Reasonable Doubt

In 1992, Jo and I left our jobs and home in Savannah, GA to move to east Tennessee, where I would enter seminary and begin our formal ministry training. We were broke, but healthy, in love, and certain of our calling.

Then one Saturday, we found ourselves in a hospital emergency room. Jo had broken her kneecap and severed her ACL. She was in tremendous pain. After sedating her, the doctors discovered she was pregnant. They postponed surgery, and I was left pacing the hospital grounds, waiting for her to be conscious enough to talk through what we were facing.

Shaken was an understatement. Just hours earlier, I had been so confident we were aligned with God. We were living rent-free as hosts of a bed and breakfast run by the seminary. I was a full-time student and part-time youth minister earning $100 a week. Jo was working full-time counseling children at a large mental health organization. Like pieces of a well-made puzzle, every element of our life had been snapping neatly into place — until that day. Now, Jo couldn’t walk, and she was pregnant.

How would we afford any of this? Had we misunderstood God’s calling? Had we jumped the gun? Was this move our idea rather than his? Endless questions pelted me as though I were caught in a spiritual hailstorm with nowhere to take cover.

A few years later, after the birth of our third child, we were house shopping — though we couldn’t find anything in our price range that was much bigger than what we already had. Our church was in the middle of a capital stewardship campaign, raising money to purchase land and relocate. After much prayer, we felt led to give the money we had saved for a down payment to the church.

The very next day, the perfect house on our street went on the market, within our price range. But we had no down payment. Once again, I found myself doubting. Had I misunderstood? How could this happen?

Ten years later, our ministry was thriving. We were making significant investments of time and energy into a major shift in our ministry direction — decisions bathed in prayer, with a clear sense that we were again aligned with God. Then Jo was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Sidelined by chemotherapy and multiple surgeries, she needed constant care. I found myself caregiving, single-parenting three very scared children, and simply hanging on to the ministry we had already built. The old questions returned: Had I misunderstood? Had all that prayer simply been a way of convincing myself that God would bless what I wanted to do?

As a counselor and coach, I often hear similar doubts from people overwhelmed by their circumstances. Decades of following Jesus and studying Scripture have taught me that everyone has doubts — and the more one steps out in faith, the more life will rattle one’s confidence. Some people blame this on Satan. Others see it as God’s testing. Still others chalk it up to coincidence, or simply life. Personally, I think any of these could be true depending on the situation.

Rather than trying to identify the source of each challenge, I’ve found it more helpful to sort doubts into one of two categories: reasonable doubts and unreasonable doubts.

Reasonable doubts are aimed at ourselves. We’re not doubting God — we’re doubting our own discernment or abilities. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, and Peter all experienced this. There’s a fine line between humility and self-doubt, and reasonable doubt is what happens when we tip over that line. Arrogance may seem like the opposite, but it’s often just a mask for insecurity — the denial of self-doubt rather than the absence of it.

Unreasonable doubts, on the other hand, are directed at God. In trying circumstances, a believer may begin to question God’s love, forgiveness, goodness, or fairness. Like Jonah — or the workers who resented receiving the same wages as those who had labored only part of the day — we look at our circumstances and decide that God is being unfair, unloving, or unjust. Unreasonable doubts tend to be emotionally driven rather than faith-led. Their danger is that they blind us to what God is actually doing. This disconnection can spiral a believer downward even as God is working on their behalf.

Reasonable doubts, by contrast, most often prompt a stronger connection with God. They drive us to seek his guidance and trust him to lead us through.

In each of the stories above, that’s exactly what happened. We pressed into God rather than pulling away — and watched him do what only he could do. We welcomed two beautiful daughters and completed seminary without debt. We got the house. And through two years of illness, healing, and restoration, God expanded our ministry impact in ways we never could have orchestrated ourselves.

Thanks for Reading,

John

Share