Let me ask you a question: Do you like country music? Because I don't, and I don't want to offend anybody that loves it, but I'm not a big country music fan. But I do have a song by Alan Jackson called "Just That Way" that I want to look at some of the lyrics. I'm not endorsing the song, but I do want to use the lyrics to set up this week's message.

And here's the first part of that song, the first part of the lyrics. He says, "That old sun comes up every morning and goes back down at the end of every day. It's just that way." Then he says this: "Stars show up every evening, man, and the moon comes out to play. It's just that way."

Why do I say that? I say that because you and me both know that there are plenty of things in our life that are just that way. Like, do you have that person—maybe at Thanksgiving or Christmas, when you get together with family—that you know is going to be the one that goes right for the food first? We know that person. Hopefully, it's not you. If it is, there'll be a chance at the end that you can pray and get right with God. But the point is, we all know—we all know—if we have family members that are just that way. We have things about our job that are just that way. There are things about dogs and people that we know, and sports and stuff—they're just that way.

And the reason I say that is because, whether we want to admit it or not, whether we want to embrace it or not, there is another thing about your and my life as Christians that's also just that way, and it's this: Doubt is a common characteristic of God's children.

Now, you may stop right now and say, "Chip, I don't want to hear this. Please don't tell me that doubt is part of my life." But we know that it is. We know that from time to time, we all doubt. We know that doubt really is a characteristic of our lives. And the reason I want to talk about this is because it's not talked about that much. We sort of just sandwich off and compartmentalize parts of our life that are really challenging. You know, if I were to tell you the times in my life that I struggled, and if I were to sit here and be incredibly vulnerable, you might go, "Oh, don't, don't tell me all that stuff." But it's true, and I suspect that deep down inside, you and I both know that doubt is a part of our life from time to time. That's why I did this series. So I feel like this series is so important for you and me, in the times that we're living, and the doubt that I hear in people's minds—like, "Why is God allowing this? Why did God let this happen to me? Why did this person have to pass away? Why did I lose this job?" We know that there's doubt.

And so, when I put this series together, I put it together with a big idea. That big idea was: Just because we doubt, doesn't mean we're out. Just because we doubt, doesn't mean we are out with God.

But let's back up here for a second. Barna, which is a research group that looks at all things church, one of the things that they did, not in the too distant past, is they did a survey, and they wanted to know why younger people were leaving the church. Now, I don't know about you, but I know for me as a pastor, the last thing I want is for any of our young people to leave the church. I want our young people to have a robust faith. I want our young people to be able to challenge and to think through why they believe what they believe. But the fact of the matter is, in America, there is a group of people, and it's the younger ones, that are walking away from the faith and walking away from the church. Doesn't mean there are not older people that are doing that, but where we're seeing it the most is in this younger generation.

And here is the alarming thing: They found six particular reasons why younger people were walking away from the church. And one of those six, and it's something that we need to deal with because it's part of what we're dealing with in this series, is this: One of the six reasons that young people are leaving the church is because they say that churches are unfriendly to those who doubt.

I don't know how you feel. I don't know how that resonates with you, but as a pastor, it makes me say, "Hey, this is an issue," and I know it's an issue. It's an issue none of us want to talk about because doubt is uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to share some of the vulnerabilities. It's a lot easier to put the smile on and act like everything's okay, and say, "Oh, I got it. Don't worry, God's got it," and act as if we have faith, but deep down inside, we know that oftentimes, you and me, we struggle.

When asked, many of the younger people said one of the reasons why they're leaving the church is because churches are just simply unfriendly to those who doubt. Here are the alarming parts. Listen to some of these statistics: 35% of the younger people that have left the church said Christians were too confident that they knew all the answers.

