Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Hey New Life Gillette Church. We are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes.newlife gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:25] Hey, we are going to be in John chapter 20. John chapter 20. If you got a Bible, go ahead and open up there. We're continuing continuing on in our series While I Breathe. I hope, talking about how we have hope, no matter the situation in every Circumstance. John chapter 20. I want to say good morning to everybody joining us online at church307 and especially to our friends down at the prison who join us every week. We're stoked that you're part of the extended family.
[00:00:53] John, chapter 40.
[00:00:55] Excuse me. John chapter 20. We're going to start reading in verse 24. Here's what it says.
[00:01:00] Now, Thomas, also known as Didymus, one of the 12, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. This is right after the resurrection, right after Jesus came back from the dead. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.
[00:01:25] A week later, his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them, which is a weird detail to the story, by the way. Either Jesus is really good at picking locks or he can walk through walls.
[00:01:37] Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your hands here.
[00:01:44] See my side.
[00:01:46] See my hands? Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.
[00:01:52] Thomas said to him, my Lord and my God. Then Jesus told him, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. This morning we're talking about the thing that attacks our hope, maybe the most consistently doubt, something that nearly every single one of us has experienced at some point in our lives.
[00:02:19] As we prepare to get into the message, let's pray.
[00:02:23] Jesus, you are worthy and this is your word. You are the only one who's worthy of our praise, and you are the teacher who gives us the words of life.
[00:02:33] So we ask that you would speak to us this morning. God, we don't need my opinions in this sermon. My opinions won't help anybody. But if there's my opinions in the sermon, let us notice them so we can throw them away.
[00:02:44] But if there's Anything that's consistent with your character and faithful with your word, would you plant it in our hearts, Jesus, that we would become like you?
[00:02:52] That's why we're here.
[00:02:54] We love you, Jesus. Amen.
[00:02:58] Has anyone here ever done any rock climbing?
[00:03:01] Anybody?
[00:03:03] Almost one? I got one. There's a few. Okay, I see some more. I see some more. All right. Just out of curiosity, anyone scared of heights?
[00:03:10] Usually. There's a correlation there. Just curious.
[00:03:13] When I was in college, I did a lot of climbing. That was my primary hobby. That's what me and my friends would do. The college I went to actually had a rock climbing kind of gym, small gym on site. That's where I worked in college. So we would do a lot of climbing on the weekends. We might go down to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, or we'd go out to Utah.
[00:03:31] We spent all of our time, all of our money doing this. Now, there are a few different ways to, to go climbing. If you've been down to the rec center or something like that and tried it out, then you probably did something like this. This picture right here, this is called top rope climbing. Top rope climbing is self explanatory. Do you see the rope that goes up top?
[00:03:51] Top rope climbing, when you're top roping, that means the rope is already there.
[00:03:57] So you are safe. The rope's up there. You can see exactly how far you're gonna fall if you get dropped. Sometimes you can feel the rope actually kind of pulling you little bit. And as long as the person on the other end, as long as the person belaying you is paying attention to you and not flirting with the girl standing next to him, then you're safe. Right? It's the great thing about top rope climbing. It's really easy to be focused. It's the reason why it's what most people do. It doesn't require a lot of extra skills to be safe. And you feel safe more or less when you're doing it because you can see the rope, you can see everything that's involved in it.
[00:04:34] But if you've ever driven through maybe 10 Sleep Canyon and you've seen people climbing there, you might have wondered, the ropes don't just stay there all the time, do they? How do the ropes get up? Well, when you're climbing outdoors, somebody has to take the rope up to the top the first time. That is called lead climbing. And it looks like this, what lead climbing is. Now you can see that the rope is not up above him, that the rope is attached to that carabiner right there. There's another one right down, one down here. And the rope goes down beneath him because he's taking the rope up the wall with him. When you lead climb, you tie your harness to the rope. Your belayer takes the other end of the rope, and there's just a bunch of rope in between you in the beginning. And you have something attached to your harness that are called quick draws, which are little carabiners with webbing or with material in between them. And as you go up, you attach that quickdraw to a point on the rock. In this type of climbing, it's called a piton. It's a piece of metal hamm of the rock. You attach that quick draw to the piton and then you attach your rope to the quickdraw, and then you keep climbing. So as you go up the wall, you're continually attaching yourself to the wall beneath you so that you cannot fall farther than your last quick draw. Make sense?
