by Dennis and Barbara Rainey

John 20:29
Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed."

Have you ever noticed how some businesses creatively communicate a service or product through a catchy name or slogan?

A few years ago I noted the slogan of Johnson's Flower and Garden Center in Washington, D.C.: "Our Business Is Blooming!" Our garbage company had one of my favorites: "We guarantee satisfaction or double your garbage back!"

Another one recently grabbed my attention. A Christian optometrist named his practice "Seeing Is Believing." When I saw that, my mind raced back to when I graduated from junior college.

I was a normal 20-year-old in the midst of the tumultuous sixties. I had no purpose. My life was chock-full of compromise, doubt, perplexing questions I couldn't answer and frequent despair.

Everything I had touched for the past year had turned to gold-grades, girls and college athletics. You would have thought I had everything, but I had lost my faith. I had become a "practical atheist."

Just like Thomas in the book of John, I was full of doubts and had questions like:

Is the Bible really God's Word?

Why does God allow suffering?

If Christianity is a hoax, what is the purpose of life?

Precariously balanced with one foot on the banana peel of doubt and the other foot in the world, I began to honestly seek what God had to say about my life. Throughout my quest one question haunted me: "Must I really see it to believe it?"

My slippery spiritual descent was halted in the fall of l968 when God loved me out of my unbelief. One person He used was evangelist Tom Skinner who shared the following quote:

I spent a long time trying to come to grips with my doubts, when suddenly I realized I had better come to grips with what I believe. I have since moved from the agony of questions that I cannot answer, to the reality of answers that I cannot escape...and it's a great relief.

You see, my life was riddled with questions I couldn't answer. Ultimately, I doubted God's existence. And I realized I needed to look at the answers I couldn't escape.

Prayer:

Ask God to give you an inner conviction of the truth of Scripture, or the answers you cannot escape.

Discuss: What are the questions about God or Christianity that have caused you to doubt God's existence? Be honest with your spouse about your questions.

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