Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Bonus Episode: Pastor Craig on The Benefit of Doubt | Living With Doubts | Part 4

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Welcome to a bonus episode of the Life.Church podcast. Today, you’ll hear an interview with Pastor Craig Groeschel about his newest book, The Benefit of Doubt. This conversation is the final part of a four part series on doubt from the You’ve Heard It Said podcast. We can spend our whole lives looking for clarity and concrete answers and unintentionally miss having a personal relationship with Jesus. In this conversation with Pastor Craig Groeschel, we’ll learn how our doubts can help us have a deeper faith.Use the Conversation Guide to discuss this episode with your LifeGroup: https://go2.lc/YHISGuide82ABOUT THIS PODCASTYou’ve Heard It Said is a podcast created by Life.Church to spark conversations to help us live more like Jesus. We hope that you’ll listen to the podcast and then talk about it with others. Learn more at https://life.church/yhisYou can subscribe to You’ve Heard It Said wherever you listen to podcasts or watch full video episodes on the Life.Church YouTube Channel. ABOUT LIFE.CHURCHWherever you are in life, you have a purpose. Life.Church wants to help you find your next step. Our hope is that your journey will include joining us at a Life.Church location throughout the United States or globally online at https://www.live.life.churchFind locations, videos, and more info about us at https://www.life.church or download the Life.Church app at https://www.life.church/appFIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/life.churchInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/life.churchTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lifechurchYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@life.churchCONNECT WITH PASTOR CRAIGYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/craiggroeschelFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/craiggroeschelInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/craiggroeschelTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@craiggroeschel#lifechurch #yhispodcast #doubt Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to a bonus episode of the Life Church podcast. Today, you'll hear an interview with Pastor Craig Groschelle about his newest book, The Benefit of Doubt. This conversation is the final part of a four-part series on Doubt from the You've Heard It Said podcast. You can subscribe to You've Heard It Said wherever you listen to podcasts or watch full video episodes on the Life Church YouTube channel. Whether you're listening by yourself or part of a group, we hope you'll download the

conversation guide and talk about it with your friends, family, or life group. You can find it all by going to www. www.life.church slash y-h-h-I-S. Now, on to the show. Welcome to the You've Heard It Said Podcast. This is Jason. And this is Allie. Today, we're going to wrap up our mini-series with another conversation with Pastor Craig.

Yeah, but before we do that, let's talk about what we've talked about. In episode one, you got to talk with Pastor Craig, and we heard about how doubts can be beneficial to our faith. In fact, they are beneficial to our faith. And we heard about how to have conversations about death. Yeah. And then in week two, we got to hear from someone who had a crisis of faith, but came out on the other side. And so for anyone who's feeling like maybe those big questions, like the really, really big ones, disqualify you. They don't. Right. In fact, I think you can't really have a big faith without having big questions. And if your questions are small, then your answers might be small. With that, in episode three, we looked for practical tools, helpful ways to process through your doubts. Yeah. And then in week four, we're going to be talking with Pastor Chris. about how do we move forward? How do we live through these doubts and keep pressing into Jesus. Yeah, and that was a great conversation that you got to have. Let's go to it right now.

Well, Pastor Craig, welcome back to the You've Heard It Said podcast. Hey, great to be back with you again, Allie. Yeah, we're excited. So I'm going to jump straight in. All right. So you've been following Jesus for a long time. In fact, you've been our pastor at Life Church almost 30 years now. It's crazy, right? I know. So what are you saying? What are you saying? I'm old. I'm old enough to do you're saying. No, I'm just saying you've got lots of great wisdom to share. That's what I thought.

Very wise. So there's been a lot of seasons where you've had really hard seasons. Yes. And lots of doubts along the way. And so how have you kept coming back to Jesus when it might feel easier sometimes to walk away? I like the way you ask it.