[00:06:00] All right, now here's the thing once again. As long as your belayer is paying attention and as long as you have secured every quick draw correctly and as long as your feet aren't tangled in the rope, then you're safe. Right? You're not going to die when you fall. But if you fall, lead climbing. This is what it looks like.
[00:06:23] Yeah. So you see how that guy's way up above his last quickdraw.
[00:06:27] So when you fall, you fall the full distance of the rope that you were above the last quickdraw, and you fall, however much your belayer wasn't paying attention, how much it takes them to lock off the rope, and then you fall the stretch of the rope as well. And most of the time, something happens that we in rock climbing call taking a whipper.
[00:06:51] Yeah, it's as bad as it sounds. When you fall, you get caught and then you get whipped into the rock so you don't die.
[00:07:00] But it does hurt.
[00:07:02] You don't like doing those a lot.
[00:07:04] Here's the thing about climbing, even lead climbing, as long as you're being safe, as long as you're being responsible, and as long as you're not pushing your limits too much, then you're probably not going to fall. If you're climbing within your skill set, you're probably not going to fall.
[00:07:22] As long as you're focused on what you're doing, as long as you're not thinking about falling, you're probably not going to fall. In fact, have you ever heard of Alex Honnold, the famous free solo climber the guy who climbs without ropes, which another definition for that is insanity.
[00:07:38] He climbs huge walls without ropes. Somebody asked him one time, when you're on the wall, do you get adrenaline? Is your adrenaline spike? Are you worried? Are you afraid? And he said, no, absolutely not. If I feel adrenaline, something's wrong.
[00:07:49] The only thing I'm thinking about when I'm climbing is the next move, not thinking about being 2,000ft off the ground. If you can be in that head space when you're climbing, then you're good, you're gold.
[00:08:00] Because you're not worried about anything except making that next move. It's consumed your mind, and you're probably going to do it. But here's the thing that I learned from climbing. Most of the time, you're not thinking about the next move.
[00:08:10] Most of the time you're thinking about just how high you are over that last clip and how much that whipper is going to hurt if you slip.
[00:08:17] And then you're thinking about the fact that, you know, when you're in college, you know, the guy belaying you wasn't paying attention in class two hours ago, so how in the world is he paying attention now? And when you start thinking about that, your hands start sweating.
[00:08:29] When your hands start sweating, you start slipping. And when you start slipping, your hands start sweating, and then you start slipping. And then as you start slipping, you get something that in climbing we call Elvis leg, which I can't demonstrate for you, it wouldn't be appropriate. But it's when your legs, your knees, your hips start shaking real bad because you're nervous.
[00:08:50] So your legs start shaking because you're thinking about falling. And your legs shaking makes your hands sweat, and then your hands sweating makes you think about falling, and then you think about falling, so your legs shake.
[00:09:01] And the more you think about falling, the more likely you are to fall.
[00:09:06] Let me make it more clear. The more I doubt that I'm going to get caught, the more I doubt that I'm going to be okay.
[00:09:15] The more likely I am to fall.
[00:09:20] Doubting is a cycle.
[00:09:24] The more I'm worried, the more I'm afraid. The more I can think of to be worried and afraid of. The more questions I have about whether any of this is going to work, the more questions I can think of about if any of this is going to work, the more I doubt whether I'm going to get caught, the more likely I am to fall.
[00:09:46] It's not just true in climbing. You probably put that together.
[00:09:49] It's true in faith as well.
[00:09:52] Doubt is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. Doubt is a cycle.
[00:09:58] The more that I doubt, the more likely I am to doubt. The more that I doubt maybe the existence of God, the trustworthiness of the Bible, that's probably going to cause me to doubt the people who teach the Bible or it'll cause me to doubt my own sense of right and wrong. Why would I follow the book if I don't even know if it's true?
[00:10:18] The more I doubt whether God loves me or whether God's paying attention to me, the more I doubt whether God will actually answer a prayer, the less likely I am to pray at all. And the more likely I am to doubt whether he's even there to listen to my prayer.
[00:10:31] Doubt is cyclical.
[00:10:36] The more we do it, the more likely we are to do it. The more we doubt, the more likely we are to fall.
