Spiritual Depression Pt. 11: The Waves

Okay, we're up to part 11 in our series on spiritual depression using the book by the same name by Dr.

Martin Lloyd -Jones, and tonight's lesson is very similar to the lesson last week and it's in a related area.

So we'll start by reading the scripture, that's the basis for the teaching tonight.

Matthew 14, immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side while he sent the crowds away.

Just to put the context, remember this is right after he had fed the 5 ,000 people and this is what happens afterwards.

After he had sent the crowds away, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray and when it was evening he was there alone.

But the boat was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves for the wind was contrary.

And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said, it is a ghost and they cried out in fear.

But immediately Jesus spoke to them saying, take courage, it is I, do not be afraid.

Peter said to him, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. And he said, come.

And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened and beginning to sink, he cried out,

Lord, save me. Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of him and said to him, you of little faith, why did you doubt?

All right, that's the basis, so I have a couple of quotations from the good doctor here at the very beginning just to set the stage for what we're going to look at.

This incident, which we are going to consider next, has many features in common with that in our last study in the eighth chapter of the gospel according to Luke.

The main point being that this incident, exactly like the other, concentrates attention on the nature and the character of faith and the importance of having a right view of it.

But of course it does so in a slightly different manner. There, the major trouble we saw to be the failure to realize that faith is an activity, something that must be applied.

Where is your faith? The disciples had it, but they were not focusing it upon their particular problem.

Here as we shall see, while in general we are still considering the question of the true character of faith, it is from a somewhat different aspect.

And you'll see that this is true, this is just setting up the first thing.

The first thing we notice here is the person, the personality, if you like, of our blessed Lord. I'm just going to pause there for a second.

There is the key, we're going to examine this a little bit further, but that is really the key to this whole subject of faith, okay?

And it is what is missed especially in the Word of Faith churches. Word of Faith churches tell you you have to have faith in faith.

And that every, you know, and it's the object of our faith that is really important, okay?

So, the first thing we notice here is the person, the personality, if you like, of our blessed

Lord. Here once more, He stands out in all the fullness of His Godhead and of His unique deity.

We see Him, Himself, walking upon the waves, though they were stormy and turbulent.

And we see Him likewise enabling His servant, the Apostle, to do the same. We again see

Him commanding and controlling the elements. We are bound to start with this because we cannot begin to consider the question of faith, nor can we have a true understanding of faith if we are not clear about Him.

Just keep these thoughts in mind because this really sets up the whole teaching. We are not talking about any sort of faith.

We are talking about the Christian faith. And the essential preliminary to any consideration of that is to be clear about the person of our blessed

Lord, okay? And again, this is crucial to understand.

What we're going to be looking at tonight is the character of faith.

You'll see that's going to be the essence of it. There is no Christian message apart from that which starts by saying that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten

Son of God. That He is the Lord of glory, the Lord Jesus Christ, and here you see

Him standing out in this effluence of His glory, the Master of the universe, the

Lord of the elements. All right, now just let's pause there. That's the last set of quotations for a while.

But they're important quotations, all right? Just remember, what we're talking about here in this whole incident, and we're going to be looking specifically at Peter, of course, because he's the main actor apart from our

Lord, but you always have to keep in the back of your mind the focus here is on Christ.

Without Christ, there is no faith, okay? And we'll keep looking at that.

But the important fact, this important fact influences the subject of faith which we're examining tonight, and that is, who is

Jesus Christ? The object of our faith is what is absolutely crucial because if Jesus wasn't the

Lord of the universe, the living God, there's no way

He could have walked on the water, nor bid Peter to come and walk on the water also, okay?

But Peter is the main actor that we're going to be looking at from our perspective, looking at it from keeping us from spiritual depression.

And understand that Peter starts out well. Peter's the one who says, he says, is it you,

Lord? And if it is you, all right, tell me to come and walk, all right?

And I always say this, too, because I'm not a Peter basher, all right?

Peter is one of my heroes, and I hear him called, oh, he's the impetuous one,

Peter has foot and mouth disease, I've heard so many sermons where people talk like that. And my answer to that is very simple, really, is that what you think of Peter?

When did you walk on water? So don't go telling me how bad

Peter is, he walked on water, all right? So he starts out very well, but he winds up in trouble.

