I’m glad you found this blog! This entry is the first in a limited series for those who are exploring Christianity, and for believers who are experiencing doubt.
Trinity Radio & The One Life Network have partnered together to produce this resource. Each entry will include a pastoral presentation from Bret Nicholson, as well as resources from the Trinity Radio podcast. We want to encourage you to treat this as devotional material. Open yourself up to it, and get used to making it part of your daily routine, at least until you finish the series. If you don’t yet believe, this is a way you can explore some of the experiential side of how Christians often function. For Christians, this can get you back in the habit of focusing on God each day.
STEP ONE:
You might not be a believer yet, but regardless of where you stand, I would encourage a time of prayerful preparation. Before I read the Bible devotionally, or listen to a sermon, I ask God to bring to my mind anything in my life that is not right. I thank God for bringing what Christians call conviction about those sins. I deal with God about those issues first. Then I ask God to help me clearly understand what He is trying to communicate through His word, or perhaps through the messenger.
This is my personal practice, but I’ve found it very helpful, and biblically consistent. Why don’t you take a moment and do the same before moving on to step two?
STEP TWO:
Put everything else out of your mind so that you can take in what Bret has to say in this clip. As you listen, think about your own life. Where do you place yourself on the spectrum of belief? How much weight is on each side of the scale that Bret mentions? Try not to passively take in the content, but actively personalize it to your situation.
STEP THREE:
Reflect on what you just heard. Faith is a spectrum on which you can move up or down. Moving up or down on this spectrum is contingent on having more "weight" on either the belief side of the scale or the doubt side of the scale.
Did Jesus raise from the dead?
Ask yourself:
What is faith?
What are we being asked to believe?
How do we move from doubt to belief?
Why should we believe what is to be believed?
Faith is knowledge, agreement, and commitment. A follower of Jesus is asked to know, agree with, and commit to the content that Jesus died, was buried, raised from the dead, and was seen by others.
STEP FOUR:
Watch this brief video from Braxton, and consider the freedom/peace that finally COMMITTING to Jesus can actually bring.
HINT: it’s probably not what you think.
STEP FIVE:
Let’s bring this all together:
Believe it or not, when one finally commits to God, which may well be on the basis of evidence, one often finds freedom and stability. It may be that you are a Christian, and you have already committed, in the official sense, but consider the notion of commitment in terms of one’s relationships with family.
I don’t spend a lot of time worrying that I might have the wrong brother, mother or father. I’ve accepted that reality. I’m committed to it. But more to the point, that’s also how I and many Christians view the covenant commitment of marriage (barring, of course, extreme circumstances). Many Christians deal with doubt, in part, because even though they have committed in some official sense, they have not committed in a settled sense.
Christians can easily grant that if someone demonstrates that God does not exist or that Jesus, likely, did not rise from the dead, we would have to drop our faith - just as there are extreme cases that could change my faith in my wife. But I really don’t spend much time considering those possibilities with my wife. I have no good reason to expend energy, and experience deep anxiety about that unlikely possibility, or what it might mean for my life. Practically speaking, it’s been settled. The same is true for my faith in God.
Our hope for you, is that you will begin to lean back onto the rope, and trust that God IS, that God HAS YOU, and that God WILL DO what He said He will do for you in the future. That rope represents the good reasons we have to believe Christianity is true. Your placing your weight on it is faith!
STEP SIX:
Now, just to “nutshell” everything we’ve said, listen to this brief summation from Bret, before closing in prayer, asking God to remind you of these things as you attempt to apply them in your life.