[00:10:41] This story is probably the most famous story in the Bible about doubt. Now there's tons of stories about doubt in the Bible. It's full of them. This is probably the most famous one. In fact, it's so famous that we gave Thomas a nickname just as humans, as Christians, we call him Doubting Thomas because of this one story.
[00:10:59] And if you think about it, Thomas is really the one who should have the least reason to doubt. If anyone should have believed in the resurrection, it should have been Thomas.
[00:11:08] Thomas is one of the 12 disciples. There were 12 guys who saw all of the miracles, heard all of the teaching. They were there for all of it for the last three years. Thomas is one of those guys. Thomas saw Lazarus come out of the grave still wrapped in grave cloth. But he saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. Thomas saw Jesus feed 5,000 men and their families with five loaves of bread and two fish. Then he saw him feed 4,000 men and their families with just a little bit more food.
[00:11:34] Thomas saw blind people regain their sight. He saw people that were paralyzed be able to walk.
[00:11:40] He saw Jairus daughter and he saw Peter's mother in law and he saw all of these miracles. And he heard Jesus say effectively, hey, I'm going to die and I'm going to come back from the dead. But Thomas is doubting it.
[00:11:52] Thomas is saying, no, no, I'm going to have to see it, I'm going to have to touch it.
[00:12:00] When the Romans killed Jesus, they took a spear and they put it through his rib cage, up into his vital area, using that spear to destroy the basic organs that keep a human alive. So there was no question at this point that Jesus might have just Been like asleep or faking it.
[00:12:19] There was no possibility of him being in a coma or something like that.
[00:12:25] Thomas knew. That's why he said, I'm going to have to put my hand. If you're telling me he's awake, then I'm going to need to put my hand in to the hole in his side where they destroyed his heart and lungs.
[00:12:36] Otherwise I'm not going to believe it.
[00:12:38] He's doubting now. There's something that's important to say about doubt right here before we go any farther. And it's that if I'm not doubting, if I'm not in a moment of doubt, personally, doubt feels a million miles away. It's hard to imagine ever doubting if you're not doubting.
[00:12:57] So for us it's hard to imagine being in Thomas shoes and doubting it. It's easy for us to think, my goodness, this guy, come on, if I were there, there's not a chance I'd have any questions. I would have believed it.
[00:13:11] The same thing happens with all of us when we're not in a season of doubt, right?
[00:13:15] When your 18 year old, 19 year old kid goes to college and they take that comparative religions course and they're starting to question things, it's easy for us as to think seriously.
[00:13:24] Seriously, you're doubting. When we have a friend that stumbles on a YouTube video and they start asking questions, if we're not in a place of doubt, it's easy for us to think seriously.
[00:13:33] A YouTube video, that's what's going to cause you to doubt.
[00:13:36] It's actually similar to dealing with mental illness. Doubt and mental illness are not the same thing. I want to clearly differentiate that, but I want us to see the way that they can interact on occasion.
[00:13:49] And doubt is similar in the sense that if you haven't dealt with depression or if you don't deal with depression, it's hard to imagine what it's like. It's hard to imagine how anyone could. If you've never dealt with depression, you probably think, or you might think seriously. You can't get out of bed, you don't have any motivation. You just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Okay? Come on, seriously. If you were to just put some effort to it, you would find some motivation. You're just being lazy. When you're not dealing with depression, it's easy to think of it that way.
[00:14:16] Or anxiety. If you're not struggling with anxiety, it's easy to think, why are you worrying about that? That's not even possible. That's not probable, that's not likely. A rational person wouldn't worry about that. Even if you've dealt with depression but you're not currently feeling it, it's easy to look back on the last time you felt it and think, how could I have ever felt that way? That's not me. And then to imagine it'll never happen again, which is why we get so taken aback when it finally happens again.
[00:14:47] When you're not doubting, it's hard to imagine what it's like to ever be doubting. But when you're in it, it's hard to imagine ever being out of it.
[00:14:55] When you're in it, it's hard to imagine it getting better. When you're in an episode of depression, you don't want it. You didn't decide to lose motivation. When you're dealing with anxiety, you didn't decide to worry about things that aren't rational. You understand they're not rational. That's why it's so frustrating. You just can't stop the anxiety.
[00:15:12] When you're in it, you're overwhelmed by it. Even though when you're not in it, it's hard to imagine ever being there.
[00:15:18] When we're not Thomas, it's hard to imagine what he would have ever felt like.