I'm not naive. Somebody's listening right now saying, "Oh, I got all the answers." Let's stop for a moment. You and I both know that none of us have all the answers. We may know the ultimate answer, who's a person and his name is Jesus, but we don't know all the answers. And to think that there are people that have left church because we've given off the impression that we know about everything—I mean, that's it. That's a striking number, 35%—that's almost four in ten, 3.5 out of 10 people that have left, and that are younger, say, "Hey, time out here. You know what? We just felt like Christians felt like they had all the answers."

So here's another stat: 25%—that's a quarter of everyone that was 18 to 29—said the church demonizes everything outside of the church. Now, you and I know this: We don't demonize everything outside of the church, but they felt that way. Whatever it was, whatever our posture was, whatever our rhetoric was, whatever our actions were, it made people feel as if we demonized everything outside of the church—a quarter of them, 25%—striking to me.

How about this? 36% said they could not ask their most pressing questions. As a pastor, that strikes deep. I hope, if you're watching this and you're a Christian, I hope that strikes deep to you too, to know that there are people that genuinely are struggling in their life, genuinely struggling with things that are going on, and they feel like the church doesn't allow for them to ask their pressing questions. It's alarming to me.

In fact, Christianity Today, when looking at all of the stats, this is what one of the writers wrote: "Christian traditions that celebrate and normalize certitude and unwavering faith tend to be inhospitable places for those struggling to make sense of how to negotiate dissenting questions and doubt."

How did we get here? How did the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, that took on the philosophers of the Roman Empire and shattered all of their philosophies with the truth of the gospel—how in the world did we get to the place where the church of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is not a place where people can ask questions and people can express doubt? I mean, go back to Thomas. We all know Thomas. We've all heard about him. We call him Doubting Thomas, don't we? Remember when Jesus shows up and Thomas isn't there? And did Jesus leave Thomas like, "You know what? It's fine that you all think you saw him. It's fine that you all think that he was there. But I'm going to tell you right now, I'm not going to believe until I can take my fingers and poke them into the scars." When Jesus shows up, does he rip Thomas? Does he tell him how bad he is? Does he kick him out of the room? Does he tell him the questions that he has are not valid now? What does he do? 

He says, "Thomas, poke away. Check it out." Now, of course, we know that Jesus says, "More blessed is it going to be for the person who doesn't have to see," but the bottom line is, Jesus never, ever, ever gave Thomas a hard time because He knows our hearts. He knows that we're challenged. But how did we get here? How did we get here with the most robust answers for all of humanity—the gospel that is the truth? How do we get to the place where we don't want to let people ask questions, and we've made people feel bad for their doubt?

Some of you are going, "Well, this is probably for me." But some of you right now are going, "Please tell me. Please help me, because I doubt, Chip. If you can, if you can say something to me that helps me out in this message, you have no idea how much this will be for me," and I want to answer that. I want to help all of the people that struggle with this. I want to help those that struggle with being people that don't want to tell people they can doubt because we need to talk about these issues.

How did we get here? Well, we got here, in my mind—and I'm trying to give the best simple answer that I can, that we can all understand—is this: Historically, Christians have believed that there are people of faith and there are people of unbelief, and that's sort of like… and it's a very simplistic way of looking at life, but from a gospel standpoint, from those that are going to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, and those that are not, the early church forward has believed there are either people of faith or people of unbelief, and that faith was very, very minimal.

Just go back with me here for a second. If we could have gone back to the early church, for the first 300 years, there wasn't a Bible, right? So they didn't walk around going, "Do you believe this?" They didn't go around saying, "The Bible says." They didn't have any of that. They had some Old Testament Scriptures, and they had some letters that were loosely starting to be put together that would eventually become what we call the 66 books of the Bible. They didn't have systems of thought like the Reformation that was going to happen 1500 years later. They didn't have canonized people like they didn't say, "Hey, are you a Calvinist? Are you an Arminian?" They didn't have any of those thoughts. What they had was the gospel.

