This is a featured post by Sarah McHaney. Perserverance. She's got it. Intellect. Check!  She not only earned the grueling title of "marathon runner," but could easily run circles around you in the philosophical arena. Dare to challenge her in either? Then, connect with her on Facebook.

I doubt all the time. I doubt people when they say they’ll do something. I doubt myself. I doubt God, not just that He can do “immeasurably more than all I ask or imagine”, but sometimes I doubt His very existence. It’s hard sometimes to pinpoint when I doubt and when I don’t because a lot of my faith has become routine. Other times my doubt is so obvious that it stings when I go to church or TNW. I don’t doubt that every single one of us has felt this way.

Why then does doubt feel so shameful? I feel it can be portrayed as the deal breaker of faith. How dare you doubt the all-knowing, ever-present all mighty God? Yet, we see in the Gospels that Jesus’ most faithful followers were also his most faithful doubters. All but one of his followers doubted being able to walk on water, they doubted they could feed five thousand people, and Thomas even doubted Jesus was alive again even when He was right in front of him.

If we didn’t doubt, how could God prove His glory to us? If we didn’t doubt why would we call it faith? He is the God that can do immeasurably more than all I ask or imagine and He is that God because I ask and imagine with my doubt intact. When I realized that I might always harbor some form of doubt I began to explore how to incorporate my ever present doubt into the faith I am determined to live by.

“If there was no room for doubt then there would be no room for me”, writes Frederick Buechner, an American writer and theologian. He wrote Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary. In this book he defines words such as ‘adolescence’, ‘dying’, ‘earth’, ‘loneliness’, ‘money’, and ‘jogging’ in a theological way. In the introduction he says that if we are to believe that God is everywhere then we should be able to see him in the most mundane parts of our lives. He writes,

“For doubters as well as for everybody else, if God is present anywhere, God is present everywhere. Even in the most everyday places and at the most commonplace times. Even in the most casual words we use.”

This idea that God was in the most common places helped me confront my doubt. In reading through Buechner’s alphabet, I began to ask God questions while I was going through my mundane daily activities.

 If I was out running I would ask, “God, are you running with me”,

“Yes, Sarah I am”.

After a while of this I could hear God asking me, “Do you feel me here? Do you hear me now?”

“Yes, God I do.”

Of course He’s there, but I doubt He minds us asking. If there was no room for doubt, then there would be no room for me. There would just be an undeniable God and another faithful follower who had no reason to doubt. Where would the possibility for an individual faith be if there was not the possibility for individual doubts? How would God show Himself to ME if I already saw Him everywhere?

The next time you are having a day of doubt, just trying asking, "Are You there?" And if you’re willing to listen I am positive He will say, “Here I am”.