In my book The Blessed Winter, Greg, the central character of The Shepherd Series who's the pillar of faith for his family, doubts himself and his calling from the Lord. Without revealing details in case someone who's reading this hasn't read the book and wants to, I feel the need to explore something he says during his time of doubt.
"It's me who's weak and wrong, not God. What if I've been wrong about me all along? What if everything I've ever believed I heard from God wasn't from him at all but was my own selfish desire? ... What if I'm stubborn, selfish and self-righteous? And if I don't know how to hear God's voice after twenty years as a Christian ... If I've been wrong, then I don't know how to hear God so I'm not going to know when he speaks to me as he tries to change me. ... So this is it. This is all I get to be, the messed up screwball with no past and no future. What good am I to anyone?"
I wonder sometimes how many Christians, even Billy-Graham-like 'pillars of the faith,' sometimes feel this way.
Curiously, I think that maybe only those who do know the Lord will question themselves enough to doubt like this. In my experience, those who are stubborn, selfish and self-righteous never doubt themselves! They 'know' that they know the Lord better than anyone else.
It isn't the doubts that are the problem, it's what you do with them. A few chapters later, Greg tells one of his friends: "In everything God loves us and he goes with us. Nothing we do can destroy his love for us, nothing we go through makes him leave us. We have to hold our feelings up to that truth and bring them in line with it rather than trying to rewrite the truth based on our feelings."
Feelings can lie to us, tell us things about ourselves that aren't true. God himself has said that you are of great value to him. Even if you have messed up, he's going to redeem that, turn it around to his glory.
So when you have doubts about yourself and your calling from the Lord, remember what you know about God. Write yourself a psalm listing the ways God has already shown his love for you and his calling on you. Don't just include the wonderful things of the bible, include the wonderful personal experiences that you've had. Confront your doubts with the Truth. Let that Truth reveal any legitimate issues that you need to face and work with God to fix them, but never, ever embrace doubt about your usefulness to God and his kingdom. If you are his child, you definitely have a place in his plan.
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