The gospel was very simple: "Do you believe that Jesus Christ, the carpenter from Nazareth? Do you believe that he went to Jerusalem and died on a cross?" You know he did because they would tell that people knew the story. They were there. They'd heard about it, like, "That guy that went to the cross and died. Check this out. He got up, he rose from the dead on the third day? Are you in?" That was probably the shortest gospel message that was presented for hundreds of years. They didn't have all these elaborate things and elaborate systems. It was very simple: You either trusted who Jesus was, and you believed that he died on the cross for your sins and rose again on the third day, or you didn't, and that was the system. It was either faith or unbelief. It was pretty, pretty simple.

But what happened is, along the way, because of the way we are, because we're humans, and because we want to get everything right, and we want to know things with certainty, what happened was, is we changed the terms. Faith and unbelief have become certainty and doubt. So now what we do is we say, "Well, if you're a believer, these are all the things that you need to believe." And in today's world, it might be what you believe about the pandemic. It might be about what you think about masks. It might be what you think about your freedoms. It might be what you think about the Pledge of Allegiance, or what you think about ball players, and all of those things start to become what we say, "This is the certainty of my walk with God. This is what it really means to be a follower of God." I mean, we sort of just got past all the "believe in Jesus, and He rose from there." That's part of what we say. But then it's a list, and it's got to be certain.

That's why there are over 40,000 denominations in the United States because everybody's certain that they're right. So faith, rather than being this mystery of believing that there is a God that loves you and me so much, who created the world, who gave His Son and died on a cross so that we could have everlasting life and rose again on the third day, has become synonymous with certainty—knowing that what we believe is the right belief—and those that doubt that, that doubt our certainty, well, they're the ones that are over there. They're not the ones. And so this certainty and doubt has created all kinds of problems for the church because what we've done is we've taken the simple gospel, and what we've done is we've made it a system. And these systems that we have are pretty elaborate, and many of us have them.

Let's just be honest. When you think about it, "Oh yeah, you know, Chip, you're sort of right. I do have sort of all these things that I sort of check off. And then if my friends don't do that, I start to wonder, you know, what's wrong with them? Why don't they see it this way and everything else?" And the reality is, if somebody challenges that system, we got to fight for it.

So let me, let me, let me show you how, somehow this works. The first system here, you're going to go, "Oh, come on, man, I would have never believed that." Maybe, maybe not. Let's go back several hundred years, and let's go to a system that said the earth is flat. You go, "Come on. No, this is the Christians. They believed this. This is part of what it meant to be a Christian. You believe in the flat earth. You didn't believe in it." They just could kill you because they were right. This is the way it was. I mean, think about it for a second. "Do you believe the Bible? The Bible? Do you think the Bible's inspired and the Word of God?" Well, didn't Jesus say in Matthew 24 that he's going to come and gather his elect from the four corners of the world? What does that mean? Well, you and I both know what that means. It means the world's flat. You can't get from four corners if the earth is round. It's flat. And if you don't believe that what Jesus says about the world being flat, then how can you believe the Bible? How can you trust the Bible? Because that's what the Bible says. If the Bible says that and you don't believe it, then how can you say that you're saved?

And you go, "Well, Chip, I might not have ever gone for the flat earth." I could insert slavery in there. I can insert a lot of things in there that people believed, and they believed if you didn't believe it the way they believed it, you were questionable about your and my salvation. Why? We've changed faith to certainty.

Let me step a little closer. One of the big reasons why people today, especially our younger people, are walking away from church is because when they go to college or they go to the university, they're confronted with a different worldview than many times what they have been talked about or trained to believe in church. So let's talk about this. Let's substitute creation. Maybe you have a very, very definitive view of what you think about creation. From the early church, even back to Augustine, there was debate. Great Christians have debated this. No, no Christian has debated whether or not God created, but they've always debated how he created. But there are a lot of Christians that believe that if you don't believe a certain view of creation, then how can you believe the Bible? How can you believe anything? And if you don't trust the Bible, and if you don't trust the system, how can you be saved? How can you be a legitimate follower of Jesus?