[00:15:22] But Thomas would have had every reason to believe or to not believe exactly what he did. He was in it, overwhelmed by it.
[00:15:29] Doubt tends to manifest in a couple of different ways, and we're reading into the story a little bit, but it's not hard to imagine how Thomas would have felt. Both of these in this instance, because the two interact. When we have one, it usually leads to the other. Doubt can be intellectual or emotional.
[00:15:52] Intellectual doubt is driven by questions about truth.
[00:15:56] Maybe you do you see a YouTube video, you stumble across Dan McClellan on YouTube for the first time. If you don't know that name, your kids do.
[00:16:05] You stumble across that name for the first time. You stumble across Alex o', Connor, the cosmic skeptic who's well respected in the world of philosophy right now and very compelling in the way he asks questions about the truth of scripture or the trustworthiness of religion. You stumble across these videos and you realize no one's ever talked about that in church. My pastor has never even mentioned that question. And are they hiding something from me, or do they just not have the answers?
[00:16:30] And it starts to feel like there's someone talking about the things we've all been thinking and.
[00:16:36] And you wonder whether you can trust The Bible. Because those people bring up often very good, very thoughtful questions that are sometimes hard to answer.
[00:16:47] Are there answers? You start questioning whether you can trust scripture or you start to notice the evil in the world, and you have a hard time reconciling the evil in the world with the goodness of God. That's an intellectual question. Many times it's actually called theodicy in theology and philosophy, the question or the problem of evil.
[00:17:10] And maybe you watch the news and you see all of the things happening on both sides of every issue in Palestine and all over the world. And you just see, like, if God is good and people are dying and people are doing things to one another and all of this stuff, how could there be a good God who's letting these types of things happen? If he claims to be powerful and he also claims to want what's best for people, it doesn't make sense that he could exist and all of these things exist. And you have that intellectual question.
[00:17:40] Or maybe you have the intellectual question of someone said, well, just pray about it. God will give you an answer. God will take care of it. And you did. But he didn't take care of it, or he didn't give you the answer. And now two plus two doesn't make four.
[00:17:53] Those intellectual doubts often lead us to emotional doubts. The emotional doubts often look something along the lines of, God answered their prayer, but he didn't answer my prayer.
[00:18:07] Maybe God exists, but he doesn't listen to me. Maybe I'm the problem.
[00:18:13] The intellectual doubts often lead to the emotional doubts, and the emotional doubts often lead to the intellectual doubts.
[00:18:19] Maybe that emotional doubt for you came from feeling like God had changed you. You were confident you had changed. You promised God and your friends and your family that you'd never pick up a bottle again. And three months in, you fell off the wagon. And now you wonder if you're just too bad, you know? And then you come to church and you hear somebody behind you singing at the top of their lungs. And you see somebody lifting their hands and you think, man, I am not like these people. Everybody here has kicked their addiction, and Everybody here is 100% sure. And they're 100% confident of everything they believe. And I'm the only one. I must be the only one who doesn't.
[00:18:50] Who's not sure. So what do we do then? We just shove the doubts. I'm not going to be the only one doubting in here. So I just won't talk about it. I won't bring it up. Then the doubt Leads to doubt, which leads to doubt, which leads to doubt. The doubt multiplies on itself.
[00:19:04] The emotional doubts.
[00:19:07] Most of us have experienced this. I've experienced this. I've talked about this before. My wife and I have struggled with infertility and miscarriage. And you pray about it. You ask God, hey, God, look, I'm fasting, I'm believing, I'm praying, I'm repenting of my sin. I'm doing, you know, I'm obeying you. And then other people get pregnant, and then somebody else gets pregnant, and somebody else gets pregnant, and it's like, are we the problem?
[00:19:29] Maybe you just don't answer our prayers.
[00:19:32] Maybe you just love them a little more than you love us.
[00:19:38] It's easy to imagine Thomas is feeling both of those doubts.
[00:19:42] Dead people don't come back from the dead.
[00:19:44] And look, Lazarus was sick, but nobody took a spear and stuck it into his lungs.
[00:19:50] If you're telling me Jesus came back from the dead, I'm going to need some evidence, because I've got real good, strong questions, and I'm going to need some evidence.
