Doubting God: When Nothing Makes Sense

Selected Scripture

Connect:

• Share how you have seen God in the Highs and Lows of your week.

Prayer:

Pray that God would lead your discussion time and bring fresh insight, conviction, and hope through your time together.

Review:

This series, Doubting God, looks at the many questions that we all have about God and His ways. Our doubts are an invitation to a deeper faith grounded in God’s revelation of Himself. This week we had an interview with John Woodall who faced severe tragedy in his family after a lifetime of service in ministry, hearing how he navigated this season…

The Grand Tour of the message: Thinking back on what you heard this Sunday…

o What did you learn about God?

o What did you learn about people?

o What did you learn about yourself?

o What do you want to commit to putting into practice?

Reflection:

Personal Experience:

• Option 1: Talk about what happened when John came to Mike & Patti Shaffer’s door with “…no faith, no hope, no love…”. What did “I believe” mean to John in that moment?

• Option 2: Thinking back to the story of Job in Scripture, some say this is an allegory and some say it is a poetic rendition of a historical person… either way, it deals with severe loss and suffering. When you think about Job, what do you see as the point of the narrative here?

  Group Discussion:

  1. Faith in Jesus is what makes the difference between salvation and damnation (John 3:14-18), so it’s critical we understand what we are talking about here. Let’s dig into that:

     1. What is faith? (Gen 15:6, John 1:11-13, 14:26; 1 Cor 12:3; Heb 11:1-7; Rom 5:1, 8:16, 10:17; Eph 2:8,9)

     2. What is the difference between our faith in God and our understanding about God? (Heb 11:1, 2 Cor 5:7, Prov 3:5-6, Is 55:8-9 Rom 11:34, 1 Cor 13:12, Jer 9:23-24, Hab 3:17,18)

     3. Let’s pull this together. In 2 sentences or less, summarize how faith keeps us grounded in what is true of God and His relationship to us.

  2. John shared that we have 5 options what we are trying to figure out what we are going to do when life does not make sense. Using the Scriptures we just read, consider each of these options:

     1. Fight it

     2. Flight it

     3. Fright it

     4. Fake it

     5. Faith it

  3. There are times when our own ability to ‘make ourselves believe something is true’ is simply not enough— life is too painful, things matter too much, and we just can’t get there. We must believe and we cannot make ourselves believe. Under those conditions…

     1. What is the difference between Spirit-inspired faith in God and our own knowledge about God?

     2. What is the difference between abiding in Him and studying about Him?

Application: 

At the end of the day, God answers our questions not with data but with a revelation of Himself to us, through His Word and by His Spirit… At that point we must choose between our own plans and His, our own purposes and His, our own pleasure and His. In which one of these will we choose to find rest and take joy today?

Prayer:

Spend some time in prayer entrusting ourselves to God’s purposes for His glory this week.

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