Have you ever had a moment where you looked up at Heaven and thought, “Okay… are You actually there?” If you have, congratulations, you’re human. And probably a Christian who has been paying attention to life and all the chaos it can bring.
Doubt can feel like the one thing Christians aren’t supposed to talk about. We’re supposed to have faith, trust God, pray confidently, and have a bible verse or two on the ready if things get tough.
But then life happens.
Someone you love gets sick. A marriage falls apart. A prayer you’ve been praying for years seems to go unanswered. You lose that dream job. You experience grief that makes absolutely no sense. Or sometimes, nothing dramatic even happens. You just wake up one morning and realize you don’t feel God the way you used to.
And suddenly you’re wondering, “What if I’ve been wrong about all of this? Is God really real?”
If you’ve ever been there, I want you to know something: doubting God does not automatically mean you have lost your faith. Sometimes doubt is actually part of what faith looks like.
What does Jesus Think about Doubters?
One of the things I love about the Bible is that it doesn’t clean everybody up before putting them on the page.
Many “doubting” people in scripture had questions. Big questions. Messy questions. Sometimes questions that made people uncomfortable, but not Jesus. He took the questions.
How about Thomas… After Jesus was crucified and the other disciples told Thomas that Jesus had risen from the dead, Thomas basically said, “I need to see this for myself.”
We sometimes call him “Doubting Thomas,” which honestly feels a little unfair. Thomas had just watched his friend and teacher be brutally killed. Then his friends told him Jesus was alive.
Truthfully? I might have had a few questions too.
And Jesus didn’t respond by saying, “Thomas, wow. I can’t believe you. Get your act together.”
Instead, Jesus met Thomas in his doubt.
In John 20 verse 26, Jesus invited Thomas to see and touch the wounds in His hands after literally coming through a locked door to meet him. (John 20:26, NIV). Notice how the door was locked? Our doubt can feel like a locked door, but Jesus will still seek you out and come through it for you.
That matters.
Doubt Is Not the Same Thing as Unbelief
There’s an important distinction here. Doubt can mean, “I don’t know what to believe right now.” Unbelief can mean, “I have decided I will not believe.” Those aren’t the same thing. A person can have doubts and still desperately want to believe.
In fact, one of my favorite prayers in the Bible comes from a man who said to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24, NIV).
That is one wonderfully honest prayer.
He basically said, “Jesus, I believe You… but I also have some serious questions going on over here.” And Jesus didn’t reject him. He proceeded to cast the demon out of the man’s son in the very next verse.
There is something comforting about that. You don’t have to pretend your faith is stronger than it actually is. You can come to God with the faith you have today, even if today’s faith feels small.
Doubting God Is a Lot Like Checking the Fridge
Here’s another way to think about it that might resonate for many who are like me and deep in the season of crazy back-to-school evenings.
Doubting God is a lot like checking the fridge again and again when you know it’s still empty and still trying to get dinner on the table. If you are like me, here is how it usually goes:
You open the door.
You stare inside.
You move the ketchup.
You look behind the leftovers. (How many days has this Kung Fu Chicken been here again?)
Maybe somehow a pizza magically appeared since the last time you checked.
Guess what? It didn’t.
So you close the fridge.
Five minutes later, you’re back as if the magical dinner fairy has solved this dilemma for you.
Sometimes that’s what our minds do with doubt. We keep opening the same emotional refrigerator, hoping that somehow the answer will be different this time.
“God, are You really there?”
Close the door.
“Okay, but are You really there?”
Open the door again.
“Why didn’t You answer that prayer?”
Open it again.
“Why did this happen?”
Again and again.
And honestly, sometimes there isn’t a new answer waiting for us.
What we need isn’t always another piece of information. Sometimes we need someone to sit with us while we’re uncomfortable not having an answer. That’s where faith can become less about having certainty and more about learning to trust God in the middle of uncertainty.
Sometimes Doubt Comes From Pain
It’s also important to recognize that doubt doesn’t always begin with an intellectual question — sometimes it begins with a heartbreak or difficult situation.
A person may say, “I don’t know if I believe in God anymore,” when what they’re really trying to say is:
- “I prayed for my dad to live, and he died.”
- “I begged God to save my marriage, and it still ended.”
- “I thought God was going to provide, but I’m still struggling.”
- “I’ve been faithful, so why does my life feel like this?”
Those aren’t silly questions. And giving someone a quick answer like, “Well, everything happens for a reason,” can sometimes make things worse. Or how about the ever famous “God only gives the toughest battles to his strongest warriors.”