And so what I want to try to talk about here is, from the very beginning, it's just the way it is. Right now, we find ourselves in a world where these systems and these certainties and not being able to admit that we may doubt, or not being able to admit that maybe our system isn't exactly right. Because listen to me. Please hear me here. You and me do not get our life, and we don't get eternal life, and we don't get forgiven based on a system. It's based on a person. It's based on Jesus. He is our life, and all God's children have doubt.

Let me try to make some more sense of this. Doubt is not the same thing as unbelief. Unbelief is something different than doubt. Doubt can lead to unbelief, but doubt is not unbelief. Doubt always hinges in between faith and unbelief. You and I's doubt can lead us to a relationship with God. Many people have doubted things. Many people have doubted the claims of Christianity, and it forced them to engage Christianity, and they became believers. Doubt's not necessarily bad. Doubt is something that God has endowed you and me with. We think through issues. We're not just always gullible, but doubt can also be really bad, and it can lead to unbelief. And in this series, we're going to talk about the doubt that leads to unbelief. But for right now, we need to still consider doubt because this is something that Christians don't like to talk about, but doubt is, doubt is at the intersection of faith.

Think about this for a second. Doubt means that you might be a little uncertain about something. Doubt means that you might have a little bit of a hesitation, sort of like in Acts 17, when it says the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians because they searched the scriptures daily to see whether those things were so. What were those things? The things that the apostle Paul taught them. Why'd they do that? Because they wanted to make sure, they had a little uncertainty. They wanted to be a little hesitant. See, that doubt was a good doubt. Doubt can be bad, but doubt can also lead us in a good way. And so this is why it's so important for us to understand how we got here. We got here because what we've done is we've changed the words and we've changed their meanings, and now we have a very sort of "just the way it is" system throughout many churches in America, where our systems, unfortunately, are where our certainty lies, and when people don't see it the way we see it, we call them unbelievers, or we call them doubters, when in reality, they might be just as much or even more so of a believer than you and me.

So doubt's part of our life. If you don't believe that, let's look at another person. Last week, we looked at John the Baptist. Pretty big doubts he had. This weekend, what are we going to look at? We're going to look at King David. I mean, I think all of us would agree King David's probably one of the greatest of all time, the man after God's own heart. I mean, this is a man that God loved. This is a man that God anointed. This is a man that God chose to be king. This is a man in whom his lineage, the Christ, will come—pretty big-time guy.

Well, let's look at one of the psalms that he wrote. We actually looked at the Psalm, I think, about four months ago, but we looked at it in a different light, but I want to look at this psalm again, and I want us to look at how David frames some of his life. And when we read it, we'll go, "Me too, me too." You know why most of this? There's somewhere between 30 to 50% of the psalms are what we call lament Psalms. Do you know why they are? Because that's part of our life. There's tragic and there's comedy, there's good and there's bad. This is the flow of life. Yeah, this is the suffering and the glory. It's the tragic and the comic. It's the bad, it's the good. We all know these things. And the reason the psalms are so good for you and me is because we know—you and me both know—that we can relate to them.

So let's listen to David. Let's look at David through the lens of just who he was and what he's saying. And let's engage the fact that we do have some doubt. And let's look at how he dealt with it. He says, "How long, O Lord, will you forget me? Forever?" See, David knows that God is a covenant God. He can't forget him. That's part of his covenant, that he won't forget him. But David, wherever he's at right now in his life—and we don't know for sure. We're not quite sure. It may be that this Psalm has taken place after the raid of Ziklag, where everybody's sort of gone and everybody thinks everybody's dead, and his people turn against him and want to stone him. And now he feels like, "Oh my gosh, what's going to happen to me?" Maybe he wrote this during that time. We just don't know. But we do know this. We do know that he's got some real questions. He's like, "God, time out. How long are you going to forget me for? I mean, I know you can't even do this, but this is what it feels like." Have you ever felt that way? Ever felt like God forgot you?