How have you kept coming back to Jesus when it might be easier to walk away? Actually, even in my best doubts, my biggest doubts, I've never thought it's easier to walk away. Really? Yeah. No, I mean, I just don't think it's ever easier. One of the blessings for me,

is that my, you know, everybody's got different salvation stories and every story matters, every story is important. Mine was really dramatic. I always go back to that moment in my mind and say that that's the most real thing that I know, that I was dead spiritually and then I became alive spiritually. So with any doubt, I find that it's just, it's better to go to God with it and not to walk away. So I don't let, I don't, it was really sad to me.

And I understand it somewhat, but it's just, it's just. It's really sad. When someone gets hurt by the church, right? A lot of times they run away. And I kind of want to just say lovingly, like, I'm, you know, I get hurt by the church all the time, right? And then what I try to tell myself is it actually is not the church. It was a person or two people.

And it's, you know, I got hurt recently. And like, are you mad at the group? Like, actually, I'm not mad. I'm not mad at anybody. I was disappointed. But it was a couple of people. It's not a whole organization. It's a couple of people.

And I've heard people, right? And so what do we do? We don't run away from God. We don't run away from the church. I say, you got to go to it. And I just always find that, you know, Jesus can handle my doubts. And it's better to doubt with people doubt in community than to pull away. So I just don't, I don't, for anyone that's been hurt, the natural thing is to pull away.

I would just say push in as much as often as you can. There's, we don't heal better in isolation. Yeah. We don't heal better disconnect from God. So even if we don't understand God, even if we're mad at God's people, if we feel like we're mad at God's people, if we feel like we're mad at the church, I would say don't step away. I mean, if you have to even like catch a breather and then come back into it. So I just don't think it's better to step away from God. That's good.

So now that you've written this whole book and you're in this series, you'll probably never doubt again, right? Like you're all good. Yeah, like I said, I wrote this book a while back and I told you in the last episode that God is real, God is present. God is good and we are flawed and we are sinful. And there's a lot, and our minds play tricks on us. There's a lot of reasons for fallible people to doubt God. And it could be circumstances we don't understand. It could be a bad hormonal season. It could be a, you know, it could be a mental health challenge. It could be someone hurt us. So there's just no shame in the doubt. And, you know, unfortunately, I might have doubts again. But that's just, that's a part of it. You just,

You just, you know, in a great relationship, the best marriage, the best parent-child relationship, you get your feelings hurt, you might doubt. Are you telling me the truth? And they are. But you're just having a bad day. So don't let that freak you out. It is doubting God, questioning God. It is a part of following God and knowing God.

That's good. I think that's one of my favorite parts of your book actually is the title. Because when I hear doubt, it kind of is like this alarm that's going off. Like, oh, you better hide that one and pretend it doesn't exist. But the benefit of doubt almost gives it this redemptive quality. So what is the benefit of doubt? Well, the benefit of doubt is that is like one of the quotes we say, a faith that's been tested is a faith that can be trusted. If you have never worked through any kind of doubts before, that's a good sign that you generally love God, but it's probably a sign that you haven't had a lot of life yet.

And so sometimes you have to have some unanswered prayers for your faith to be deeper. Sometimes you have to be hurt by Christians for your faith in God to be deeper. Sometimes you have to go through something that does not seem fair and nothing seems fair about it for you genuinely trust the character of God when he didn't do what you wanted him to do. So you have to go through those questioning seasons. And, you know, every time I'm in a hard seat, like I was in one recently that was one of those that on my face before God. You know, we're like, I need God, I need God, I need God. And I was hurting and I felt all this stuff. And I told, I was just, for one of the first times, I actually led with, okay, thank you God for this season.

Wow. Because in this season, I will experience you in a different way. I'm going to need you. And so like, thank you God for it. And we're supposed to rejoice in our trials, right? We preach that. It's really hard to do. I did it.