You know the story, the disciples are struggling in the boat, the wind comes up, and we need to understand the

Sea of Galilee, I don't know if you've ever heard this before, but the

Sea of Galilee is a very unique sea. You have the mountains to the north of it, and then you have the

Mediterranean Sea, you know, across the plain of Israel, all right?

And then just the whole configuration of the geography, storms, very turbulent storms come up very quickly on that sea, okay?

And because it's small, you know, and big fishing ports around the sea, the fishermen there know that, and so they're very careful.

But very often they would get stuck because the weather changes just like that. And remember, a bunch of the disciples were fishermen,

Peter included, okay? Peter, Andrew, James, John, were all fishermen.

So the wind's against them, and they're not gaining any headway, and Jesus perceives this, and so he comes to them walking on the water.

I've tried to picture this in my head. There's big waves, I mean, this storm, it's a wind, rain, you know, and here comes

Jesus just walking out for a stroll, walking on the water, all right? And the disciples are terrified, so much so that they think it's a ghost, they think it's some sort of apparition, okay?

So Jesus identifies himself to them, don't be afraid, and as soon as that happens, that's when

Peter makes his request, you know, if it is you, tell me to come to you. And Jesus says, come.

Now Peter gets out of the boat, walks towards Jesus, he too now is walking on the water, but then what happens?

He looks at the wind, looks at the waves, and he became frightened, starts to sink and cries out to the

Lord to save him, which of course the Lord does and brings him back into the boat.

Then Jesus calms the storm once again, not the first time he's done that. Now of interest to us tonight,

I just wanted to run through the facts just so that we have them all in our minds. Of interest to us tonight are the words of Jesus to Peter.

This is the basis of our study, you of little faith, why did you doubt?

Little bit different than the other incident where he says, where is your faith, all right?

And keep that in mind as well. Now, the first reason, notice we talk about temperament, the first reason that Peter got into trouble was his temperament.

Now do you remember when we went through first or second session in this study and we were talking about one of the reasons for spiritual depression, a general reason was temperament?

In other words, some people just by their personality and their temperament have a tendency to go into depression.

I mean, other people have different temperaments. Some have temperament where they get angry more quickly than other people.

So there's just different temperaments. And remember what we said too, that salvation doesn't change that.

Salvation doesn't change the makeup, the way God created you, all right?

What he does is he gives you the ability to control your temperament so that it doesn't lead you into sin.

That's the difference. That's what we call mortifying the flesh, the process of sanctification.

I mean, it wouldn't be nice that if you were saved and didn't have any problems any longer with your flesh.

But that's not the message of Scripture. We're new creations that gives us the ability to handle life, all right?

But there's still something that we must do. Now we addressed this before but it bears repeating that salvation doesn't change your personality.

We maintain most of the characteristics but now have the ability to overcome sinful tendencies. Martin Lloyd -Jones refers to Peter as energetic.

And I like the way he phrases it, you know, instead of saying impetuous and what not, he calls him energetic.

And he says, and he uses a number of examples for Peter. Peter's the one who runs right past John, goes into the tomb.

Peter's the one who says, if everybody else betrays you, I won't. I'll stand here with you. Peter's always the first one not afraid to stand up and to say what's on his mind, all right?

And to take action. He wasn't just somebody who said things.

He was a doer. He took action. He's the one who cut off the slave's ear, okay?

So he was a doer. It wasn't just, you know, bravado. I mean, he actually did it.

And Jones goes into, Lloyd -Jones says, we need to thank

God for people like this because they're the ones who get most things done. There's a lot of people who can tell you how things should be done.

Should be doing it this way, but they never do it. Guys like Peter are the ones who aren't afraid to stand out and fail and make mistakes, you know?

And so he shows how important, you know, people like Peter are.

He was quick to make judgments, quick to act upon them. And those are not necessarily bad qualities.

But just like everything else that needs to be put into check with our sanctification. But they also have their own set of pitfalls, and that's what we see in the

Scripture. One of the things we love about the Scripture is it shows its heroes, warts and all.

You know, if you go back through, what hero of Scripture do we find nothing, you know, wrong that they did?

No, all of them, huh? Yeah, Joseph is possibly the only one because I've searched for it in Joseph.

And I couldn't find it. So that's not to say he was perfect, but it just was.

But he's the only one I think that's not, doesn't have something recorded. All the other heroes, they all did something wrong, which again,

I'm glad is in there. Sometimes they act before they've thought things through.