I know I've felt that way. Maybe you feel that way right now. That's why these psalms speak to us. "How long, O God, are you going to forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" This idea of hiding his face is like not answering his prayers. You ever felt that way? You felt like you're praying, but there's no answer, like, what's up? God, what are you doing? Why is this way? See, we all have these things. Let's be honest. Let's be vulnerable for a moment. All of us know what this is like. We put on that smiley face and act like we've got this faith that just runs through walls. But the bottom line is, you and me are very frail people, and many times we struggle. That's why these are so important.

He says, "How long are you going to hide your face?" In fact, "How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long?" In other words, "God, how long do I have to dig deep within me to figure things out, because you're not answering me and nothing makes sense? And how long shall my enemy be exalted over me?" I mean, "God, I thought that you said that you would deliver me from all the evils. I thought you said you would deliver me—that isn't your salvation, like, take us out of Egypt and get us away from the pharaohs. Like, God, how long are you going to let me be here?" Four times he says, "How long, God, are you going to let this happen?" Maybe you're there right now. Maybe you're there and you don't want anybody to know that. Maybe you're there and you have a small group. Maybe you're watching, you go to another church, and you're a leader and you're like, "Man, if anybody knew that's where I was at, I don't know what they would think." No, stop. This is where David was at. We're in good company here. There's nothing wrong with being here, because this is where many of us live.

But listen here, because it changes. He says, "Consider and answer me, O Lord my God." See, what's interesting here is the doubt that he has, the questioning that he has, the struggle that he has. What's interesting is, it's all done in faith. It's done in faith because he now is starting to petition God. Reminds me of the man that came to Jesus and wanted to see him heal his boy. He says, "Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief." See, there was a belief there, but there was also a doubt there, and sometimes doubt is the hinge for faith.

He says, "Consider and answer me, O Lord, light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death." What's he saying here? He's saying, "God, the enemies are about to get me, and if you don't do something, if you don't intervene, you know what's going to happen? They're going to kill me. Like, I'm going to die. I'm going to sleep the sleep of death." What's interesting is, "consider," "answer," and "light" are all imperatives in Hebrew. Like, he's getting bold. He's saying, "God, you need to really consider. You need to answer." I love this because his questions, his doubt, his concern, his hesitation has led him to throw himself on God. It's like I said, doubt can oftentimes be that hinge that pushes us over into a different relationship with God.

And then he says, "Lest my enemy say, 'I've prevailed over him,' lest my foes rejoice because I'm shaken." "God, please intervene." And what happens is, he has this moment with God. It changes everything. He says, "But I have trusted in your steadfast love." Well, he was just saying, "How long?" Now he's trusting in his steadfast love. He says, "My heart shall rejoice in your salvation, and I'm going to sing to the Lord, because he's dealt bountifully with me."

What can we take out of the Psalm? He said, "This is a powerful Psalm. There's so much in it. I'd love to do a little bit more work in it, but we did enough there to get a couple of key points that might be transformational for your mind's life, hopefully will be."

So, first thing is, this is that we all need to come to terms with the four recurring words that create a mystery and tension in our faith. See, there's a mystery to our faith. We'd love for there not to be a mystery, right? We'd love to just have all the answers, but then it wouldn't be faith. It'd be knowledge. It'd be faith, it'd be knowledge. And then we could be certain, then we could have a system. See where that goes? We want to be people of faith, and for us to be people of faith, and for us to be people that truly live this out in a way that's honest and authentic and vulnerable and even showing some doubt from time to time, we need to be able to come to terms with four recurring words that all of us know deep down in our heart. And those four recurring words are, "How long, O Lord?" You know that, and I know that. "How long, God, are you going to allow this to keep happening? How long, God, is this going to go on? God, come on, you. Why did you let this happen?" See, that's hard for us because we want to have certainty. What we don't want to have sometimes is honesty. These four words are the words of Christians everywhere, and this may haunt you, and this may be something you don't want to hear, but in Revelation, chapter 6, verse 10, the martyrs that have been slain, that are in heaven, that are in the presence of God. Do you know what they're saying? "How long, O Lord, how long is it going to be before you avenge the blood?" "How long, Lord, is it going to be before you do?" These are people that are in heaven. Go check it out. Read Revelation, chapter 6, verse 10, it's there. You go, "Well, I don't, I don't like that answer." See, this is the uncomfortable part, but when we embrace some of the doubts that we have and the struggles that we have, that is the most important thing we can do, which is starting to be honest and vulnerable and authentic with God.

