Defeating DOUBT

I look at the blank page before me, and think of how appropriate it is. At the moment I can’t think of a thing to write. Maybe I’m feeling the pressure of a topic that is so important that I don‘t even know where to begin. It stops my blogging cold.

And suddenly it comes to me. That’s what doubt does. It blanks out all the possibilities ahead of me, the evidence of God’s power and strength working in my life. They are all suddenly erased, like when you hit a wrong button on the keyboard and suddenly everything that you’ve written vanishes completely, a horror that has happened to me more times than I like to count. I’ve then searched and searched for a way to bring it back, usually to find that I have to start at the beginning and begin typing all over again.

If doubt does that to a draft, think of it’s power in the spiritual and physical realm. All the ground that we’ve gained spiritually suddenly vanishes, like that in the cartoons of old in which Road Runner runs off a cliff, hangs suspended in the air for a moment or two and then crashes to the ground below. We are the same, chasing our dreams at full speed, when suddenly doubt pulls away the ground beneath our feet and we have to regain the ground we’ve lost, step by step.

That’s a lot of power packed into a five-letter word. Thankfully, another five-letter word defeats it. In fact, faith is so powerful that just a grain the size of a mustard seed can do incredible things in the spiritual realm. Mountains are moved, prayers are answered, lives can be forever changed. It doesn’t take much. And the incredible thing is that we all have this weapon inside of us. God’s Word promises that we are all given a measure of faith. It’s what we do with it that matters.

The best way then to defeat doubt is to feed faith. And we do that by consuming the Word of God. (Romans 10:17). The Bible (an especially powerful five-letter Word!) is simply the spiritual food of choice. The more we eat, the stronger we grow in our faith, and the weaker doubt becomes in its ability to affect us at all. We simply don’t entertain it any longer.

Our faith may be a blank page to start with, but if we fill it with the sustenance found in the words of God, we find that doubt is soon defeated and the possibilities before us are endless once more.

“Jesus answered and said to them, Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you shall not only do this miracle of the fig tree, but also; if you shall say to this mountain, Be moved and be thrown into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”
(Matthew 21: 21-22 MKJV, emphasis mine)