And this is very typical of this type of personality that Peter has, is, you know, he doesn't necessarily think things through.

He sees something, he wants to do it, and he just goes to do it and doesn't necessarily think it all the way through, okay?

And we know people like this, right? I mean, have we ever done that ourselves?

Peter had the faith that Jesus was able to allow him to walk on water. Now notice,

Peter was a man of faith. Don't think, don't say that Peter had no faith. That's not what

Jesus says. Jesus says what? Little faith. So it says that he had faith.

And he had enough faith. He's the only one who says, I'm going to walk on water. You don't see the other 11 saying, yeah, us too, right?

So he was able to walk on water. So he was, in fact, a man of faith.

He didn't understand where the faith would take him, however. He looks at the sea.

Once he's out of the boat, remember, he's out of the boat. He looks at the sea, and then he realizes, and you can just picture what's going on, what did

I do, right? Have you ever been there? What did

I do? And his faith away.

See, it's at this point, this is where his faith wavers. The second point is that Peter's situation produced doubts.

When his faith took him out of the boat, he looks around now, and all of a sudden, he sees he's beginning to have doubts.

I can't do this. All right? The doubts came from himself, however.

Now, this is an important point. From the time Jesus walks in the water, gets to the boat, and Peter says, bid me to come, all right, and Jesus has come, and he gets out of the boat, and starts walking towards Jesus, what changed?

What of the circumstances changed? Absolutely right.

Nothing changed. The wind was blowing before he stepped out. The waves were high. Everything was exactly the same.

He sees that, still gets out of the boat, but then all of a sudden, what happens?

Now that he's in the midst of it, he turns around, and he looks around, and he sees the wind, he sees the seas, and then he panics, and he begins to have doubts.

Even though the Lord had told him to come, he has doubts, all right?

But he put himself in the position to be outside the boat, so there's a little lesson here. Not the main lesson, but a little aside.

Be careful. In fact, it's one thing to proclaim faith from a position of safety, but quite another when the bullets start to fly, okay?

I've, as you know, you know, I was a police officer, and I was in, because of the type of job that I had, my position being with, it was not unusual that guns were fired.

I know there's a lot of cops, they go through the whole career, never fire their gun and all, I can't say that.

I fired mine numerous times, and was shot at besides. It's interesting to see how many guys who walk around in the squad room with their guns strapped on, with all the bravado, just like Clint Eastwood, go ahead, make my day, and then see them when the bullets start to fly.

And who's heading under the desk? Or behind, or the first one to hit behind the tree?

And it's not always who you think, you know? And we could see that all of a sudden, when the bullets start to fly, the true character comes out, okay?

So, anyway, the little aside lesson that I want to talk about here, just for a second, is be careful the position that you put yourself in, all right?

And make sure that you're not putting yourself into a position that you're not equipped to handle, all right?

What I mean by that is, for example, if you know nothing about Mormonism, don't sign up to get in a debate with Mormons, you follow?

If you're not a scientist, don't try to debate a scientist on evolution, you know?

Because you're not even going to understand the position he's coming from, and they can wrap you up very quickly and make you look very, very foolish.

So, in fact, I mentioned Clint Eastwood, there's another, I'll give you one of my favorite quotes from him.

A man's got to know his limitations. That's second only to go ahead, make my day.

All right. So it's one thing to proclaim faith from a position of safety, but quite another when the bullets start to fly.

Because we need to understand that Christian faith is not blind faith, but a reasoned faith.

All right? We are never called to blindly accept anything.

In the scriptures, Jesus says that he has given us reasons. He says, even if you don't believe me because of what

I say, believe me because of the works that I do. And he gives us reasons to believe.

I mean, he doesn't have to, but he does. And so we need to understand. Blind faith is something that you'll find with cults and things like that, but not the

Christian faith. So be careful not to put yourself in a situation you are not prepared for.

Another important point, doubts are not incompatible with faith. Okay?

Because it is by its very nature, faith is what? The evidence of things hoped for.

Right? What's the verse? I just lost the verse. It's in Hebrews.

The conviction of things not seen. That's what I lost. Good. All right? So you're dealing, faith by its very nature, there's going to be a certain amount of doubts.

And we see that because we know Peter had faith. And what does Jesus say?

You have little faith. Why did you doubt? Doesn't say you killed your faith by doubting or you had no faith.

He doesn't say that. He said you have little faith. That's the problem. All right?

