Oct 5, 2026 · 8 min · 4 segments
*But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord…
"But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
If you weren't here for week one, I shared a little bit of my personal understanding of James before I understood the gospel, and when I used to read James, I used to read it with condemnation attached, forgetting that, is it Romans 8:1 says, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"? So the Book of James, and this is, if you have the journal, flip back on these harder verses.
Flip back to the context, um, the devotional that talked about the context in week one, where it talked about how the Book of James was written to believers who were scattered, um, throughout.
So it, people, it was people who had already trusted Jesus for their salvation.
It's not saying, "If you ever doubt, then you're bad and you're not loved," okay? But God wants us to believe without doubting.
So we just learned that God generously gives us wisdom, that was last week, when we ask for it, but He also wants us to ask boldly without doubting that He'll provide.
I need Him for this [laughs] because sometimes, for me, doubt slips in, and I know other believers, if they're honest, they struggle with this too.
He can help us with this, so we can ask Him for help, just like Thomas said, "I believe.
So I don't know, have you ever asked God for something, but in the back of your head you thought, "This probably won't happen"? So this, this verse, these verses today remind us that when we doubt, we're kinda splitting our trust, so we're, like, partly trusting God and partly trusting the world, when the goal is to just trust God.
And again, we're not gonna do this perfectly, and we're not doing this from a place of striving.
Um, we're just, we wanna trust God because He is trustworthy, right? And so when we ask God with full confidence, I mean, that's the mark.
That, that's a, that's evidence of a mature faith, and it doesn't mean that we're never gonna struggle or doubt or have questions.
It just means that we know God's character well enough to trust that He's gonna respond in a way that's best for us, um, even if it's not what we hoped for.
So you know, your feelings might not always match, um, what you know to be true, but if you are a mature believer, then you know, like, "Okay, I know that this is what God's Word says about His character, and I've seen, I've seen His work in my life, so I know I can trust Him." So you know, this devotional leads us to think about being in a boat during a storm or on a plane when it, when there's turbulence, and it's shaky, and it can be scary, and that's kinda what doubt feels like.
But we can ask God for help as we, you know, lead our kids to do what we're also trying to do, which is to have an anchored faith and just an unshakable trust in God, and we know that it's a gift, you know? Faith in God is a gift, and so we're gonna pray, and we're gonna ask God to help us even as we ask Him for things [laughs] like wisdom or whatever it is, um, that He will remove doubt and help us to just fully rely on Him and not rely on our own strength or our own strategizing as we look ahead to this week, okay? So the specific things that this devotional's leading us to pray for our kids this week is, one, that they can keep their minds singularly focused on the Lord and all the good things that He does for us.
"But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
If you weren't here for week one, I shared a little bit of my personal understanding of James before I understood the gospel, and when I used to read James, I used to read it with condemnation attached, forgetting that, is it Romans 8:1 says, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"? So the Book of James, and this is, if you have the journal, flip back on these harder verses.
Flip back to the context, um, the devotional that talked about the context in week one, where it talked about how the Book of James was written to believers who were scattered, um, throughout.
So it, people, it was people who had already trusted Jesus for their salvation.
It's not saying, "If you ever doubt, then you're bad and you're not loved," okay? But God wants us to believe without doubting.
So we just learned that God generously gives us wisdom, that was last week, when we ask for it, but He also wants us to ask boldly without doubting that He'll provide.
I need Him for this [laughs] because sometimes, for me, doubt slips in, and I know other believers, if they're honest, they struggle with this too.
He can help us with this, so we can ask Him for help, just like Thomas said, "I believe.
So I don't know, have you ever asked God for something, but in the back of your head you thought, "This probably won't happen"? So this, this verse, these verses today remind us that when we doubt, we're kinda splitting our trust, so we're, like, partly trusting God and partly trusting the world, when the goal is to just trust God.
And again, we're not gonna do this perfectly, and we're not doing this from a place of striving.
Um, we're just, we wanna trust God because He is trustworthy, right? And so when we ask God with full confidence, I mean, that's the mark.
That, that's a, that's evidence of a mature faith, and it doesn't mean that we're never gonna struggle or doubt or have questions.
It just means that we know God's character well enough to trust that He's gonna respond in a way that's best for us, um, even if it's not what we hoped for.
So you know, your feelings might not always match, um, what you know to be true, but if you are a mature believer, then you know, like, "Okay, I know that this is what God's Word says about His character, and I've seen, I've seen His work in my life, so I know I can trust Him." So you know, this devotional leads us to think about being in a boat during a storm or on a plane when it, when there's turbulence, and it's shaky, and it can be scary, and that's kinda what doubt feels like.
But we can ask God for help as we, you know, lead our kids to do what we're also trying to do, which is to have an anchored faith and just an unshakable trust in God, and we know that it's a gift, you know? Faith in God is a gift, and so we're gonna pray, and we're gonna ask God to help us even as we ask Him for things [laughs] like wisdom or whatever it is, um, that He will remove doubt and help us to just fully rely on Him and not rely on our own strength or our own strategizing as we look ahead to this week, okay? So the specific things that this devotional's leading us to pray for our kids this week is, one, that they can keep their minds singularly focused on the Lord and all the good things that He does for us.
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