Read, Do, & Tell

Ep 22: When Bible Questions Aren't Answered

• Becky • Episode 22

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 28:14

Welcome back to the podcast!

Join our Podcast+ Membership or login to your membership to download the transcripts, guided notes, and study tools from each episode. Becoming a member also supports our work as we read, do, and tell the Word of the Lord!

In recent podcast episodes, we've discussed reading the Bible context, looking at the original languages, and using different translations. 

Studying God's Word with our heads is very important. Today, however, we have a different kind of episode. 

This one is a bit more personal, as Amy and I (Becky) share times in our lives when Bible answers didn't come so quickly.

There are times when our heart desires answers. Sometimes those answers take YEARS to come. It's possible the answers may never come on this side of Heaven.

What do we do in those times of searching or doubt? I hope this episode will encourage your heart as you study His Word!


Previous Episodes Related to this Topic:


Books Mentioned in this Episode:


Let's Connect!


Welcome back to this Reading Mamas Podcast. I am Becky. I'm Amy. Thank you all for joining us again. Wanted to quickly remind you all that we have the Podcast Plus membership that gives you access to our Bible reading plans like the one that we walked you all through in episode 21 called Captivity and Return. It also gives you access to the different resources that we use during the slideshow, like the graphs and charts and other tools that help you engage with the podcast to take notes that will hopefully allow you to provide aid when you're teaching a Sunday school or even to lead a Bible study. It does cost $5 a month, but by becoming a member, you come alongside of us to help teach others why Bible literacy matters. Over the last few episodes, we have focused a little bit on approaching God with your head. So we've talked about Bible context, we've talked about different translations, English translations of the Bible, we've talked about reading more than one Bible verse, using a study Bible, and then we talked about understanding that the Bible was not originally written in English. So sometimes we may have to do a little bit of digging to figure out what that original language said. We haven't really talked about that. That one's a very heady, but I love that. I love the Blue Letter Bible app for that purpose. But today we want to venture more into reading the Bible with your heart. We got to remember that the heart and the head are very much connected. And so, as we discussed in episode three, it's dangerous to read the Bible only with your head, and it's dangerous to only read the Bible with your heart. There has to be a balance. Today we want to talk about what happens when your Bible questions aren't answered. I want to just cover the topic of faith for just a minute, because faith as a follower of Jesus, there are going to be times when you don't have the answers, when you just don't know. But it's good to remind ourselves that faith is something as a follower of Jesus, we will always need it. We will never wake up one day and say, ah, I've arrived and no longer need faith. We also need, on the flip side, I guess, to remind ourselves that faith is not a blind faith. Faith, this is a quote from I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, the book I'm going through right now. Almost finished. I'm almost there. Hi Frank Turr, right? Yes, and Norm Geisler. Faith covers a gap in knowledge. This is not just referring to the Christian faith. Atheists have to have faith. We never truly, I would say in life, this is kind of philosophical, and I'm not really great with philosophy, but there are things we don't necessarily have 100% proof of. For example, if I come into a room, do I know 100% sure that the chair will hold me up? When I'm driving down the road at night, do I know 100% sure that a deer will not run out in front of me? No. So there's always some measure of faith. But the thing about Christian faith is that it's a reasonable faith. We have historical evidence. So I love how Craig Blomberg says that our faith, the faith that's necessary to fill in the remaining gap, is reasonable. It's a very small because there's so much evidence God has given us for his word, for the proof of Jesus, that our amount of faith isn't like this gigantic chasm between what we know and what we don't know. And I love that. So it's good to remember that. But what do you do when you have an unanswered question that kind of nags at you? So you may not always understand what it is that you're reading when you're doing your own personal Bible study. Sometimes you may be in church and you're listening to the pastor, and in his sermon, there's questions that arise as he's teaching. That's okay, that's totally normal. There may be people in your life that are not believers and they throw out these questions at you about who God is and is the Bible something that you can trust? And you may not be able to answer those questions completely or even at all sometimes. But don't give up. You need to keep seeking the Lord. In Deuteronomy, Moses tells them to seek the Lord with all of their heart and all of their mind. So keep praying, asking God for understanding, keep reading his word, even when you're like, I do not understand what that means, because some of the Bible