And I did it because I've been in enough of them with God to know he'll meet me there. He'll meet me in the fire. Yeah. And so I, at, you're alluding to the fact that I'm more mature because I've been around longer. So in a little bit of that is true. You can know God in a different way after 35 years of walking with him than you can after three and a half months, right? Yeah. And so after decades of that, of knowing him in good seasons, knowing him in hard seasons, knowing him when my faith is full, when my faith is a little more empty, I do recognize you can actually rejoice.

and the doubts because you get to know God in a deeper, more intimate way through them. You'll never see someone that's really, really close with God that hadn't had trials, hadn't had questions, hadn't had doubts. Yeah. So what do you think is different about the way that you doubt now being so far in your walk with Jesus? Permission to doubt. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like permission to question God. And that's why I tell the church, you know, two or three times a year in message, like it's okay to ask him. It's okay to yell at him. you look at the Psalms, like, you know, David's not, I understand she's not having any other. Like, God, where are you? Why is this going on? And so it's just, it's giving,

early on in my life, I went to, before I was a follower of Jesus, I actually went to a pastor at a church and said like, what do I need to do to be a Christian? And the answer, I don't think was good theology, but it basically said, don't do this, don't do that and do these things. I was like going, I'm going, I'm going to screw that up bad. And so I didn't, I didn't feel like I had permission to even talk about the doubts because I couldn't get the performance right. And to realize that you're not always going to get the performance right and you're going to doubt and he still loves you and he's still God. He can handle your doubts. That's a God I want. It's a God I need. And so it's just you have permission to doubt. And when you do, don't let your

doubts drive you from God. Let your doubts, you know, pull you to him. And he may answer most your question, may not answer all of them, but he is good and he'll be faithful to you with what you need in the moment. That's really good. So for people who are in that season right now, they're in that, you know, something's going on in their life. They're not having a prayer that's answered. And they intellectually know the right things to do. They know I can still pray. They know I should talk to others. I should still go to church. But I don't feel it in my heart. What would you tell them? Well, I'd say I've been there, right? And then I would say, for example, in marriage, do you always like every, you always feel tingly-winglies like you did, you know, the first time

you made out in a slow dance or whatever? The answer, for most people, not always. So what do you do? Does that mean you ever stop doing the right thing? No, you continue to pray for your spouse, to treat your spouse with respect, to pursue your spouse, to pray together. So you keep doing the right things, whether you feel it or not. And I would say, like, that's just so true with God. Like, if I don't feel his presence, but by faith, I know he's there, I'm going to open up the word, I'm going to talk to him. And sometimes it's like he's sitting right next to me or dwelling within me another time. It's kind of like the ceilings, like I can't get through to him. But it doesn't mean he's not there. And so to have faith in God means you actually

have to have faith, right? That means you have to believe in someone you don't see. and that you don't always feel. That's faith. Yeah. And so sometimes you said faith. Yeah. Don't be ashamed of it. Just be honest with them.

That's good. And then for the people who maybe they're not personally walking through it, but they are walking with someone who's experiencing doubt. And it's not just like a one-time conversation, but maybe it's been a year or it's been a long time. What encouragement would you give to that person to keep the conversation open and to help that person? Well, I think what you're saying is exactly right. You want to keep the conversation going. And so I would just, like what I love about our life groups is like you genuinely are the pastors, like you're caring for people. And so when I'm pastoring someone, I am intimately involved daily at first, like daily. Every single day I'm going to check in and touch base. And so if someone's going through a crisis of faith, then you're going to want it might be a couple times a day. It might be more where we're going to ask questions. We're going to check on and we're going to text. We're going to read.

chowl, we're going to listen. And then as there's healing, then you might go to every other day and you start to pull back. But I would just say, like, be intimately involved in their lives. And what you're going to find is people often don't know how to ask for help. And so we're going to just bring help, whether they ask for it or not. And sometimes they don't like to receive it because it's hard to receive it. Doesn't matter. We're going to show up. We're going to help them get better at receiving. And so I would just, and, you know, especially like if you're a parent, I see this a lot. 16-year-old, 17-year-old, 21-year-old starts to have doubts in the,

and so they're going to deconstruct or whatever. And the parent runs in and starts throwing Bible verses at them or starts preaching at them or whatever. That could work. It's not a horrible plan, but a better plan might be to sit in it with them, ask questions, see what they're going through. And then, I mean, I literally pray for all points.

