Dealing with Doubt (CC)
DEALING WITH DOUBT
Be still, and know that I am God.”
If we have once kept silent long enough to know this, we have, at least in that moment, been ready to obey. But it is the being still that is so hard for us. It often takes illness, loss, suffering of some kind, isolation, and loneliness. Only when we have come to the end of our own resources, when few distractions are left to us, does it become possible to be quiet.
But if, in the providence of God, we have not yet had to weather a real crisis, we may “be still” on purpose. We may choose to obey the command, stop all activity, turn aside in stillness, and know. The best kind of beginning, when we are wanting to know the will of God, is to concentrate first on God Himself. And of course, the briefest effort to do this will humble us, for we will learn how poorly we are in control of our thoughts. For me, there is nothing like the printed word to help me corral my scattered thoughts. Simply looking at a verse in the Bible that tells me something of God and reading through a hymn or a prayer are aids to discipline, and I need all the aids I can get.
I have been told that in one of the China Inland Mission homes in China there was a motto on the wall that said, “The sun stood still. The iron did swim. This God is our God for ever and ever. He will be our guide even unto death.” This God, the One who, in answer to the prayer of an ordinary man, stopped the sun in its course, the God who suspended His own law of gravity and made an ax head float, this is the God to whom I come. This is the God whose will and direction I am asking. This God is the One whose promises I am counting on. Whatever my predicament may be, as soon as I compare it with the circumstances surrounding the miracles of the sun and the ax, my doubts seem comical.
God knows all about those comical doubts. He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust, and it is to us, knowing all this better than we know it ourselves, that He made those promises.
God is, according to Isaiah 43, our Creator, our Redeemer, the Lord our God, the Holy One of Israel, our Savior. Would we ask Him to be anything more than this, before we admit in our hearts that He can be trusted?