Smith Wigglesworth once said: “There is nothing impossible with God. All the impossibility is with us when we measure God by the limitations of our unbelief.” What does the Bible have to say about doubt and unbelief?
James 1:5-8 talks about asking God for wisdom. It says that “if anyone lacks wisdom, he only has to ask and God will give it, freely and without reproach”. But there is a caveat: “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind”. In other words he will keep changing his mind because he does not have confidence in God. The scripture continues, “For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” Doubt makes us double-minded and stops us receiving God’s promises.
An example of someone who doubted is Zacharias, who received a visit from an angel telling him that he and his wife were about to have a baby. He found it hard to believe what the angel said because he could not see it. His objections were logical from a natural viewpoint; he and his wife were elderly and she had never been able to have children. However, those things were no obstacle to God. As a result of his doubting the angel said to Zacharias, “But behold, you will be mute and not able to speak until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their own time” (Luke 1:20). Zacharias did receive what the Lord had promised but only because His closed mouth stopped him from speaking the words of unbelief that would have aborted the miracle.
According to the dictionary, doubt is “questioning what you believe” whereas unbelief is “a determined refusal to believe”. Satan seeks to plant doubts in our minds to lead us into unbelief. He did it with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, first by subtly undermining God’s word – “Has God indeed said?” (Genesis 3:1), and then by flatly contradicting it – “You will not surely die” (v.4). Adam and Eve listened to what he said and fell into sin. Satan tried the same trick with Jesus too (Matthew 4:1-11), subtly twisting what God had said in an attempt to make Jesus doubt what He believed. However, Jesus refused to give way to doubt. He refused to consider Satan’s words and simply answered them with scripture.
Doubt and unbelief were something that Jesus frequently challenged in the people who came to listen to him, even those who were his closest followers.
For example, Jesus rebuked Peter for his doubt when he tried to walk on the water. As he began to sink Jesus grabbed hold of him but He said, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). When Peter looked at the size of the waves rather than at Jesus it caused him to doubt and lose his faith.
We see a similar chastening of all the disciples in Mark 4:40. When Jesus had calmed the wind and waves in a storm that had terrified the disciples, He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?” Again, they had been looking at the situation with natural eyes.
In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus rebuked his listeners for their lack of trust in God, which was evidenced in their worries about everyday needs such as food and clothing. Matthew 6:30 says “Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”
Matthew 13:58 tells us that when Jesus was his hometown of Nazareth, “He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” Whereas people in other towns saw Jesus as a miracle worker, the people of His hometown saw Him as one of themselves. To them He was the son of Joseph and Mary, the brother of men who still lived among them. They did not believe He was the Son of God and they had no expectation of miracles. Not surprisingly, not much happened there. The climate was one of unbelief.
After the disciples had been unable to heal an epileptic boy whom Jesus later healed they asked Him why they had failed. His answer was simple and to the point, “Because of your unbelief” (Matthew 17:20). He calls them a “faithless and perverse generation” because of their hardness of heart (Matthew 17:17). We can see that unbelief hinders the flow of the supernatural.
That same perversity was found in the generation of Israelites who came out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses. They saw many miraculous events, yet they still fell into unbelief very quickly. It is highlighted in Deuteronomy 32 which is a psalm written by Moses. In that scripture God is described five times as a rock, which is the epitome of stability and reliability. He proved Himself faithful to His covenant promises, steadfast and unchanging no matter what the circumstances. By contrast, faithless Israel was tossed this way and that, continually changing their minds and their allegiances. “For they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faith” (v.20). It seems that human beings are prone to doubt and unbelief, no matter what age they live in.
Even after His disciples had spent three years with Jesus He had to rebuke them for their unbelief. For example, Thomas refused to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead unless he saw it with his own eyes. When Jesus appeared to him after the resurrection, He said, “Do not be unbelieving, but believing” (John 20:27), and He went on to say, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (v.29). Thomas was stuck in a natural mindset that undermined His belief. And he was not the only one. Mark 16:14 tells us, “Later, He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen.”
Notice that unbelief is linked to hardness of heart. The disciples were thinking along natural lines (I.e. “people who have been killed stay dead”), rather than spiritual ones (“Jesus told us He would rise on the third day”). Their hearts were more sensitive to the wisdom of this world than the whispers of God’s spirit.
Many of us recognise ourselves in these people who fell into unbelief. It is all too easy for us to do the same. We tend to make excuses for it but the Bible tells us that “whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). The writer to the Hebrews warns of the sin of unbelief by using the example of the Israelites in the days of Moses:
Hebrews 3:8-12 (NKJV) “Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God…”
Hebrews 3:19 says, “So we see that they could not enter in (to the promised land) because of unbelief.”
Unbelief is displeasing to God. It is also dangerous, causing us to rebel against Him and miss out on the good things He has prepared for us.
It is easy in this godless world for our hearts to become hardened, so we have to take steps to keep them soft, sensitised to the word of God and the whisper of His spirit. Romans 10:17 says that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”. We need to keep God’s word before us, meditating on it and stirring ourselves up to lay hold of it. If we fill our minds with worldly thinking, spending more time listening to media reports, secular TV programmes and so on than we spend meditating on God’s word, our hearts will become hardened, and doubt will creep in. To stay in faith, we must put more value on God’s word than anything else we hear or think. Christians should be believers!
All references are from the NKJV unless specified otherwise.
Jill Partis
bearing-kingdom-fruit.com
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