is really deep and it has a cultural context that you maybe have not yet learned. And until you get to that point in your knowledge, it's not going to make sense. But I promise you that as you continue to study, there are going to be moments where you are like, Oh God, thank you so much for revealing that to me. So keep reading and keep obeying his word. Do not give up. And so we're gonna go into my testimony because I did not grow up a believer. I grew up as, I mean, you would say, I would have said I was Catholic because I was born into an Italian family. They were Roman Catholic at heart. My mom grew up in the faith, and we would, you know, we would go to church on the big holidays, like Christmas and Easter. Is what did you say? CEO? Christmas, Easter. Only. Only. So I was a CEO Christian. Is that what that's called? Or a CEO attender. So um we would go on those days, and I actually only remember reading the Bible one time with my mom. I don't remember why she opened the Bible. I was maybe between eight and nine years old because I remember where we were living at the time, but I don't remember what we read. And that was it. I graduated high school. My aunt gave me my first Bible. That was my graduation gift, and she told me, if you only read a sentence a day, that will be enough. Just stay in his word. And I was like, okay. So that Bible went with me and is still with me to this day everywhere I went. Growing up, I did pray a lot though. I because I was in the Catholic faith, there were a lot of traditions that my grandmother held, and so she would take us to church on Palm Sunday, and the father would bless the palms, and then we would make them into the shape of a cross. And she said, You have to have four in your room because four is the number you need to keep the demons away. And so I remember always being so frightened by this spiritual presence or spiritual beings that I couldn't see. And so I actually prayed that our Father a lot, our Father who art in heaven, until I was asleep. It was like um praying into a into a um trance. And so then I went to college. I did not think about God while I was in college. I didn't think about what the purpose of life was. And then I met my husband and we started a family, and so we did go to church a little bit, to the Catholic Church, of course, and I did finally learn in the Catholic Church what the our father meant, which I thought was that's probably the beginning of my learning was that it wasn't just a magical supernatural prayer protection, like it has meaning. And then I lived with his family for a while when we were first together, and his uncle would meet with someone or actually like a group of people, and they were very into the new age stuff, and he also dabbled into reincarnation. And so he would come home and he would share all these stories with me about how the fears that you have today are actually because of things that you suffered in your past life. And so I very vividly remember a story of a lady who was hypnotized, and she realized that in her past life she had drowned, and that's why she was in a tsunami, actually. It was in a tsunami. She drowned in a tsunami, and this is why she was so afraid of water. And I was like, that is fascinating. Then, where we lived with our kids in a state called Morelos in Mexico, I had a neighbor. The mom was into meditation, and she talked about the spirit guides and how you had to have someone that would pull you out of the meditation. And so I was really tempted to do that, and then I started doing some research because at heart I am a skeptic of everything. Um, and so I research everything that I hear, and I read that some people die in meditation because they never get pulled out of the trance or whatever it is they're in, and I was like, oh, I'm not gonna do that. And then her daughter was very big into like the spiritual side, and she did like, I don't really know what it was because maybe she told me and I just don't remember, but she would do like massages and she would do the aura around you, and she talked about you know, like spirits that are present in your home, and I can remember one night being asleep in my bed and I could just feel I didn't move at all. I could just feel something was there, and I went, I have to go see her. So the next day I went to her and said, Hey, I think I have bad spirits in my house. Can you come in? And I did not do not do that. I did not know what I was doing. And thankfully, when she came in, she put her hands up all around my house and said, I don't feel anything, and so she didn't do anything or no ritual was done in my house. So praise the Lord for his protection there. Anyway, some time went by, and my husband and I we started to get we started to have some trouble in our relationship and we were separating. I was crying out to the Lord, like, okay, Lord, what is my purpose? Because now the father of my children I'm not gonna be with anymore. I'm gonna be a single mom. I'm in a country that's not my own. Do I stay? Do I go back home? And so, what would anybody do that wants to know the answers that the Lord has for them? Crack open your Bible to Genesis and start reading. This was back in 2009, 2010. Anyway, I did not actually ever finish reading through the Bible for like 10 years after that. But all of that to say, the Lord sent Jehovah's Witnesses to my house. I do know that that was his divine plan because he can use anyone, and