[00:19:59] He probably felt the emotional doubt, too, of, I gave my whole life to this guy. Why in the world would I trust him again? The last time I believed something, he died. Last time I trusted someone, they ripped my heart out and walked on it. Now you want me to do it again. If you want me to do it again, you'd better give me some proof.
[00:20:20] It's rational. It's a normal way to think.
[00:20:23] It's worth noting here that depression and anxiety often lead to or add to our experience of doubt. Once again, depression and anxiety are not the same thing as doubt, but they interact with.
[00:20:36] For those of us who deal with depression and anxiety, we often find ourselves in church looking at other people who seem to have joy and then feeling like we're the problem.
[00:20:46] For those of us who deal with anxiety, we often look at other people who are confident in their faith who don't seem to worry. And we read when Jesus said in Matthew 6 to cast your cares on him, do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow has enough worries of its own. And then we feel our anxiety and we think, oh, man, I must be the only one without faith.
[00:21:04] And our anxiety leads us to doubt, or we're struggling with doubt, and then that doubt sends us spiraling back into anxiety or spiraling back into depression because we were doing okay until we were faced with that question we didn't have an answer to. Now we're questioning our faith and our friends and our church. And the whole worldview again, and it sends us back.
[00:21:28] I just want to acknowledge this here. I want to take an aside, because we don't talk about mental health and mental illness often enough in the modern church, even though it's a very, very real issue that many of us deal with. In fact, let me go so far as to say, if you deal with depression, anxiety, or a different mental illness, I promise you're not the only person in this room who deals with it. I promise you're not the only person on the stage who has dealt with it.
[00:21:53] You're not alone.
[00:21:55] And we cannot just slap a spiritual answer onto an issue that is complicated and affected by trauma and brain chemistry and all of these other things. Faith can and does help us in our depression and anxiety, and therapy help us in our depression and anxiety, and medication can help us in our depression and anxiety. If you have a headache, I hope you pray about it and take Tylenol. So we shouldn't be ashamed to go to therapy and have faith. If we deal with depression and anxiety, our emotions are good. Our feelings help us. They don't tell us the whole truth.
[00:22:36] When we're struggling with those feelings, we need something that's going to give us the whole truth. A good way to think about it is your emotions. Your senses can tell you that they're in a garage, but they can't tell you you are a car.
[00:22:49] They can tell you where you are, but they can't tell you the whole story.
[00:22:52] So we balance them. We have faith, and it interacts with genuine mental health therapy. Do you see it?
[00:22:59] Okay, now, when we doubt, our reaction is fear and anxiety and shame.
[00:23:10] Because what Satan wants us to feel, what our enemy, what our spiritual enemy wants us to feel when we doubt, is ashamed of doubting because he wants you to keep doubting.
[00:23:20] He wants that doubt to cycle and circle and increase and multiply on itself. He wants that. So he says, don't tell anyone. Don't admit it. If you admit it, they won't trust you. If you admit it, they won't want you around.
[00:23:35] If you admit it, they'll kick you out. If you admit it, you'll realize you're the only one with that problem.
[00:23:41] This isn't in my notes, but I think it's worth saying, as a pastor, I have a lot of people who come to me and they want to talk about a sin or a struggle that they have. And almost every time, I can tell by the look on their face and by the hyperventilation in their voice, that they think what they're about to tell me is the worst thing a human has ever done.
[00:23:59] And then they say it out loud. And I think, really, that's all.
[00:24:04] Because when we keep it secret, it gets heavier and heavier and heavier and we don't see it for what it is. Whether it's doubt or sin or something from our past, it increases and the shame multiplies until we can't see that it's a nor. Scripture says that there's no temptation that's come upon you, except which is common to humans. Except, which is common to man.
[00:24:25] But when we live in shame and secrecy and we let that doubt multiply, what we feel like is, I'm the only one who's ever felt that.
[00:24:32] And no one will love me if I admit it.
[00:24:35] Jesus tells us in Ephesians to bring things into the light, and in Thessalonians to bring things into the light. Wake up, O sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine upon you.
[00:24:47] Here's the thing about this story. Did you notice what Jesus did in reaction to Thomas?
[00:24:54] Thomas had just said a week before, look, I got to put my hand into his side.
[00:24:58] I need to touch the place in his hands if I'm going to believe it's really him. If I'm going to believe that he rose from the dead, I need to touch.
[00:25:06] So what did Jesus do?