You know, in Matthew 28, verse 17, we're told that the disciples that have seen Jesus resurrected from the dead. It says they went up on the mountain. It says, in Matthew 28:17, it says some, it says many worshiped, but some doubted. Think about that. These are people that have seen Jesus. He's alive. They're like they can touch him. They still got some doubt. Why is that in there? It's in there because it's part of our lives. It's just the way it is. And if we try to push it away, or we try to not deal with it, or we try to create systems of certainty, what we're doing is, is we're taking away the beauty of a real, awesome relationship with God, and we're also somehow pushing away what the gospel really is all about.

So, "How long, O Lord?" We've got to come to terms with this in our lives. And here's what's awesome when we come to terms with this, is that we realize that doubt can be a catalyst for real intimacy with God. This is an incredible part of who we are as Christians and following God, is that when we are able to be vulnerable, when we're able to be honest, what happens is this, it creates a catalyst for intimacy. I believe that many Christians are scared of intimacy with God because intimacy with God means that we have to be honest about what's going on in here. It's a lot easier to go, "Oh, I got my creed, I got my system, I got my knowledge, and I'm clinging to it." It's another thing to lay down in front of God and say, "I'm broken. God, I'm shattered. God, I've got a lot of issues."

Listen, I'll be vulnerable during this time. If you don't think that many times I've woken up and go, "Are we going to make it? Is the church going to get through this? Are we even going to be able to build this building? What's going to happen with my kids?" I mean, I do a lot of ministry, and oftentimes I give everything that I've got at church. I try everything I can to be on all the time, and then I go home and maybe I'm not as on as I should be, and my kids get some bread crumbs. "God, are they going to grow up hating church? Are they going to grow up hating me?" If you don't think these are things that people struggle with, you're not being honest with yourself, because even guys that do what I do can say that's true. But let me tell you something, when you can be that way, you can have real intimacy with God. Because this is what happens. He says, "God, consider"—he throws himself in front of God, and now there's relationship. See, God's not after you and me, what we know. He's after you and me. He wants a relationship with you and me, and oftentimes being able to express our doubt, our uncertainty, our questions, and bringing that before God, what it does is it creates an intimacy where you can say, "Hey, consider, answer. Come on, God, I need you right now. I need you to get involved. I need you. I don't just need an answer. I need you in my life."

Can I, can I just take a moment and ask you where you're at in your intimacy with God? Because, see, I think that's a struggle for many of us, because we go, "Well, yeah, but if he really could know, if he really considered and he saw what was here, and I had to be honest with what I thought and what I did, what would he think?" Can I tell you the answer to that? His answer would be that he loves you. He already knows all those problems, he already knows all those struggles, and he loves you. Every single one of us hopes that there might be somebody in our life that would truly see who we were and would love us for who we are. And can I tell you something? There is that somebody, and his name is Jesus. He loves you and me with an everlasting love, and what he wants us to do is to just come and be honest. And when we do that, it creates an intimacy.

