Doubt

Most of the time we do not really doubt that God means what He says. Nor do we doubt that He is in control. What we doubt is whether we want Him to be. We don't really want a life of consequences. We don't really want God to do all that is necessary to conform us into His image. We doubt if the cost of discipleship is worth it, if Christian maturity is the path we wish to walk, if being refined like gold is worth the trial by fire. We doubt that the place God has placed us in is the place we want to be.
What is the cause of such doubt? Fear is one. We doubt that it is love that motivates our Savior to discipline and train us. Irrational, is it not, to doubt that One who died for you and defends you before the Father would act out of anything but love? Do you really doubt that the One who cared for all the needs of all His people when they wandered through the wilderness shaking their fists in His face, testing His every move, complaining about every trial, is not the God of love?
What does doubt cost us? Much more than submission will cost us. We lose God's peace, we lose confidence in prayer, we lose the fullness of His joy. Oh, we don't escape the trials. We just wander through life--a wilderness--always on the edge of Christian victory and the rest it affords in the worst of conflicts. We wander through life always afraid to enter the "Promised Land," always afraid of the enemy who cannot defeat us because of Him. Do you know of any people more miserable than the generation of God's people who wandered for forty years short of God's best? Doubt put them there. They were always testing God to see if He was good or evil--to see if He was the God of love and mercy and lovingkindness that He claimed to be. And though He was--and is--they lived the miserable existence of one who doubts. Of one who constantly questions what God is doing in his life and how could it possibly be good--how could it possibly be His love at work.
Do you really want to be more and more like Him? Then you must consider it all joy when He brings into your life those things that will purify and refine you into His image. Will it make life easy? Not a chance. But it will keep you from a life of misery, of wilderness wandering. You will have a life, regardless of the circumstances, basking in the full awareness of His love for you. Certain that when "sorrows like sea billows roll," that "peace like a river" will attend to your soul. And all will be well. All will be well with your soul.