[00:25:07] He said, here, Thomas, what do you need in order to believe?
[00:25:14] What can I give you in order for you to believe?
[00:25:17] Do you need to see the hole in my side to make sure? Listen, if this was a rational story, like the way any of us would have responded or the way anything in the modern world would have responded, then Jesus would have said, hey, Thomas, I showed you so many miracles and you still didn't believe. Why don't you see yourself out, man? We don't really have room for people who aren't loyal on this thing. We don't really have room for people who don't have faith on this team. If I can do a million miracles right in front of your face and then you can't believe for the last one, then you gotta. Then just don't let the door hit you on the way out. That's how. Jesus had every right to respond like that. But that's not how he responded, is it?
[00:25:52] No, what he did is. He said, thomas, what do you need?
[00:25:56] Do you need to see? It's me, Thomas, it's me.
[00:26:01] See, Jesus moves towards you in your doubt. Jesus moves towards us in our doubt. Jesus moved towards he didn't say, thomas, get that doubt out of here. He said, thomas, bring it to me so I can show you the truth. Thomas, bring your doubts right here so you can compare them with who I am. Jesus moved towards Thomas in his doubt so that Thomas could open his doubt up to Jesus and experience the truth.
[00:26:26] And experience the truth because he was open about his doubt.
[00:26:30] So we were talking about rock climbing earlier.
[00:26:36] You know, the thing about climbing is that the more you grab onto that rock and try to avoid falling, the more afraid of falling you become. The more I try to avoid falling, the more I fear falling.
[00:26:51] The harder you hold on, the more afraid you become of what's going to happen when you let go or when you can't hold anymore.
[00:27:02] I told you, when I was in college, I did a lot of climbing and I used to lead climb a decent amount, which is funny because I am not a big fan of heights, but I did it anyway.
[00:27:14] I hadn't led a route in a while, and there was a new route on our wall in the climbing gym that I worked at and I wanted to try it. And I knew this route was harder than anything that I had led before. It was pushing my abilities to climb it, but I really wanted to do it.
[00:27:31] So I told my friend Andrew, I said, hey, belay me, I'm going to lead this route. And I got my quick draws and tied on the rope and everything and we're good to go. Now, when you're climbing, the worst place to fall is close to the bottom of the climb when you're lead climbing, because if you're five feet off the ground and you're seven feet above your last clip, when you fall, you hit the ground.
[00:27:57] So it's the one place you really don't want to fall is right there at the bottom. It's way better to fall up top because there's plenty of space for you to get caught.
[00:28:05] So I start climbing, I get to my first clip, it's about five feet off the ground, and I clip in, clip my rope in. Things are great. I'm feeling good, feeling strong.
[00:28:15] I keep climbing and I get to where I'm supposed to clip the second one about 10ft off the ground. Now 5ft over my last clip, my last quick draw. And I just don't love the holds right here.
[00:28:30] So I decided to go up a little higher to get a better hold so I can clip. So I go up 2ft higher, but I didn't love the holds there either.
[00:28:38] So I went up a couple more feet.
[00:28:41] You Know, now I'm eight, nine feet off the ground or four feet above my last clip, where I was supposed to clip. I keep going.
[00:28:51] Happens three or four times. I just keep inching my way up that wall, trying to find a spot where I felt good to hold onto. And then I realize I'm 10ft over my last clip, which is 5ft off the ground, and my hands start sweating.
[00:29:08] And I notice that my hands are sweating.
[00:29:10] So then I start getting that Elvis leg.
[00:29:13] Start shaking, and it's real visible. Sometimes you can, like, power your way through it. I couldn't power my way through it.
[00:29:20] So I'm moving around. I'm getting kind of desperate, trying to grab anything I can. And my hands are getting sweaty, and they're starting to slip. The other thing you're never supposed to do when you're climbing is to get in front of your rope. You always want the rope to be in between you and the wall so that when you fall, you don't get wrapped in the rope. Well, I had started to panic a little bit, honestly, and I had stepped around my rope, and my rope's kind of wrapped through my legs, and I start slipping, and I know what's about to happen. I know that I am going to hit the ground.
[00:29:54] I start to think about whether Andrew is paying attention or not.
[00:29:59] I start to fall off.
[00:30:02] Thing was, though, my belayer, my friend Andrew, had been watching the whole time.
