IDEA: Our doubts come when what we believe about God conflicts with what we see about us in life.TEXT: "But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked" (Psalm 73:2,3).

PURPOSE: To help listeners understand the source of much of our doubt.

Is doubt a serious problem to you? Has it been?

Where do doubts come from? What causes them?

Doubts come when what we believe about God doesn't seem to measure up to what we see in life. Is that really true?

I. All of us have beliefs about God.

Some of our beliefs are simply things we think we have figured out for ourselves.

We may believe that God loves us, and what we see doesn't seem to support that.

We may believe that God is down on us, doesn't like us, and thus what is happening to us confirms this but drives us away from God.

We may believe that God weighs our good deeds against our bad deeds and when things go wrong, God isn't being fair in evaluating us.

Sometimes what we believe about God is pretty accurate, but what we see happening around us makes us wonder about what we believe. Have you ever known a person who deeply disappointed you? What happened? Usually it's because something that person did was inconsistent with what that person seemed to be or say.

II. Do you think that doubt is sinful?

Sometimes doubt comes from physical and emotional causes.

Sometimes it is sinful in that we choose to doubt to cover up a sin in our lives.

Satan is the father of lies and often persuades us that God cannot be trusted, Genesis 3.

III. Doubt can be the shadow side of faith.

In the Bible we have examples of people who went through doubt only to come to a deeper understanding of who God is and what He purposes.

Asaph, in Psalm 73, comments that he almost slipped because of doubt (v. 2-3), but the psalm ends with his affirmation, "I have put my trust in the Lord God."

Church history reveals the same pattern.

Martin Luther in 1527 was paralyzed by depression and doubt: "I was close to the gates of death and hell. I trembled in all my members. Christ was wholly lost. I was shaken by desperation and blasphemy of God."

Yet he could also write: "If God hides himself in the storm clouds which brood over the brow of Sinai, then gather about the manger, look upon the infant Jesus as he leaps in the lap of his mother and know that the hope of the world is here. Or again if Christ and God seem unapproachable, then look upon the heavens and marvel at the work of God. Or take the smallest flower and see in the smallest petal the handiwork of God."

John Calvin struggled with doubt: "Since salvation is by faith alone, then not sin but doubt of which anxiety is the immediate consequence are the most terrible adversaries of every Christian, even the most faithful."

"Everyone of us knows only too well from his own experiences our difficulty in believing. . . . The saints frequently stagger from unbelief.