The Question You Need to Bring to Jesus

If you have one, you're not alone. We all have those moments where we question everything we have ever been taught.

These are the moments where we either push it down when it surfaces, or feel like it's all impossible. Maybe, it's the question you almost asked one night, and then backed away from because you were afraid of what it would mean about you if you actually let yourself ask it. The question that hovers every time you hear a sermon that doesn't quite address it. The question that makes your stomach tight when a well-meaning friend offers a tidy answer to something that is not tidy. Perhaps the question is something like this:

"Why did You let this happen to me?" "Where were You?" "Why did You not stop it?" "Is this what You wanted for my life?" "Do You even care?" "Are You real?"

Whatever yours is — and you know which one it is — I want to tell you something that might change how you carry it from here on:

He is not afraid of it.

He has been waiting for it. Not to correct you. Not to shame you. Not to give you a seminary answer. To be with you in the space after you dared to ask it.

The church — and I say this as someone who loves the church — has done a spectacular job of teaching people to suppress the hard questions and call it reverence. We learn early that asking anything deep is met with surface level answers that don't really make sense. It causes us to doubt our faith. That doubt is a threat to our faith. When Pastors answer questions with what I call, Christian-eese, let me be blunt here - its a sorry excuse for their inability to answer for their own faith. Believing something "because the bible tells us so" or "because we just have to have faith that (fill in the blank)" is just meaningless nothing-burger answers. If anyone who is a Pastor is giving you examples like this, they don't understand the deeper meanings of scripture - OR - they don't know how to convey the answer in a meaningful way. This, my friends, is what led me to create Honeyed Candor - my podcast. I am not afraid to answer hard and deep questions. Each episode tackles either a deep seated philosophical hurdle we all face or if there is a trend or issue the church is struggling with that needs addressed. Exposure culture anyone?

I want you to go read the Psalms for the first time, or again if you need the reminder. Really read them. Not the comforting excerpts we put on tote bags. Read them whole. "How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?" "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" "Why do You stand far off, O Lord? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?" These are not the prayers of people with weak faith. These are the prayers that are in the Bible because they are the most honest prayers human beings have ever prayed. God did not edit them out. He canonized them.

Job spent thirty-seven chapters asking God hard questions — not gently — and God's answer was not "stop asking." God's answer was to show up in the whirlwind. Job was not rebuked for his questions. He was met inside them. In fact, go read God's response to Job.

Jesus Himself, on the cross, quoted Psalm 22 aloud. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" He did not come into the worst moment of His human existence with a tidy theology of suffering. He came into it with a question. That question is in your Bible on purpose.

If Jesus can ask, so can you. Jesus is our example of how to approach both life and the Father. If He can say, "Father, why have you forsaken me?" Then why can we not go to Him and say, "I don't get why you let this happen." He is a BIG God and He will answer you. Its those trying moments where we confront God that we figure out another facet of who He is and how He works.

Here's another thing I want you to know about bringing a hard question to God: He is not going to correct your theology first. He is not going to require you to phrase it piously. He is not going to send you to a verse and leave. He is going to sit with you. He is going to let you cry. He is going to let you be angry. He is going to let you not have it figured out. And somewhere in the middle of that, if you stay with Him long enough, He is going to start telling you things no pastor ever could. Not because they were withholding them. Because the things He tells you inside a question are reserved for the people who dare to ask.

The people with the deepest intimacy with Jesus are not the people with no questions. They are the people who brought their questions to Him and stayed long enough to hear Him speak. That will preach.

So take the question you have been hiding from Him — even though He already knows it; even though it is the reason you have been drifting; even though you are scared He will be disappointed in you for having it — and take it to Him directly.

Don't dress it up. Don't soften it. Don't tack a "but I trust You anyway" onto the end because you're scared of what might happen if you don't.

Ask it. Straight. Let the silence after it be as long as it needs to be.

He is in that silence. He has been all along.

The question you were afraid to bring is the doorway you've been missing.

→ Follow on Instagram @purelycece for real-time insight and unfiltered conversations → If you're ready to do the work, my book Escape Artist: The Fight for Freedom From Trauma will guide you through the process of breaking patterns and stepping into freedom. On Sale now everywhere books are sold. → If you need to go even deeper, I have written Escape Artist: The Workbook that will guide you through deeper reflections and healing. Available now on Amazon.

You don't have to figure this out alone.