Navigating Doubt as a LeaderSample

In Psalm 73, Asaph prays to God about his crisis of faith. Like all the Psalms, his prayer can help guide our prayers.

Let’s walk through Psalm 73 and consider what that would look like. What would it sound like to take our own doubt—the things we struggle to believe—and talk to God about it?

The first two things we see Asaph do are name the doubt and defend the doubt.

In verses 1-3, he names why he is doubting: "I have heard that God is good to Israel" (v. 1), "I see and envy the prosperity of the wicked" (v. 3), and because of the gap between verses 1 and 3, verse 2 says, "I am slipping. I almost stumbled." That language is doubt language—faith crisis language.

What would it sound like if you wrote your own verses? In a moment or a season of doubt, what would it sound like to name that to God in prayer?

Maybe it would be…

“God says He is in control but my life feels really out of control and I am having a hard time seeing a sovereign God in my unstable life.”

“God says He is good, but life has not been good and I am having a hard time experiencing the goodness of God in the pain of my life.”

At times, it has looked like this for me: I am driving to church on a Sunday, and I am about to preach a sermon about the love of God, and all I can think about is my own sin, frailty, and failure…

“God says I am loved by him in Christ, but I know me, and I know my thoughts and failures, and there is no way God can know what I know about me and love me still.”

What would it sound like to name our doubt to God?

The second thing we see Asaph do is surprising to me: he defends his doubt.

I kind of expect him to rush from verse 3 to verse 16 — to give a quick response to his struggle, saying something like, “Yes I am having a hard time but God is good.” He gets there, but not quickly. Verses 4-15 (almost half of the prayer) is Asaph telling God why he thinks he has good reason to doubt the way he does. He says things like:

They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. (v. 5)

Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. (v. 12)

There is something really important to pay attention to here: Asaph was a worship leader in the temple. He led worship services for God’s people in God’s presence. He had a front-row seat to the work of God — the reality of God. He likely saw lives changed in the presence of God. He had been given gifts by God to use for God. Surely, he had really high spiritual highs — times when he was filled with faith and courage.

Yet he also faced doubt so crippling that when he talked to God, he said, “It almost took me out. I almost fell of the path. I almost quit my job, left the temple, broke my covenant, and abandoned my people.”

I think there can be an assumption that doubt is something immature Christians struggle with…or new Christians…or that doubt means someone’s faith is weak or insincere. This is just not true.

Asaph wrote part of the Bible! None of us have done that, and none of us should try. He led in the temple — the very place where heaven and earth touched…and doubt was part of his life. When he prayed about it, he was honest with God — honest enough to defend that doubt.

Asaph must have believed God was big enough to handle that kind of honest prayer.

We are invited to do the same. If we don’t lay it all out like this, it will feel like we are keeping our doubt from God, which will only make us feel further from Him, not closer to Him. It’s not like God doesn’t already know what’s in our hearts. If temple-worshipping Bible-writers can be honest like this with God, so can we.

What would that sound like for you?

“God I have lost in ways that you could have protected me from…”

“God I have sinned in ways that should keep me from you…”

“God it seems like this life is easier for people who don’t follow you…”

Name the doubt and then, in honest faith, defend it to God.

This is not where the prayer ends, but it is where it starts.