“Faith is the belief without evidence.” -Atheist, agnostic, or the misinformed Sunday School teacher.
It has been said time and time again that faith is believing in something without evidence. I’ve heard atheists, false teachers, and even well-meaning Sunday school teachers claim this. The question is, is this how the Bible defines faith? Absolutely not. We see in Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1 that faith is defined as “The substance of things hoped for, and the evidence for things unseen.” Now, you might be asking yourself, what’s the difference? The difference is that faith is the evidence of things hoped for, not the evidence for the foundation of your faith. When we pray for something or someone, we hold it in faith that God will provide what is right. We don’t see the outcome, and we usually don’t get a solid answer right after we pray, but through the knowledge of what God has already done, we can see that He is a good and trustworthy God. On the other hand, we are not commanded to accept Christ and follow him on blind, unearned faith, as some people would claim. God provides real historical, scientific, and philosophical evidence for us to look at, and we can not discredit the work of the Holy Spirit as a witness in someone’s life. We will discuss some of the more material evidence for faith and, more specifically, how the Holy Spirit works in our lives today in later posts, but for now, I want to focus on getting comfortable with your own doubts.
As a child, I never really cared about the “why” questions. I listened in Sunday School and Children’s church and just thought it all made sense. I was never confronted with any pushback against my faith. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started to meet people with conflicting beliefs and strange new ideas about the world. I never left the faith, but I did start questioning. Sadly, I was a very shy and quiet kid. At some point, I began thinking that if I ever doubted God, He would abandon me for good. Because of this, I pushed down my doubts and any negative feelings I had and just tried to ignore them. This worked for a while, and I thought life was great, but there was always something holding me back. I believe hiding my fears rather than confronting them may have held me back and even led to some of the worst mistakes that I made down the line. If I had confronted my doubts then, I would have seen my relationship with God grow and flourish rather than take a back seat as it did in my later teen years.
I believe many of you might be in the same situation I was in as a teenager, and I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to be afraid of it anymore. I want to conquer these doubts with you. God did not give us a spirit of fear but rather a spirit of love, peace, and a sound mind. God offers you a sound mind. I’m here to help you confront the feelings of doubt. Are you afraid the God you’ve spent years of your life serving doesn’t exist? Are you afraid that maybe you’ve been following the wrong God? Or maybe you’re scared the Bible is just a made-up book? If any of this sounds familiar, I want you to know you are not alone, and holding back is just going to push a divider even further between you and God. Get in touch now, and let’s start searching for truth together.