The Benefit of Doubt: How Confronting Your Deepest Questions Can Lead to a Richer FaithSample

The Benefit of Doubt

Imagine you’re supposed to be meeting a friend for lunch, and your friend is late. You keep checking your phone for a text or call for twenty minutes. Nothing.

What do you think of your friend? It depends on which friend it is.

You may have a friend where you’d think, “This is totally believable. He’s so unreliable. Why’d I even think he’d show up?” But you have another friend where you’d think, “Wow, this is so unlike her. Maybe she’s sick? But she would have called. I hope she’s okay.”

Your response would reflect what you already believed about each person. You would be giving your typically reliable friend the benefit of the doubt.

In the Old Testament story of Job, he loses everything. He’s distraught and confused, and he understandably starts questioning God. But in the middle of unbearable pain, he holds on to his faith and declares his belief in the goodness of God. While he struggles with doubt, he gives God the benefit of the doubt.

Job has doubts, but he doesn’t allow his doubts to define God. Because he had already decided who God was, when he was hit by troubling doubts, Job could still give Him the benefit of the doubt.

How about you?

We’ve learned that it’s completely normal to have questions. Just as Job did, we should feel free to ask away. But, at the same time, we can give God the benefit of the doubt.

When Job asked questions, God showed up.

But God didn’t give Job any answers. In fact, He asked Job a bunch of questions of His own.

Why doesn’t God explain everything to Job or to us?

Perhaps God is trying to build our faith. Or, more significantly, it may be that the answers are simply beyond us—because there are some things we could never fully understand, even if God Himself were to explain them to us.

Job wanted answers. Instead, God gave him the Answer. He gave Job Himself. God showed up, and God’s presence was enough for Job. Why? Because of their relationship.

In the same way, God’s presence can be enough for you. Just as Job had to decide, so do you.

When you want to trust God, but He doesn’t seem to be doing what you think He should do, you typically make one of two choices:

1. You deny your faith.
2. You deny your questions.

With choice one, you deny your faith and stop believing in a God who didn’t come through for you in the way you thought He should. With choice two, you deny your questions. You push them down and pretend they aren’t there.

Though both options feel tempting at times, neither will lead you where you really want to go. But there’s a third option. It’s the much better, but more difficult path.

The third option is to declare, “God, I’m still going to trust You. Even if it doesn’t make sense to me. Even if I don’t like it. I’m going to give You the benefit of the doubt.”

If you continue to pursue God one day at a time, He’ll take you to a place of greater trust, stronger faith, and deeper intimacy with Him than you’ve ever seen before. When we keep asking Him our questions, we get to experience intimacy with the God who modeled a perfect sacrificial life of love, and paid the penalty for all of our sins—yours and mine.

While you’ll never have all your questions answered this side of heaven, you can be sure of one thing: You can give God the benefit of the doubt.

Learn more about Pastor Craig Groeschel’s book The Benefit of Doubt.