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April 28, 2008

The Benefit of Doubt

by Shana Schutte

Have you ever struggled with doubts about God, your faith, or His love for you? Doubt is something that inevitably comes knocking on the door of every heart, no matter how much we want to avoid it. And if you're like me, you've wondered if there can be anything good that can come from it.

Thankfully, there can be something transformational about doubt because it pushes us to the edge of ourselves where we ask questions about God, ourselves, where we are going and His will for us.

In his book, The Gift of Doubt, Gary Parker wrote, "If faith never encounters doubt, if truth never struggles with error, if good never battles with evil, how can faith know its own power? In my own pilgrimage, if I have to choose between a faith that has stared doubt in the eye and made it blink, or a naive faith that has never known the firing line of doubt, I will choose the former everytime."

So would I. I wonder where I would be now without the doubt that plagued me early in my Christian walk. I probably wouldn't have grown. My early faith years were infused with a deep passion unparalleled by any other time because I searched so diligently for answers to soothe the pain of doubt that plagued my soul about God's love and will for my life. I was like a fledging butterfly pushing it's way out of cacoon. I wanted to fly, but without doubt and the questions it brings, would I have fought for life?

Think about the people who have no doubts. I can think of many who question nothing and they are apathetically asleep in their faith. When we are surrendered to God, the passion of doubt can push us into the arms of God where we come to know Him more fully.

Yes, good things can come from doubt when we run toward God--rather than away from Him.

"For you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord." (Ephesians 4:25)

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