“How long will you forget me, O LORD? Forever? How long will you hide
your face from me?” – David the anointed (Ps 13:1)
A reason many
Believers find it hard to cope with doubt and think that it’s unique to them is
because they have gilded images of Bible characters in their minds. Even after
they’ve left children Sunday school class with its picture stories of shepherd
David, Brave Moses, faithful Abraham, etc. they continue this selective,
cherry-picking method of Bible study that seems to cast Bible characters as
stoic, faithful and perfect.
Nothing could be
further from the truth.
Our “fathers of faith
were real men like you and I and went
through the same struggles some of us are afraid to admit today.
Take the prophet
Jeremiah, for example. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest prophets in the
Old Testament and wrote more prophecies than any other (the book of Jeremiah is
considerably longer than Isaiah). He wasn’t just a prophet, he was also a
priest, called and anointed before he was even born.
Jer 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;
and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you, and I ordained you
a prophet unto the nations.”
We often quote this
verse and even appropriate it to ourselves. We claim that we, too, are anointed
of God and are set over nations and over
kingdoms to root out, pull down, destroy, etc. (Jer 1:10).
Yet we wilfully
ignore the actual aftermath of that prophecy. Jeremiah may have been a prophet
to nations but he was no Elijah who
could call down fire on his enemies or Elisha
who was courted by kings. Jeremiah was slapped, thrown into wells, exiled, and basically
humiliated throughout his prophetic ministry.
This is why we
shouldn’t be shocked when we hear this great prophet say directly to God, “O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was
deceived… I am in derision daily, everyone mocks me…” (Jer 20:7-18).
Abraham, our
designated “Father of Faith”, tired of waiting long after being promised great
blessings by God told Him directly “What
will you give me, seeing I go childless?” (Gen 15:2).
We could go on and on
to talk about Moses, David, John the Baptist, etc. Nevertheless, at no time did
God rebuke any of them. Indeed, some of them went from these periods of doubt
to achieve great feats of faith.
Beloved, doubt is
neither strange nor a sin in the life of a believer, it’s what we do with it,
however, that determines if we would come out better and stronger or wilt and
shrivel into oblivion.
AMEN.
GREG ELKAN
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