If You Do, Don’t

If you are tempted to doubt God—to dismiss, ignore, or abandon God—for seemingly dismissing, ignoring, or abandoning you, don’t do it. Here’s why.

Jeremiah was commanded by God to deliver to the kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem a message of impending disaster, ruin, and devastation for having forsaken God for foreign gods. When the priest in charge of the temple of the Lord heard Jeremiah prophesying these things he had Jeremiah beaten and put in the stocks. Jeremiah then complained to the Lord that he was insulted and reproached. He heard whisperings denouncing him, and his friends hoping that they would prevail over him. (Jeremiah 19-20)

In an earlier period, David, like Jeremiah, had his own lament for his relationship with God and what it subjected him to. Psalm 69 (4, 7-12) reads, 

Those who hate me without reason
outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
those who seek to destroy me.
For I endure scorn for your sake,
and shame covers my face.
I am a foreigner to my own family,
a stranger to my own mother’s children;
for zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
When I weep and fast,
I must endure scorn;
when I put on sackcloth,
people make sport of me.
Those who sit at the gate mock me,
and I am the song of the drunkards.

Both Jeremiah and David may have been tempted to doubt God, but they didn’t. Instead, Jeremiah says, “Sing to the Lord! Give praise to the Lord! (v 13) and David sings, “I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.” (v 30).

Why didn’t they doubt?

The answer is given centuries later by Paul who proclaimed this astonishing fact of the power of God’s love, a power that Jeremiah and David knew and understood:

“…in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Romans 8:37)

We are not to doubt because God’s love conquers all.