[00:30:08] He had seen it when I climbed a little too high, and then he had watched me climb a little higher.
[00:30:15] And then he saw when my hand started losing grip, and he saw when my legs started shaking.
[00:30:26] So he knew I was about to fall.
[00:30:29] So he was ready the moment my hands slipped off the wall.
[00:30:33] And when I slipped off the wall, Andrew dove backwards about 10ft. Remember, I said I was 10ft over that last hold, last quick draw. He dove backwards about 10ft, and he picked up every ounce of slack that I had put into the rope so that I landed wrapped in the rope, upside down with my head about a foot off the ground.
[00:30:51] I've still got scars on my arm from the rope burn.
[00:30:57] He was watching.
[00:30:59] You know, I kept climbing after that, and I would get nervous about a lot of things. But, you know, one thing I never worried about again, whether Andrew would catch me.
[00:31:11] I liked it a lot when he was the belayer because I knew he was always paying attention.
[00:31:19] Because that's the thing you lose, the fear of falling by getting caught.
[00:31:26] The more times you get caught, the less afraid you are to fall.
[00:31:31] And when you're not afraid to fall. You can focus on what's in front of you and you're less likely to fall altogether.
[00:31:39] So how do I get over doubt?
[00:31:42] I let Jesus catch me in the doubt.
[00:31:45] How do I move past doubt? I let him catch me in it. I let Jesus come towards me in the doubt. I don't hold my doubt back from him. I don't say I won't ask the questions. I won't talk to anybody about it. No, I say, here's what I'm struggling with, here's what I'm wrestling with, here's what I'm feeling, here's what I'm thinking. I tell Jesus and I tell my friends. I tell my family, I tell my life group. I bring it out in the the light so that Jesus can catch me in the doubt. And when he catches me in the doubt, I learned that doubt wasn't anything to be ashamed of. When he catches me in the doubt, I learn that doubt is survivable, that you can get through it. When he catches me in the doubt, I learned that Jesus isn't afraid or angry or upset by any of our questions, but he welcomes us. Did you know the Bible is full of doubt?
[00:32:32] The Bible is full of people who doubt cover to cover. There are people who doubt in the Bible. There are people who doubt God's existence. There are people who doubt his goodness. There are people who doubt his plan. There are people who doubt his people. There are people who doubt everything. And you know what Jesus constantly does. In fact, you know one way you can summarize the whole Bible? It's God moving closer and closer to us in our doubt, in our sin, in our shame, in our everything.
[00:32:55] So my job this morning is not to convince you to trust the Bible. There are lots of great reasons to trust the Bible.
[00:33:02] My job this morning is not to convince you that God actually exists. So there are lots of good reasons, rational reasons, to trust in the existence of God and the veracity of Scripture.
[00:33:13] My goal this morning isn't even to convince you that God actually does love you.
[00:33:18] My goal this morning is to convince you that you do not have to be afraid of the doubt, that you should bring the doubt to Jesus, that you should quit hiding it, quit trying to cover it up, quit trying to keep it secret. But admit it, acknowledge the doubt in whatever form it takes so that Jesus can meet you in the doubt. Listen to me, my friends.
[00:33:41] There's a very small percentage, there's maybe 10% of Christians that never deal with doubt. If you're into personality tests. There are all the Enneagram sevens and eights who are able to just like jump in and never question anything in full steam ahead and never look back.
[00:33:54] If that's you, praise the Lord for you. None of the rest of us understand you. The other 90% of us wrestle with doubt. The other 90% of us every once in a while wake up and say, I'm praying to the ceiling.
[00:34:09] Every once in a while, the rest of us lift our hands in a song and say, he's good. And we don't feel like he's good because things are bad and we just sing it anyway.
[00:34:18] Doubt is normal. It's part of the human experience.
[00:34:21] Bring it to Jesus so that he can meet you in your doubt. Quit hiding it.
[00:34:27] Let's pray.
[00:34:29] Jesus, we thank you that you come straight towards us in our doubt, in our fear, in our shame, in our anxiety.
[00:34:36] Thank you that you do not cover it. You do not ask us to cover it up or hide it from you, but you bring it. Bring yourself to us so that we can bring our doubt to you. Would you give us the courage to acknowledge every question and every anxiety so that we can learn that you can catch us?
[00:34:55] We love you, Jesus.
[00:34:57] Amen.
