Five Minute Friday: Doubt

This week the topic for the Five Minute Friday link-up post is doubt. What is a link-up? Essentially a link-up is when you join other bloggers and write on a similar topic. You share your blog posts with one another and begin conversations via a host site. You can head over toKate Motaung’s page to check out other entries from inspired bloggers. Here’s my five minutes of uninterrupted, unedited writing on this week’s topic:

Do you ever struggle with doubting God? I will assume your answer is yes, because it is human nature to doubt God at times. Some of us may find ourselves doubting God in the big stuff like salvation or His ability to bring healing. Others of us may doubt God when it comes to the day-to-day issues in our lives. My latest doubts would include the doubting of my calling. Why do I always begin to question the things that I know God has clearly called me to do?  I’ve been in a place over the past couple of days where I’ve truly struggled with the question, “Am I truly called to lead and advise the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the high school where I am employed?” despite the fact that God has proven faithful to me time and time again in this ministry.

I had found myself in a place of exhaustion and dealing with a lot of planning for an upcoming FCA retreat (the most stressful event of the school year for me.) I know that event planning is not my strength. I learned that in college while working for the Office of Advancement and planning so many fund raisers. It was a lot of fun, but definitely not something I feel called to do.

As I questioned my position with the FCA and whether or not God had really called me to fulfill the responsibilities of advising a group of seventy high school Christians God reminded me why He has placed me in this position. When I was exhausted from all the time that goes into planning and executing weekly meetings as well as the upcoming retreat God gave me a message to renew my purpose. This message came in the form of an encouraging letter from a parent.

This week when I was in need of reassurance I walked out to my mailbox and found a letter from a parent of a student involved in the ministry. In this letter the parent expressed their gratitude for my role and explained the impact that this group is having on their son. This was a parent who also is an administrator in the district and whose opinion and wisdom I truly respect.

The letter brought me to tears as I received it exactly when I needed it.

I hate that in this scenario I had become a doubting Thomas. I had forgotten my purpose and focused on myself and my weakness. Alone I could never balance the role of advising a large club with all of the other demands of life, but over the past five years God has truly given me strength and worked through this club. Sometimes I surprise myself with how short-sighted my memory can be. It just takes a look back at the many ways that God has provided for and worked through this organization to remember that He ordained me for such a time as this.

From what I’ve heard doubting your calling when you are in a place of ministry is pretty normal. We pour ourselves into our ministries and when we don’t see the results we pray for it can easily become discouraging. I’m learning even after five years that God’s plans don’t always align with mine, but His plans are always so much better than my own. Doubt is a natural step in the believing process. Doubt helps bring us to a point of faith. Doubt calls into question ourselves and can actually be beneficial for getting our eyes off of ourselves and back on God. We were not created to fulfill our purposes in our own strength. God is almost always the missing piece when we find ourselves in doubt.