Faith v Doubt - Monday Morning Mail

Yesterday, we were continuing in our series looking at some of the basics of the Christian faith from a slightly different angle, and we were looking in particular at Faith and Doubt from Psalm 77, which was written by David's chief musician, Asaph.

A lot of people today seem to think that faith is the opposite of doubt, but that isn't how Asaph saw it at all. Instead we'll see that faith is something we choose (or don't), and that the opposite of faith is pride. But I'm getting ahead of myself a little...

Asaph was in a very difficult situation (v1-6). He doesn't explain exactly what was happening, but he tells us that he couldn't sleep, and that his spirit "refused to be comforted". It feels like God is a million miles away; all that he has left of faith is a memory of times gone by when he enjoyed singing to God, and that memory hurts.

More than that, Asaph probably didn't see it himself at the time, but he had become self-obsessed. He mentions himself time and again in v1-6. It's all about him, and his feelings.

In moments like that, when we feel overwhelmed and when God feels a million miles away, we have a choice. We can choose to indulge our doubts and feelings and walk away from God. We can choose to carry on anyway with the externals of Christianity, not expecting there to be any internal reality, or we can stand and fight for our joy and relationship with God. That's what Asaph chooses to do; it is the choice of faith, and though it is not an easy road, it ultimately leads to a relationship that is deeper and stronger than what has gone before.

So what does Asaph do? It starts with a recognition that he is a broken person, just like everyone else. He knows that his doubts and his feelings can't be trusted, so he doubts his doubts and questions his questions (v7-9). He brings in what he knows deep down about God (his never-failing love, his abounding compassion) and shows that his questions just become silly when he thinks about them too much.

Then he comes to the crunch. He decides to spend time meditating on what God has done in the past, specifically here in the Exodus, which was a few hundred years ago for him. He sees how awesome God is, how he rules over nature and defeats anyone or anything else that claims to be god.

But more than that, Asaph comes to an odd realisation. He see that even when God was triumphing over Egypt at the Red Sea and leading his people to freedom, the people didn't see his footprints. They couldn't see exactly what was going on at the time – it was all confusion. The same is true of the cross and the empty tomb. We look back now and see God's great victory over the forces of evil and death. But at the time, it seemed to the apostles like devastation, fear and confusion.

Realising that must have been a great comfort for Asaph. Seeing that God is always in control, even when things are at their worst, that we will be able to look back on it and see that God has led his people through the mighty waters that threatened to overwhelm them, even though he seems to be totally absent.

Real faith is not choosing to believe what you know ain't so. It is choosing to trust the God you know to be on the basis of the evidence – on the basis of Jesus, even when it feels like he isn't there or even when we have questions we can't answer.

May we grow in our trust in our faithful God this week!

John