Doubt – All Age Worship
Sometimes we doubt about God:
- whether he is good
- what he wants for our lives
- whether he actually exists
we think that we don’t really KNOW
But how do we know anything?
Who can tell me what this is (a model aircraft)?
Who has flown on an aircraft?
Who can tell me the principles of flight?
Weight, Lift, Thrust, and Drag
and yet you have flown on aircraft; how did you know it would fly?
Most of what we know is learned from others – school, parents, friends, TV etc or experienced for ourselves. But do we believe everything that we hear?
Sometimes we don’t trust others. Thomas in our reading is an example of this. He did not meet the risen Jesus and so says unless I touch Jesus’ wounds I won’t believe. Mind you he would not have believed it if we turned up at the time and said that we had got there at 30,000 feet in a long metal tube.
Our knowledge depends much more on: what people who we trust tell us and on our own experience.
Its the same with getting to know God: the more we get used to hearing his voice and trusting him doing what he says and seeing him act in our lives, the greater our faith gets and the less our doubt gets.
How does God guide us?
Five CSs….
Commanding Scripture – in the Bible
Counsel of the Saints – not alone – with other Christians
Compelling Spirit – prompting in our minds from left field
Circumstantial Signs extraordinary coincidences give you a sense that something is meant
Common Sense – reason
This is how we hear him. As we learn to hear him and follow how he guides us and notice what he does for us, we gain confidence in him, we get to know him.
But we have to listen very carefully and weigh what to do, and its not easy. But the more we do it, the better we get at it.
This is why in the Bible the Prophets and the Psalmists were always reminding the Israelites what God had done for them, to deal with their doubt.
Now just going to play a game called ‘Listen to God’!
Firstly Matthew and Jessica are going to share a packet of Malteasers at the end…..
Matthew is going to be blindfolded then instructed by Jessica to walk down the aisle, where there will be a series of obstacles which she has to guide him round – not touching him just by word of mouth – go left go right etc. If he touches a pew or one of the objects a whistle will be blown and they lose a malteaser.
So he has to listen very carefully to her instructions!
Everyone else needs to be really quiet!
Lets see how they get on!
On the way back everyone can shout out false directions as he learns to go much faster listening to Jessica.
So to recap, if we:
Listen to God’s word
Act in accordance with it
Notice how God acts
We will reduce our doubt.