Today I send to two short and totally unrelated "thoughts" for you to ponder. The first is "Doubt as the Doorway to Truth" by Madeleine L'Engle. I have found this to be true in my own experience. In fact, about three years after I came to Christ, I prayed for greater faith. The result (quite to my surprise) was to be assaulted by many doubts that seemed to come out of nowhere! It confused me entirely. I asked for faith and I received doubts It wasn't until later that I realized that it was in seeking answers to those doubts that faith came. God's ways are not our own!
The second "thought" is a true story passed on to me by a friend who leads short term mission trips overseas -- Paul Hatmacher of "Churches in Missions.' It's a story that displays the providential intervention of God in the life of one very unsuspecting man. Enjoy!
Doubt as the Doorway to Truth
"We are often taught that it is unfaithful
to question traditional beliefs, but I believe that we must question them
continually -- not God, not Christ, who are at the center of our lives... but
what human beings say about God and about Christ. Otherwise, like the church
establishment of Galileo's day, we truly become frozen people. Galileo's
discoveries did nothing whatsoever to change the nature of God; they threatened
only man's rigid ideas of the nature of God....
The great metaphysical poet, John Donne, writes:
'To come to a doubt, and a debatement of any religious duty, is the voice of
God in our conscience: Would you know the truth? Doubt, and then you will
inquire." If my religion is true, it will stand up to all my questioning.
There is no need to fear. But if it is not true, if it is man imposing
strictures on God (as men of the religious establishment did in the days of
Galileo) then I want to be open to God, not what men say about God. I want to
be open to revelation, to new life, to new birth, to new light. Revelation.
Listening. Humility. Remember -- the root word of humble and human is the same:
Humus. Earth. We are dust. We are created. It is God who made us and not
we ourselves."
An Incredible Story
"Joseph Stalin ordered the purge of all
Bible's and believers in Russia. Millions of Bibles were confiscated and
multitudes of believers were sent to die in prison camps. Recently,
COMission Ministry, sent a team to Stravopol (east of the Black Sea in Russia)
and had literally thousands trust in Christ. They needed Bibles and heard from
a local that there was a warehouse outside of town where Stalin had the Bibles
stored. Wondrously, the officials gave them permission to check it out
and they found thousands of Bibles that had been taken from
believers. So the team hired students from a local college to clean
out the warehouse.
One young man they hired was a skeptic, but he
accepted the job for the money. As the day wore on they noticed the
young man had disappeared. They eventually found him in the corner of the
warehouse weeping. He had slipped away having taken a Bible. What he
found shook him to the core. Out of the thousands of Bibles, he had found
one belonging to his grandmother... a woman persecuted all her life, who had
died in prison. No wonder he was weeping. God had just dramatically
revealed Himself to this young man. His grandmother had no doubt prayed
for him and for that city. Her prayers had followed him. And now this young
man's life has been transformed by the very Bible that his grandmother found so
dear."
God's ways truly are mysterious - beyond
searching out (Romans 11:33). He moves and guides in ways we least
expect. "The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his
steps" (Prov. 16:9). Little did that skeptic know at the
beginning of the day (following his hearts desire for a little extra money)
that his life would be blessed in an infinitely greater way by the time he
headed home that evening. God's ways are so much higher than ours -- and
always better!
Living in the Grace of Jesus, Pastor Jeff