he used those those two young sweet sisters to come into my home. And I remember our very first conversation, it was about the role of the woman and the man in marriage. And I was going, mm-mm, we are not talking about this. Because remember, my husband and I are going through a separation, and you know, I grew up in the United States where women are empowered, and you know, I can do it all on my own. I don't need to submit to a man, and well, the Lord kind of chiseled it my heart there. So that was the beginning of the restoration of our marriage. And I did call my aunt that gave me my Bible, and I told her that I was studying with my Bible with the Jehovah's Witnesses, and she went into complete panic and she started going, no, no, no, don't do that, don't do that. And it was then that I realized that what they were teaching me about who Jesus was was not what my aunt was trying to tell me. That the Jehovah's Witnesses believed, because they openly said it, that Jesus is not God. He is a God, not God. He was created, he wasn't always existing. And so these were questions that I had that needed to be answered. Was Jesus God or just the Son of God? And did Jesus eternally exist or was he a creation of God the Father? So it was a six-year-long journey from that point where I was just I was reading the Bible, like, Lord, help me see. And God uses his word to transform your mind and what he knows you need to have your mind renewed in. And so for me it was forgiveness. So I can remember during that time, although I was seeking like who is Jesus, I very vividly remember the theme of forgiveness all throughout the Bible, which is what ultimately led me to go back to my husband and for there to be restoration in our marriage, which is amazing. So I did read the Bible, I was reading it, you know, book by book, like I would pick a gospel or something in the New Testament, the minor prophets, because those books were tiny and they were a little easier to understand than like Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Those were like, I don't understand anything that he's saying. So I didn't read those yet. Um, and then I was looking for a church, so I felt led to the Christian faith at this point. So I went to a Pentecostal church. Um, I learned a lot about the Holy Spirit and the Pentecostal church, what was true and what was false, because of course everything I was hearing, I had to like do my research on. And so that helped me grow in my faith. We went to Baptist churches and Methodist and Presbyterian churches, and then finally non-denominational churches. There was one scary instance at a non-denominational church. My mom went with me. We turned the kids into the daycare and we sat down in the service, and it was like a cold. And my mom and I looked at one another and were like, we need to go. But I'm scared to get up right now and go get the girls. So we waited it out, got got the girls and left and never went back to that church. And then after a few years, I finally did find a church that was non-denominational, and my husband was willing to go with me. A few years into that church, I was at a Wednesday night Bible study group, which was also God's providence, because I dropped my kids off in Iwana and was gonna go for a walk, and some lady out of nowhere that I actually never saw again grabbed me and she goes, What are you doing? And I said, I'm gonna go walk. She was like, Oh, come with me. She led me to a room, said, This is Amy, shut the door and walked away. And that became my Bible study group that I wasn't even looking for. And one Wednesday night I confessed to them, I was like, Okay, I have a confession. I don't know if Jesus is God. And there was this gasp, like, you need to go talk to the pastor. And I was like, I don't want to talk to the pastor about this. Then the following Sunday, God revealed to me through the sermon that the pastor was preaching called the Image of the Invisible God. He read John 1:18 that said, No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. That was Jesus, and that was the clicking point for me where I was like, thank you, Lord. Six years I have been reading articles and trying to figure out, is Jesus God? And he is. And so we got home, I sat my family down, I said, Jesus is God, and this is why, because the Bible says so. And I had been reading the Bible long enough to know that the word of God was true. It was just there was a question I had about the faith that took me six years to get the answer to. But he is faithful. And then Becky also used to go to that church. We didn't know each other at this time, and when I was sharing my testimony, she says, Oh, Colossians 1:15 says, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. So that was another voice, another voice, another verse in that sermon series. So after that day, the word of God became living in my life, and there was nothing that could stop me. Like I was so hungry to know more. And my faith actually brought division in my family. And I had a sister who basically said, Choose that book over me, and our relationship is over, basically. She said, Is it the book or is it me? And so I had to really start digging deep to know if what I said I believed was really true. And actually, I can remember picking up the book, The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel. And I read through that book and I was like, okay, that was the beginning of part of the