embrace doubt

Last week I heard Mike Williams say,

“Embracing doubt is more powerful than embracing belief. The freedom to doubt is the power to believe.”

About four years back I came to a place of letting go of most of my beliefs about God and religion. Because of the devastating nature of the circumstances I faced at the time, doubt just happened. It wasn‘t really a decision. I had no energy to consciously deal with the condition of my spirituality at the time.

Eventually the time came when I was ready to reconnect with God. Certainly I had never been disconnected but my perceptions were that I was far from God and He from me. My entire “belief system” had to be reconfigured. I gave myself the freedom to doubt many concepts that I had previously accepted as truths.

Mike also said,

“If we don’t embrace our doubts, we don’t truly believe anything. Walk into the arena of unbelief and embrace it.”

This is what I’ve done in the last two years... questioning anything and everything. I’ve been willing to embrace unbelief and allow myself to explore what it is that God has done and what it is that I really believe, separate from the threat of hell. The reason I accepted Christ as a teenager was to escape hell. I did not want to be separated from my friends for eternity.

Any relationship established under threat is not founded on love but fear. My foundational beliefs were based in fear. On top of that I attended churches that mixed law and grace for my entire Christian life. Because grace is nullified by the keeping of one law, I had only a concept of grace and love. Understanding the Gospel message, perhaps for the first time, has brought incredible freedom and peace to me.