An all-too-common response on the part of not a few Christians when they encounter marked trials and suffering is to doubt God’s goodness and His love for them. Even normally strong believers can experience such doubts when faced with strong adversity.
Where do those doubts come from? How can they be effectively dealt with? An incident from the ministry of Dwight Moody, an eminent evangelist on both sides of the Atlantic during the late 1800s, provides some helpful perspectives on these issues.
While holding evangelistic meetings in Dundee, Scotland, in 1874, Moody was taken to visit a bedridden cripple. When fifteen years old, this individual had fallen and broken his back. Since then he had lain on his bed for about forty years and could not be moved without considerable pain. Hardly a day had passed in all those years without acute suffering.
But day after day God’s grace had been granted to the invalid. To Moody and others it seemed that his bedroom was as near to heaven as one could get on earth. When Moody met the man and beheld his sweet, trusting spirit, he thought he must be beyond the reach of the Tempter. Still he asked him, “Doesn’t Satan ever tempt you to doubt God, and to think that He is a hard Master?”
“Oh yes,” he affirmed, “he does try to tempt me. I lie here and see my old schoolmates driving along in their carriages, and Satan says: ‘If God is so good, why does He keep you here all these years? You might have been a rich man, riding in your own carriage.’ Then I see a man, who was young when I was, walk by in perfect health, and Satan whispers: ‘If God loved you, couldn’t He have kept you from breaking your back?’”
“What do you do when Satan tempts you?” the evangelist queried.
“Ah, I just take him to Calvary and show him Christ. And I point out those wounds in His hands and feet and side, and say, ‘Doesn’t He love me?’ And the fact is, he got such a scare there eighteen hundred years ago that he cannot stand it. He leaves me every time.”
“That bedridden saint had not much trouble with doubts,” Moody often afterward testified of the man. “He was too full of the grace of God.”
When faced with our own hard trials and resulting doubts, let’s focus much on the cross of Christ. Doing so fixedly will greatly help us in maintaining a strong, sweet spirit of trust in God and appreciation for our Savior in His ultimate act of love in our behalf.
# # #
This and a number of other beneficial examples of Christians dealing with adversity in God-trusting, Christ-honoring fashion can be found in my book Timeless Stories: God’s Incredible Work in the Lives of Inspiring Christians (Christian Focus Publications). If you’ve appreciated and benefited from this blog, thanks for sharing it with others. Copyright 2026 by Vance E. Christie