beginning of my journey into apologetics and being able to defend my faith. For anyone else who may be struggling with who Jesus is, um, as I continue to study and even through the years, it just comes out, it like pops out at me in the Bible, and I go, Oh, there's another one, thank you, Lord. In Psalm 110, verse 1, King David says, The Lord says to my Lord. So that would be God the Father says to God the Son, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. And so when I read that, I go, Oh, that's like what the pastor said in John. And then Matthew also says in verse 41 through 44, it's Jesus talking to the Pharisees and they're questioning him. Jesus asks them the question, What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? And they said, He's the son of David. And he says, How is it then that David in the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, from Psalm 1101, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. And that was where Jesus said, I am God. I love it. That's awesome. My testimony is different than Amy's. So I grew up in a Christian home with a father who was big on apologetics. He actually, I can remember as a young child, he was studying and getting certified in Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, the cults. And so he could, I can remember these poor Jehovah, or maybe it was Mormons, coming to our door, and my dad would sit with them for an hour or two. And um, it was just fascinating to hear him asking them questions. Anyway, so he was really into apologetics. My mom is more on the heart side of Christianity. Yes, she has the head knowledge, but she tends, I tend to be more like my dad, where you're like looking at eschatology. Is it gonna be pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, all the things? You're like researching them, and my mom's like, I'm just gonna be ready. That's all I need to know. So she she's very she has a lot of faith, I will say that. My dad has always been one who likes to debate. He's very good at logic and all those things. And so we grew up family car trips with him asking us questions. We grew up at the Sunday lunch table or the dinner table with him asking us biblical questions. And he didn't always provide the answers. He wanted us to struggle. I think he wanted us, he wanted to make sure our faith was our own. So that was probably about three years ago. I remember standing in our backyard. We were in our garden, my dad likes to garden, and he says to me, First Corinthians 15. And I was like, Yeah. And he said, the um, it's an early creed of Paul's that is an early church creed, and I'm gonna read it. And then he asked me a question about it, and I was so stumped, and I was stumped for for at least three years. It says this, this is starting in verse three. For I passed on to you as most important what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and it continues to go. But his question to me was kind of, it was more than one question. He said, What are the scriptures that Paul is talking about? And I in my mind, you're thinking the New Testament, of course. And he's like, Nope, the New Testament had not been written at this point. He's talking about the Old Testament, and I was like, Oh, and so then he said, So where does the Old Testament talk about Christ's crucifixion? Specifically, where does the Old Testament talk about him being raised and in the resurrection? And I was like, I don't know, I'll have to get back to you on that one. So I mean, I'm just pondering this, like, I don't really know where. I start asking Bible teachers that I trusted. We were doing house church at the time, and so we had a couple of men in our group who I really trusted, and I kind of pulled them aside and said, Okay, I'm gonna read this passage to you. Can you tell me where these scriptures are in the Old Testament? And I mean, I they may have given me answers, but it didn't satisfy. It was kind of like, I still am not there yet. Like I can't, I can't remember their words exactly, but it just did not satisfy. I started listening to um, there was a sermon I listened to by Arnold Fruchtenbaum, and he was talking about prophecy in the Old Testament. And one of the things he said that oftentimes when they're not quoting a specific prophecy, they'll say, the prophecies said, like duh, it's a plural, because there's more than one. Well, this passage says that according to the scriptures, so apparently there's more than one. I'm not gonna go just to the old testament and go, there's the one right there. So I was kind of looking for one, a one answer, if that makes sense. So then I started realizing, okay, it's gonna be all over the old testament. I thought, okay, when I read the Bible through this year, every time I see on the third day in the Old Testament, I'm gonna circle it in my Bible. So I did. It's everywhere, but there's other numbers as well. So on the third day, I'm like, okay, one of these is gonna tell me that Jesus was gonna raise on the third day. And well, I didn't really see it. And I was like, oh Lord, come on now. I've I want to know the answer. Come on, you gotta give it to me. I was really wanting that to be my aha moment. So then last year in October ish, I'm preparing for the book Shadows of Our Savior, which I had written for Advent, which talks about the types of Jesus in the Old Testament. As I'm doing my research, I come across. Psalm 22, specifically starting in verse 