27Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”
28“My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaimed.
29Then Jesus told him, “You believe because you see me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” (John 20:27-29)
Continuing where we left off earlier in the week, Jesus appears with the Disciples and presents Himself as proof to “Doubting” Thomas. I had meant to put this post together on Wednesday, but the world was at work and I had some things come up.
We actually looked at these verses in our weekly Bible Study on Wednesday night. We had a very good conversation about Thomas, and one of the questions our Chaplain proposed was how we viewed Thomas’ disbelief. A handful voiced how they could not understand how Thomas refused to believe when the other ten Disciples had told him what they had seen. My response to that was two-fold. First, I pointed out the fact that Thomas was most likely still in shock from what he had seen happen to Jesus. I have seen it in my civilian profession when parents, whose gang-banger son is gunned down in the streets, cannot come to understand that their child is deceased. The shock of such news is just too much for some parents to bear. For Thomas, the shock of Jesus resurrecting Himself seemed to be just too much for his logical mind to process.
My second point was that I loved Thomas for his doubt. Thanks to Thomas, we are gifted with Jesus acknowledging that for us, the ones that believe without ever seeing, Jesus specifically recognizes us. Without Thomas’ doubt, we would never have the beautiful verse above.
Thomas’ doubt is encouragement for all of us. It is encouragement that it is okay to have doubts. Jesus loves us to question the truth, because that is an invitation for Jesus to come in, meet us in our doubt, and show us the truth we can only find in our Savior. So if you have any shaken faith, wobbly devotion, or questionable curiosity, it is okay, Jesus has an answer for all your inquiries.
It is Friday, which means new music releases! There’s some great new singles and an awesome full album release that I will share later in the week. For today, click the image below and enjoy the new single from Elevation Worship!
Common Sense Reborn 