Peter had enough faith to get out of the boat. And Jesus called that little faith.

We don't want to start comparing faith, do we? If getting out of the boat into the midst of a storm with little faith, what is our faith?

We have to be careful. But then he began to have doubts. What is important is not that you have no doubts, but to be controlled by your doubts.

Peter allowed his doubts to override his faith. And that's why he began to sink.

Okay? So the Christian faith is not a blind faith, but a reasoned faith. We said that before. Oh, I did it again.

If doubts control you, then that's a sign of weak faith. If your doubts cause you to freeze and not to act, that's a sign that you have weak faith.

Now, remember, Peter had enough faith to get out of the boat and enough faith to walk on water. But his doubts took control of him, and that's when he began to sink.

That is the sign of weak faith. You of little faith.

Why did you doubt? So now let's start talking. That's the situation.

Those are the things we can learn from that. Let's look at the remedy. Remedy for little faith is develop great faith.

How do we do that? That's it. That's it. Let's close. We'll close in prayer.

That's the answer. Okay, but how do we do that?

Well, you need to examine the characteristics of what is great faith. Remember from our lesson from last week, what is faith?

Faith is something that needs to be acted upon. Great faith begins with the knowledge of the truth.

And what is the main truth that we have to consider ourselves? Remember how we opened the session tonight.

The person and the work of Jesus Christ. That's the basis for the whole thing.

You want to have great faith, you have to have the knowledge of the truth. The truth starts and begins with the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

That is the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and his power. If you're not studying, if you're not exercising the faith, it's just like a muscle that's going to atrophy and you're going to have doubts.

A weak muscle is like doubts. When Peter realized it wasn't a ghost walking on the water, he requested

Jesus to tell him to come to him. And showing some faith,

Peter did. He believed that Jesus had the power to accomplish this.

So again, at this point, Peter's doing well. But his doubts overcame his faith and he began to sink.

So Peter was not yet a man of great faith. He would become a man of great faith.

Great faith begins with the knowledge of the truth and must continue in that knowledge.

Great faith continues and overcomes doubts. Remember what

Martyn Lloyd -Jones said a couple of quotations at the beginning. You can't even begin to discuss the subject of faith without looking at the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

That's at the beginning. What's the middle of great faith? The person and work of Jesus Christ.

What's the end of great faith? The person and the work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the object of our faith and that's where we have to place our faith.

And he gives us every reason to put our faith into him, which leads to the second characteristic of great faith.

Great faith overcomes second thoughts. And I love, if you read the book,

I love the way Martyn Lloyd -Jones says this. He said, Peter, when he was in the boat and saw

Jesus, he recognized, he says, Jesus is walking on water. He can cause me to walk on water.

He says, tell me, tell me to do that and I'll do it. Jesus said, come, and he did it. And he says, but that's where he made the mistake.

Once again, I started having second thoughts. He says, don't do that. He says, you already worked through that.

You know what the truth is. The truth is that Jesus can cause you to walk on water. So that's where his mistake went, controlled by the doubts.

Instead of saying, wait, no, I've already worked through this. Okay, how often do we do that?

We know what the scripture says, we know what we should do, but then we start to have second thoughts. Yeah, but if I do that, then this might happen.

No, once you have worked through it and you know the biblical answer, stick to it. Don't have those second thoughts, those doubts.

That's a hindrance to faith. Remember, nothing around him changed when

Peter left the boat. It wasn't that some new thing had come in. It's not like he got out on calm seas and then the wind came up.

Nothing had changed in the situation. The change was all in his perception. And he started rethinking.

And great faith doesn't rethink. So the change came from within himself.

Remember now, we're taking this whole lesson and bringing it into the context of spiritual depression.

Most spiritual depression comes from within. Another quotation from the good doctor.

So the next time we are tempted, let us remember this man, Peter, who should never have looked at the waves at all.

Why not? For this reason, that he had already settled the question before he went out of the boat. That is always the trouble with weak faith.

It comes back again to questions which it has already solved and answered.

How many Christians do you know get into trouble because they start second -guessing? Okay? Now the next characteristic of great faith is that it persists steadily looking to Jesus Christ.

Again, it begins with faith in Jesus Christ and it persists looking at Jesus, which means it perseveres all the way to the end.

That's the difference between great faith and weak faith. Weak faith will get you started.

Great faith carries you all the way to the end. Philippians 1 .6, just one verse.