Pray in the right friends. Pray where they're wrong friends. It's doing life with them, with no judgment and doing a lot of prayer support. And then I try not to offer a whole lot of advice unless asked, sometimes you, sometimes you will want to, but a lot of times you want to just kind of sit in it. I'll sometimes just say, like, if there were, if there were something that would be helpful, do you want to talk about it. And sometimes they'll say no. And if they say no, I'm going to wait. Because if I respect them and the no, eventually they'll say yes.

And it's just, what I want to do is I can't solve, I can't solve every problem in the moment. But God can solve every problem in his timing. So I want to be a part of what he's doing. I'm not the only solution. I'm not the only person he's using. So I want to try to do my part. And that could be being a listening year. It could be praying.

It could be helping them come to church. It could be listening to someone just yell like crazy and not judging him in the moment. It's hurting with them. Man, it sounds like we're trying to be as gracious with others as God is with us. That's you saying it very succinctly. Oh, no. I mean, you said it. Oh, my goodness.

But so as we think about that, what is some aspects of the character of God that you have learned now going through all that? Maybe you wouldn't have without. So interesting. I'm glad you asked that because there's a characteristic of God that is so real to me right now. And I've walked with him for a long time. And I haven't talked about this much. And it's so real. It could give me emotional.

So what do we know about God? You know, he is righteous and he is just. and he's gracious and he's compassionate and he's all of those things at the same time. He's good, he's pure, he's holy. In more recent years, having endured more pain in different avenues of life, kind of what I call like the accumulation of decades of pain,

not just short seasons of pain, is I have grown to love and enjoy and appreciate and honor and thank God for his kindness. He's a very kind God. So he's a very gentle God. And so I've known his love as like forgiveness. And I've known his love as, you know, comfort. I'm experiencing his love now as kindness.

He's a very kind God. And with that being said, someone else may need a different, one of the different characteristics of God, one of his qualities, one of his attributes. And no matter how long you've walked with, and there's more depth, I mean, infinite. Who are we that? we could ever fathom who he is.

Yeah. And so I would say, wherever you're doubting, wherever you're hurting, wherever you're questioning, that could be a doorway to get to know God in a way that you haven't before. And in my recent struggles, that's been a doorway to get to know the kindness of God. Wow. I love that because for me, it's easy to believe the goodness of God, but believing he's kind is a whole other level.

What do you think is the distinction between goodness and kindness or that kindness you're experiencing? I feel like God, in goodness, he, is good, he's pure, he's holy, he's true. I can be pure and not be kind, or I could be, I could be holy and not take the time to stop and express love. I can be, yeah, and so I feel like, I feel like all the attributes of God, his compassion, his love, his grace, his mercy is expressed in kindness. He's gentle. It's soothing. He's gracious. With Amy, she said to someone else, he said, Craig's always kind to me. And when she said that, I thought, that's a really meaningful compliment to me because I always want to be kind. I want to be gentle. And I feel like that's the

way God is he is strong enough and righteous enough to smush us and we deserve it. But he's not just loving. He's not just gracious. He's not discontamableness. He's kind. And his kindness leads to repentance. And if you come to it with doubts, he's going to be kind to you and gracious. And so he's just in a long answer, the more obstacles and struggles that we face, the more opportunities we have to get to know the qualities of God that we wouldn't know otherwise. That's really good.

So this is our last week of the series, but not the last week. We hope life groups will talk about this. Of course. So what do you hope our life groups will do from here coming out of here? I hope we're just going to create an ongoing posture of being a safe place for people to be real. Every single one of us come to Jesus broken, right? None of us are under our way there. And we're all still in the process of being healed, meaning we, I haven't met anybody yet that's completely been made holy and righteous.

By positionally we are in Christ. We're righteous before God. Practically, we still have stuff, right? And so we want to be a place where you can bring your stuff in and we can all look at Jesus together and we can all be transformed. And the beauty of it is that we all heal when someone else is healing in their brokenness. And we can all, everybody has something. Everybody has something. That person in a group that never opens up, they got a something.

And we want to be a group where everybody can bring their something and put it out there. And together we can let God heal the somethings. and it's so much better to do life together. And so I don't worry about the people in our life group. I know we go through bumps and bruises and someone gossip, someone gets their feelings hurt, someone doesn't show up. Someone eats all the food, never brings the food, right?

