Do you experience doubt in your Christian walk? Randy Frazee is familiar with doubt, especially in the area of the afterlife.
His doubts about the afterlife began as he experienced the passing of his mother due to pancreatic cancer.
“When I saw her dead body, and I thought about the idea that her spirit lived on and went up into the atmosphere, I just whispered to myself, did that really happen? I found myself saying, there’s just no evidence, there’s no proof.”
Randy admits that even if he did believe in the afterlife at that time, it wasn’t compelling at all. During this season of doubt he experienced the biggest tail spin of his life, but it was the best tail spin he would ever encounter because it caused him to dig deeper.
Randy encourages us to leave room for doubt in our own lives as well as the lives of others, especially young people.
“I have discovered that particularly in Christian families and churches, we don’t give young people room to ever confess what they don’t believe because it unnerves us. However, the journey of getting a belief from your head to your heart involves a confession of unbelief out of your mouth.”
Confessing unbelief doesn’t mean we stay in a state of unbelief, instead, we need to be actively digging for the answer. The first thing we should do is confess our unbelief to someone who doesn’t wrestle with the same doubts.
“If the community you’re in doesn’t give you permission to confess unbelief, you’re going to confess it around a group of people who are more comfortable with it. Typically they will be far from God or even antagonistic to Him. You’ll be in deep trouble if your first confession of unbelief is in a secular situation.”
A second thing Randy recommends is to not let despair overtake you, but instead turn to Scripture and other strong believers for answers to your questions.
“I’m not celebrating unbelief as a great thing; I’m celebrating it as a beginning place to go deeper than you’ve ever gone before. If you feel uncomfortable with your knowledge of the Scripture, get yourself to someone who does.”
Randy Frazee is the senior minister at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas. He is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary. Randy is the author of The Heart of The Story, The Connecting Church, Making Room for Life and more.
Key Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:9-10
Featured Songs: Heaven is the Face – Steven Curtis Chapman; Glorious – Passion; The War is Over – Bethel
What happens after we die?