There are moments when people don’t need an explanation. They need compassion.
The book of Psalms gives us plenty of examples of this. The writers cry out to God. They complain. They ask where He is. They wonder how long suffering will continue. And yet, those prayers made it into the Bible.
Apparently, God can handle a frustrated prayer. That’s good news for all of us.
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You Don't Have to Be Afraid of Your Questions
Sometimes Christians are afraid that if they ask the wrong question, God will be disappointed in them.
- “What if I question the Bible?”
- “What if I don’t understand why God allows suffering?”
- “What if I’m angry at God?”
- “What if I don’t feel His presence?”
- “What if I have doubts about Christianity?”
These are serious questions, but asking them doesn’t make you a bad Christian. In many cases, asking honest questions can actually lead to a deeper faith. It causes you to explore and tap into the “why” behind your beliefs.
There is a difference between pretending everything is fine and actually wrestling with what you believe. Jacob literally wrestled through the night in Genesis 32. Job spent chapter after chapter asking hard questions. David wrote prayers that sound incredibly emotional.
Faith in Scripture isn’t portrayed as a straight paved road. It’s more like a winding mountain trail where occasionally you look around and say, “Lord, I am pretty sure we are very lost in this wilderness.”
And somehow, He is still there.
What Should You Do When You Doubt?
If you’re currently struggling with doubt, here are a few things that may help.
1. Be honest with God
You don’t need a fancy prayer. Try:
- “God, I don’t understand You right now.”
- “God, I’m angry.”
- “I want to believe, but I’m struggling.”
God already knows what’s going on inside you anyway. You aren’t giving Him breaking news. But He still wants you to bring those thoughts and feelings to Him and have an honest conversation.
2. Talk to someone safe
Don’t isolate yourself. Find a mature Christian, pastor, counselor, or trusted friend who can listen without immediately trying to fix you.
You need people who can handle your questions without making you feel ashamed for having them.
Sometimes simply saying something out loud takes away some of its power.
3. Keep showing up
You don’t have to feel spiritually amazing to pray.
You don’t have to understand everything before opening your Bible.
You don’t have to feel goosebumps during worship.
Keep showing up.
Even if your prayer is only, “God, I’m here. That’s about all I’ve got today.”
That counts.
4. Give yourself permission to wrestle
Don’t rush yourself through grief or difficult questions just because you think a Christian is supposed to have everything figured out.
Wrestling isn’t walking away from your faith.
Sometimes wrestling is how we discover what we actually believe
5. Remember that feelings change
One of the hardest things about doubt is that it can feel permanent.
It usually isn’t.
There may be seasons when God feels incredibly close and seasons when He feels very far away. Your feelings are real, but they aren’t always reliable narrators.
Think of your faith like the weather. Some days are sunny. Some days are cloudy. Some days there is a thunderstorm and you’re wondering if Noah needs to show up with an ark.
Waves come and waves go. The weather changes. But God doesn’t.
Faith is bringing your whole self to God — including the confused parts, the angry parts, the scared parts, and the parts that don’t know what to do next.
- You can love God and have questions.
- You can believe and still struggle.
- You can pray and still feel disappointed.
- You can trust God and still say, “I don’t understand.”
Those things can exist together.
Maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate every question. Maybe the goal is to learn that we can bring our questions into God’s presence.
If You're Struggling, You Don't Have to Do It Alone
If you’re in a season where your faith feels shaky, you don’t have to be embarrassed about it.
And you certainly don’t have to sit alone in your car at 11:30 p.m. Googling, “Is it normal for Christians to doubt God?” while eating cold fries from the bottom of a fast-food bag. (Although, for the record, you’re definitely not the first person to do that.)
Sometimes working through spiritual doubt requires more than another inspirational quote. It can help to have a safe person who will listen to your story, respect your faith, and help you explore the deeper questions underneath what you’re experiencing.
If you’re struggling with doubt, grief, anxiety, relationships, or questions about your faith, I would be honored to walk alongside you through counseling. Counseling can be a place where you don’t have to pretend to have everything figured out. You can bring the questions, the hurt, the anger, the confusion, and we can work through them together.
You don’t have to have perfect faith before you come. Sometimes you just need enough faith to take the next step.
And if all you’ve got today is a tiny little mustard-seed-sized amount? That’s okay too.
God has always been pretty good at moving mountains with small things.
Written by Katie Anderson, MA, LPC