There's always one of those. I don't worry about them because they are in community that's grounded in Jesus. I worry about the people that are not. I worry about them. And there's a lot of those in our church family that aren't rooted in deep community. And so for those that are, enjoy, embrace it, enjoy the good times and the bad times is part of it. It's always part of it. And it's even in the bad times we're conform to being the image of Christ.

So more power to our life groups. Don't be afraid to grow. Don't be afraid to multiply. Don't be afraid to let new people in. They're going to mess it up some, but that's part of it. That's when we get better is when we get a little messed up. And so I'm just, I'm just grateful for them. Grateful for you.

And all of our life groups and missions pastor, creating an environment where, people committed to community can grow closer to Jesus is happening all the time and I praise God for it. Well, thank you. Well, thank you again for taking the time to set up our conversations and being our pastor. You did a great job. Yeah, love it. Well, I loved that conversation with Pastor Craig, especially when he started talking about the kindness of God. I think it was another moment that surprised me because like I was talking with him, it's easy for me to believe in the goodness of God. But believing that God is kind has been more of a challenge for me. And so to hear him say that his doubts actually led him to a place where he's experiencing

God's kindness in a new way was really impactful. Yeah, I can very much relate with that. A current question like today that I have for God is, how do you really feel about me? Like I can read scripture and I, you know, God loves the world and, you know, and I have big ideas and theology and all this stuff. But God, like, I don't know how you feel about me. Like, I can't really feel it. How do you feel about me, God? Yeah. And I think God loves to talk to you about that question. And I think all of us will continue to have questions because that's part of having a growing faith, like what Pastor Craig talked about. And so I think the goal is not to get to a place where you never

doubt, but it's to get to a place where every doubt you have, you are going to Jesus and you are learning more about who he is and he's meeting you in that moment. And so that was really powerful to me, And I've seen that to be just incredibly true as I've, you know, worked through doubts over the last few years. I think a thing that I've come to realize is, like, Jesus came to show us what God is like. If we're wondering who is God, where is God, what is God like, you don't have to look any further than the person of Jesus. He's humble. He's kind. He's caring.

He cares for the poor. He empowers women. He's constantly saying no to people who are taking advantage of others. And I'm like, wow, I can follow Jesus. And God is love, right? Jesus is a picture of what love is like. And so, yeah, that's so true. Like, as we ask our questions, we come closer to who God is and what he's like and God is like Jesus.

Yeah, and that reminds me of a scripture in Hebrews 12, 1 through 2. And it talks about, let us run with perseverance, the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. And I love that because Jesus is the author and perfect of our faith. We are not. And so it's okay if we have questions because we can bring those to Jesus who is perfect

and he will perfect us in the process. Right. So as we think about our questions, your group that you're talking with is going to have questions. And one question we want you to ask this week when you talk with your life group or your friends or your family is what are the next steps that I'm going to take as I work out my doubts or as I help someone who I care about to process their doubts. What next steps am I going to take? And then the next thing we want you to do is actually begin to take those steps. Begin as a group or with your friends and family to take those steps. And if you look in the conversation guide,

we've given you all types of resources to help you as you follow Jesus together. And we would love to just pray for our groups as they get ready to have this conversation. So God, thank you so much for every person who is listening right now. God, we just pray that as they bring their big questions to you and to others, that they would be met with your grace and your peace and your joy, that in the middle of those questions, they wouldn't feel like they have to shove them down or be afraid of them, but that they would bring us closer to you, the author and perfect of our faith.

Jesus, we ask that these conversations would strengthen us, that they would empower us, that they would embolden us to continue to discover who you are, who you've called us to be, and how we can live as a result. So, God, we pray for these conversations. We pray that people would be met with care and with kindness, and that people would have the courage to share what they're going through. And thank you for being with us every step of the way. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Hey, it's Jason. I hope you've enjoyed this special mini-series and that you've been able to have really great conversations with the people around you. You are definitely going to want to check out the show notes wherever you've been listening to find more resources as you have conversations

about your faith-related questions. And have a great week.