus' friends doubted him, Jesus sent them out on their mission. He didn't try to convince them of anything, he knew they doubted and he sent them out anyway. He knew they loved him and worshiped him and that was more important to him than going out with a head full of knowledge.

Of course, we don't check our brains on the way in. We honestly seek the truth but there will be times when the truth makes us scratch our heads and wonder if it's truth. And we doubt; and we worship; and we go out and fill the purpose God has for us. And then, suddenly, as we're doing what Jesus sends us to do, the doubt gets flipped into faith.