There's many. For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

There was no way, think about this, there was no way Jesus was going to let Peter sink once he told him to come.

Just think about it. Peter's thinking, I'm going to die. All right?

Jesus is right there. And think of all the promises that he had given to the disciples.

Remember just, remember last week's? Master, we perish. All right?

Jesus is in the boat. No way they were going to, he was going to let them die, let alone himself.

Peter knew that, so he called out to Jesus to save him. Notice, Peter's wavering. What does he do?

He starts to sink. Save me. And of course, Jesus does. You cannot live on an initial faith.

That is what Peter seems to have been trying to do. He started off with a great faith, then instead of going on with faith, he tries to live on it.

You cannot live on an initial faith. Do not try to live on your conversion. You will be done before you know where you are.

You cannot live on one climactic experience. You must keep on looking to him every day.

The Christian life is one of constant growth. We have to constantly be growing.

If you're, there's no such thing as idling. You know?

If you're idling, the stream is going to carry you downriver. Because we're not in a static universe here.

The whole world wants to carry us to damnation. And if you're idling, you're going to be carried away.

I remember I was sitting with a good pastor friend of mine. His name was Steve Martin. And he's actually funnier than the other

Steve Martin. And in fact, up until this year, he was the dean of the seminary.

And we were sitting in a sermon at a pastor's conference, and the pastor was going over this very point that there's no such thing as idling and whatnot.

So he leans over, and right in the middle of the class he says, Well, there goes the title of my new book.

What is that? He's coasting for Christ. Of course, you don't need that in the middle of a class.

The problem of weak faith is one of the major causes of spiritual depression. I mean, this is simply it.

The whole book is on spiritual depression, but here is one of the major causes.

Weak faith. We second -guess ourselves. We have doubts.

And that's where the weak faith comes in, and that's where you can start being depressed. Too many

Christians suffer from weak faith. Why? Because they're not exercising it. If you want to be a great athlete, you have to exercise.

You've got to practice your drills. If you want to be a great Christian, you've got to exercise your faith.

It's not going to happen automatically. It's not by osmosis. I mean, it wouldn't be great if you could go to sleep at night, put your

Bible under your pillow, lay down, put your head on it, and by osmosis, all the great truths are going to go in.

It doesn't work that way. You have to study. The remedy is simple.

Get great faith. How? By exercising the gift of faith He has given to you every day.

Remember, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you have faith. It's a gift from God, but you have to exercise it and grow in grace and grow in faith.

I'd like to end with one of his conclusions, and this is another good one. He says,

I must end by saying that, in a sense, the great lesson of the whole incident is that He can keep us from falling.

We will never need to cry out like that if only we keep on looking at Him. Believing in Him, we shall never fall but keep straight on.

If Peter had looked at Him, he would have gone on walking on the sea. He would never have become distressed.

He is so great. He is the Lord of the universe. He cannot only walk on the sea

Himself. He can enable Peter to walk on the sea. Nothing is impossible to Him.

All things are possible with God, and He is God. Questions?

Yes, Ted. It's like Blondin crossing the Niagara Falls on a kite rope with a wheelbarrow.

And he did it in different ways several times, but then he came back and said, well, to the crowd, do you believe

I can walk across the Niagara Falls on this rope with a wheelbarrow?

Oh, yes, yes, yes. Which one of you will get in the wheelbarrow?

And there wasn't so many takers. In fact, if I'm not sure, I think there was no takers.

You're right. Yes. The encouraging thing to me about this is that Peter was called as an apostle well before this.

He sat with Jesus. He was taught by Jesus. He saw Jesus perform miracles. He saw all these things, and yet still his faith wavered.

So it encourages me because I haven't been with Jesus like that, and there are times when my faith wavers, but we're in process.

This is a building process. Along those same lines, just to follow through with that, we see

Peter speaking in Acts, right? How powerful. Yeah.

But then even remember, Peter even wavered a couple times, at least once after that where Paul had to rebuke him.

His faith wavered a little bit. So even the apostles weren't perfect.

Only when they wrote scripture. Yes. What if the issue is that you don't recognize truth?

Like you recognize truths, you recognize the truth, but then you know how there's...

When I say truth, like the truth, I'm talking about you're a believer in the gospel, but then there are parts in the

Bible that you don't necessarily understand completely, so then you doubt what you're reading in terms of you're uncertain if you're interpreting it correctly.