21. Now, Psalm 22 is the one that starts with, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Which Jesus quotes on the cross. And it's very fascinating because if you do your kind of your research on that and how the Jews recited scripture, you can see that potentially he was trying to get them, hello, that passage is about me. Go back and, you know, recite it. Think through that passage. Talks a lot about the crucifixion. But starting in verse 21, we see the Lord saving him. And we see this in a way resurrection. And so I was like, okay, this is interesting. So I started to dig around. I was like looking at Bible commentaries, Bible scholars. Of course, I listened to Mike Winger's series on Jesus in the Old Testament. And all of them were saying what I was thinking here, that this is referring to Jesus' resurrection. So I had Psalm 22, and I was like, I'm happy with one. Well, then I was preparing again for the sacrifice of our Savior, which was the one I wrote for Resurrection Sunday. And in Genesis 22, which is where Abraham sacrifices Isaac, you see Isaac as the picture of Christ. He there's so many parallels there. He willingly went to be sacrificed. But what's so fascinating is in that passage, it talks about on the third day he raised his eyes and saw the place. And for me, that was that was a very close parallel about the on the third day, because that whole passage, Hebrews comments on it. And in in the hall of faith, in Hebrews chapter 11, you see where it says, and starting in verse 17, by faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He received the promises, and yet he was offering his one and only son, the one to whom it had been said, your offspring will be traced through Isaac. He considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead. Therefore, he received Isaac back, figuratively speaking. So it's you see that idea of resurrection that was the Bible tells us was in Abraham's head. I just think that's really cool. And then more recently, as I was preparing to teach a Sunday school class, we were going through the prophecies of the Old Testament and how they related to Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. And ironically, I had prepared this a couple of years ago, but didn't have a ding-ding-ding moment, like it didn't register with me. But it's the passage in Psalm 16, 8 through 11, which you may just read it in pat in passing and not think much about it. But on the day of Pentecost, when Peter stands up in Acts 2, he recites this passage from Psalm 16, 8 through 11. And here is what he says. And I'm going to read verse 24 through 33, which is a lot, I know. But he says, God raised him up, it's talking about Jesus, ending the pains of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by death. For David says of him, and here's where he's reciting Psalm, I saw the Lord ever before me, because he is at my right hand. I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. Moreover, my flesh will rest in hope, because you have not abandoned me in Hades, or allowed your holy one to see decay. You have revealed the paths of life to me, you will fill me with gladness in your presence. And then he says about this passage, Brothers and sisters, I can confidently speak to you about the patriarch David. He is both dead and buried. His tomb is with us to this day. Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn an oath to him to seat one of his descendants on the throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke concerning the resurrection of the Messiah. He was not abandoned in Hades, and his flesh did not experience decay. God has raised this Jesus. We are all witnesses of this. Therefore, since he has been exalted to the right hand of God and has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, he has poured out what you see, what you both see and hear today. So you can see, and then what's so cool is he goes on to quote Psalm 1101, which is what you quoted. I think it's the most quoted passage in the Old Testament into the New Testament. I love that God's word is so true, his promises can be trusted. So as I said in the beginning, Moses was told by God to tell them to seek the Lord their God, and they would find him. If you search for him with all your heart and with all your soul, and the New Testament confirms that in Hebrews 11, 6, it says, And without faith, it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. And I love that because we do have the eternal reward in heaven to be with him and have you know eternal joy and eternal peace. But we also are rewarded when we're here because those moments where he reveals his truth to you is just it's amazing. And I hope, you know, as you all continue to strive towards understanding what the Bible says more and more and teaching others what it says, that you'll also experience those moments of, oh, thank you, God, for showing me your truth. And I don't exactly know who said it because it's been attributed to several people, like Chuck Smith. But essentially, he said, or someone said, when you're in these moments of you're not sure, maybe something tragic even happens in your life, that we should not trade what we know that's true about God, what he's revealed in his word for what we don't know yet. So it's good to remember that in those times of seeking. So let's be determined as Ezra to read, do, and tell the word of the Lord. Amen.

Head Shot

Becky Spence

Host