And the last thing is, I think we need to embrace the certainty that changes everything. There is something that we should be certain about. There is something that changes everything. David is intuiting it in the Psalm, but you and me can look back and we see it differently. David says very clearly, he says, "Lord, I need you to answer me. I need you to light up my eyes, or what's going to happen is, I'm going to get killed. My enemy is going to take my life." And I mean, of all the things that we are the most fearful of, it's death. We don't want our kids to die, we don't want to die, we don't want our wives to die, we don't want our friends to die, we want our families to die. Death's a bad deal. We know that it's ugly. He says, "God, can you deliver me so I don't die?" He says, "Lest my enemy say I've beat him, lest my foes rejoice because I'm shaken." David intuits, in his world, that what God needs to do is intervene so that he doesn't die.

But see, this is, this is sort of looking forward to something much more significant. This opening up my eyes so I don't sleep the sleep of death. This is looking towards resurrection, and the resurrection is the game changer. See, the resurrection, when we have no more fear of death, it changes everything. When you and me go, "Well, yeah, but this could happen, or that can…" No. When we know that this life is not all that there is, when we know that there is something on the other side, it changes everything. Because what may look tragic on Friday is beautiful on Sunday, and that's why we as Christians can say, "Hey, we might not understand why these things happen, but we believe that God is good," and that is faith. It's not certainty, it's not knowledge, it's faith that says, "I believe that Jesus rose from the dead," and if he rose from the dead, that's a game-changing moment.

And see, every time we bring doubt to God, if we will realize that he genuinely gives us eyes that light up, that even if we die, death hasn't won. The greatest enemy is not David's enemies. The greatest enemy is death, and death has been conquered, and we no longer have the fear of death. That changes everything. What it does is it allows us to take that doubt, those struggles, those hurts, and say, "God, here they are. I want to be honest with you and be vulnerable with you, because I know that, even though I don't see it right now, and even though I'm not certain of exactly how all this is going to work out, and even though I've got some doubt right now and I've got some hesitancy, I believe that on the other side, I'm going to realize how awesome and how good you are."

Listen, we all have doubt. It's like the song says, "It's just the way it is," but the great antidote to doubt is to take it and allow an intimacy with God to overflow into our lives and to embrace the power of Jesus' resurrection, and in doing so, that's a game changer.

So can I ask you right now, wherever you're at—you may be a Christian, you may have used to be a Christian, maybe you're not a Christian at all. Maybe you're far from God, or maybe you just never even known God at all. Or maybe you are a follower of God. Wherever you're at, would you just take a moment right now? Might be at your house, you might be at a friend's house. You might be listening to this on some earbuds. Wherever you're at, would you take a moment and you say, "God, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to be honest here. I'm going to be vulnerable. I've got some areas in my life that I doubt, and here they are, and I'm bringing them to you. And I know, God, you might not be able to answer everything, and you might not even give me the answer to some of the things that I'm asking. But Lord, what I want to do is I want to be able to bring these things to you, to create a real, honest relationship." And then, "Lord, give me the eyes to see that no matter what is going on, the resurrection is the greatest game changer ever."

Would you pray with me right now? Father, we come to you and we're grateful for what you've done for us, grateful for who you are. And Lord, I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to share the wonderful news, the good news, the gospel of Jesus, to all those that are watching right now and to all those that will watch this at a later date. Father, my prayer is that you would give us the ability to embrace the fact that we do have doubt, and that doubt doesn't necessarily mean that we're not believers. It can go in a bad way, but it can also lead us into real intimacy. Father, my prayer is that no matter where anybody is at, whether they're a non-believer or they're a mature Christian, I pray that right now in Jesus' name, that they would take a step towards being honest and vulnerable with you, to create even more of an intimacy in their relationship that they have with you, Lord. I thank you that you hear our prayers. I thank you that you want us to be honest. I thank you that you want us to be vulnerable, and I thank you that you are not surprised nor upset when we bring our doubt to you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

God bless everybody. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Know that we're praying for you. Know that we're so happy to have you as a part of the audience of Grace, whether it's a home stream or whether you're watching somewhere else in the United States or even somewhere else in the world. And remember this, the best is yet to come.


Last modified: Tuesday, February 4, 2025, 7:32 AM