So then that being the cause of your doubt, being like, oh, I'm uncertain about it.

Yes. That's where you come to somebody, either an elder or an older person who's grounded in the faith who can explain some of those parts to you because there's no question.

Look, even Peter, writing in his epistle, says, you know, the

Apostle Paul, he's written some things that are hard to understand. So, I mean, Peter recognizes that, all right?

But the point is, and you may, in this life, you're never going to understand everything in the scriptures, okay?

But you need to study. If something is bothering you, all right, then you need to reconcile that.

Otherwise, you're not going to… It will affect your faith if you start to have doubts. Yes. John the

Baptist had doubts. Yes, he did. He was in prison, but, you know, any…

Are you the one? Are you the one? But there's two ways to doubt. You can doubt toward faith or you can doubt away from faith.

As a Christian with faith, knowing who Jesus is, we may not understand something, but when we doubt, we doubt towards a biblical understanding of it versus being doubted away from it.

Like some people are pulled away because they don't truly have faith. But when you do and you know who

Jesus is, you may misunderstand something, you may not fully comprehend it, you may doubt it, but you're moving towards it.

Bob? I think you're apprehending it. I just don't get the moving towards.

In other words, you're moving towards understanding what it truly means.

You may not comprehend it right now, but you're seeking an answer because you know that the

Scriptures are true. You know who Jesus is. You know God exists. You know the Spirit lives inside of you.

You have faith, so you don't doubt away from the faith.

That makes sense. You're doubting towards it. John the Baptist wasn't like, oh no, is this a hoax?

Yeah. He wanted to know, okay, are you the one? Give me something I can hold onto. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yes, Terry. I was just thinking extreme circumstances often put us into that mindset because we look at things with human eyes and we're not looking at them, if you will, with the spiritual eyes.

And we allow, just like Peter, he looked around, right?

As was said, he took his eyes off Christ and his circumstances were such that he looked at them from a human perspective rather than the faith that God had put in him.

Yeah, and what we really need to come to grips with is your view of Scripture.

And that's, I mean, your epistemology is extremely important because it's the Bible that sets what your worldview is.

I remember years ago a friend of mine, a devout

Christian, and somebody came to him and said, they wound up talking about Jonah, and they used a whale.

It doesn't say whale, but they said Jonah and the whale. And this guy said to him, he says, do you really believe that, that Jonah was swallowed by a whale?

And my friend says, if the Bible said Jonah swallowed the whale,

I'd believe it. And that's,

I mean, obviously, I mean, he was tongue in cheek, but he really meant that.

His point was that he doesn't have to understand how the

Bible, you know, how an event in the Bible would work, but as long as the

Bible said it, that's what he would believe. And let's go right back to the incident before us that we studied tonight.

What's the scientific criteria that allowed Peter to walk on the water? Don't know, but that doesn't mean that he didn't, you know, because we don't necessarily, because we can't reconcile it to the science that we know.

OK, and there's a lot of things just like that in Scripture. How did Jesus feed 5 ,000 people with a couple of fish and loaves of bread?

How did he do that? How did it happen? You know, did he overcome the laws of nature and all?

Or, I don't know. Any other questions?

But the big thing is, where is your faith? Do you believe the

Bible is the inspired word of God and that everything that's written in it is truth? And if you do, then it's

OK to not understand something. There's still a lot of things in Scripture I don't understand, but that doesn't prevent me from believing them.

The train. Yeah. Yes. Do you think that God ever gives us doubt for a reason?

I don't think he gives us doubt, but he could very well allow you to have doubts for a reason.

But the command is, don't doubt. In fact, remember what

James says, the person who doubts is a double -minded man, caused by the wind, and don't let that man expect anything.

Don't ever go to prayers with doubting. You're wasting your breath. Yes. No, go ahead.

Merciful to those who doubt. So I don't understand that people are not just full of faith that way.

It takes time to exercise the faith, and it grows over time. I was going to say, and this is specifically talking about doubting

God. Like, you're not applying it to any other type of doubt, basically.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of things that I doubt. I doubt I'm going to get up at 5 o 'clock tomorrow morning.

I'll do everything I can not to. See, I'm not a morning person. You don't want to see me at 5 o 'clock in the morning.

I would love to see a sunrise, but I believe that if God intended me to see a sunrise, he'd make it about noon.

Okay. Okay.