S3E27
· 42:33
Alright. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you.
Nathan Archer:Good morning. Good morning. So good to be with you today. My name is Nathan. I'm a pastor in the Vancouver area.
Nathan Archer:Are any of you from BC? Yeah. Yeah. What part of BC? Trail.
Nathan Archer:I don't even know where that is. It's like Nelson. Nelson. Okay. Yeah.
Nathan Archer:Yeah. From Howard. Okay. I'm from Abbotsford. Abbotsford area.
Nathan Archer:But I grew up in Alberta. Who's from Alberta? Yeah. Uh-huh. Where in Alberta?
Nathan Archer:Stratford is in Dublin. Yeah. Okay. Have you heard of a little town called Ditsbury? Yes.
Nathan Archer:Yes. K. So Ditsbury is, like, 4,500 people. I was born in Saskatchewan. He's from Saskatchewan.
Nathan Archer:Okay. Uh-huh. Wayburn? Any Wayburn? Oh, yeah.
Nathan Archer:Yeah? Okay. Great memories there. I moved to when I was six weeks old. Got nothing.
Nathan Archer:I've I've been back once. Are there still as many Alexanders there as there used to be? Yes? Okay. Great.
Nathan Archer:I've heard there's lots of Alexanders there. So good to be with you. I am 28 years old. I'm a fan of the Buffalo Bills. I started started as a youth pastor about five years ago.
Nathan Archer:I went to school here. My wife, Sarah if you've been in the Arts And Crafts Room, how many of you have been hip into the Arts And Crafts Room so far? Any of you? So there's a mural in there that she painted. So so she's out here, and she's doing a session after lunch on art and creating music to to work on that.
Nathan Archer:It's wrong in your handbooks. So if you wanna go, it says it's in session five, but it's actually in session three. So just so you know that. I want to create space though where you can just ask me anything, get to know me a little bit before we jump in. So this is like rapid fire q and a.
Nathan Archer:Ask me anything you want. Go. Any question? Yeah. Is this the first time you
Participant 1:Is this the first time you've talked about struggling to believe?
Nathan Archer:This is not the first time I've talked about this. In fact, I talked about this with my youth group a couple of years ago, And then also, it's just kinda been a theme of things that have come up. I was I was just reading a book by a dude, like, from nineteen o two. He's a psychologist. And he was saying in nineteen o two, he's like, there are more books in terms of, like, religious books.
Nathan Archer:There's more books written on doubt than anything else. That was nineteen o two. I think it's probably still true today. Like like, it is it is just a serious thing that everybody struggles with. Whether you are, like, playing the fall of Jesus or not, like, we just have doubts.
Nathan Archer:We just struggle to believe things. So pretty common. Great question. Also, you can just ask silly questions, but me too. Yeah.
Nathan Archer:How long did you get to school here? I was here for four years, from 2014 to 2018. And so I'm gonna be a little bit biased, but it changed my life. You're gonna hear about a ton for people who have been here, but would heavily recommend that you at least consider attending this place. The very reason you don't wanna go here because it's the middle of nowhere is the exact reason it's, like, life changing because you're just stuck with people that you have to figure out how to have fun with, you have to build relationships with, and you have to, like, figure what it looks like full of Jesus in community.
Nathan Archer:There's, like, nowhere else like Briarcrest because of that. And, again, it's probably why you don't wanna be here because you're like, oh, middle of nowhere, Saskatchewan. I'm not sure if this is what I wanna do. But life, life changing. Highly recommend.
Nathan Archer:Couple other questions. How did we sleep last night? Wow. Orly, take any give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This is, like, best of my life.
Nathan Archer:This is worst sleep of my life. Wow. Oh, man, people. We got some thumbs down. Hey, Greg.
Nathan Archer:That's I know. $229. Wow. This is the one that does. So good.
Nathan Archer:So good. K. We're gonna jump in here. Before we start, turn to your neighbor, and on a scale of one to 10, talk about, like, the most doubt you've ever experienced during the election. I'm not gonna ask you about, like, the amount of doubt you're experiencing when now it comes to faith and Jesus.
Nathan Archer:On a scale of one to 10, think back to eleven ten when we were doubting the universe. See how one to 10 share with your neighbor. Go. So wrap it up. Alright.
Nathan Archer:Bring it in. Bring it in. So for my story, when I was in grade 12, just starting grade 12, mine would have been a 10 out of 10. I had assumed that I was just going to continue wearing the mask throughout my grade 12 year. I would graduate, move out of my hometown, Dittsbury, Alberta, 4 Thousand ish people, Moved to Calgary, go to university, probably become an engineer in kinesiology or something like that, and then walk away from faith.
Nathan Archer:Not because I had anything in particular against faith, I just didn't believe. I could not wrap my mind around a god that was greater than anything. Logically, something didn't make sense to me. It didn't add up. So I was not cynical.
Nathan Archer:I was not antagonistic. I was not hostile to faith at all. In fact, I wanted faith. I saw people who had this, like, deep joy that was unexplainable by anything besides the spirit of God. I wanted that, but I just knew I didn't have it.
Nathan Archer:So I was 10 out of 10. I know many people who are 10 out of 10 right now. I think of just, like, going through my neighborhood. I think of my neighbor, Adam. Adam is a corrections officer at a maximum security prison.
Nathan Archer:He joined the military, like, I don't don't even think he graduated high school. I think he just joined the military as soon as he possibly could. This guy, was he was like a manager at an inmate transition house. Like, I have nothing in common with this dude. I was up on his rooftop patio.
Nathan Archer:I was helping him set up a fire table. You know those, like, tables that, like, shoot fire out of them? You got a cooking. So I was helping him set it up, and we were just having a conversation. He is, like, as a as a corrections officer at a maximum security prison, he has stories he will not tell me.
Nathan Archer:He has PTSD from the seventeenth. Like, he's not he is with psychopaths daily as part of his job. So he is the one who's, like, seeing the stories of people taking, like, a bathroom tile, turning into a shank, and then, like, using shank a shank and wings. I'm like, I'm the one who filtered it. He's filtered out stories he won't tell me.
Nathan Archer:I'm gonna filter out stories. I won't tell you. But they this is this is his life. So he has a question when it comes to faith about how God would allow suffering in the world. And he's about very general.
Nathan Archer:He talks about how African other children in poverty. How could people act how could a good God actually allow this? This is something he wrestles with intellectually. It's also something he wrestles with personally because of what he sees every single day. He doesn't know how a good God could allow these types of people to exist or allow these types of people to interact with others in such harmful ways.
Nathan Archer:He doesn't know how this kind of God could have allowed him to endure so much throughout his life, where the only reason he's continuing to work is because he's near retirement and he's just forcing his way through. I asked him once what he liked about his job, and the only thing he said that he liked was that there's these commemoration ceremonies, like, two or three times a year where he gets to dress up. That's it. Oh, I bet. That's a terrible job.
Nathan Archer:Two or three times a year, you like your job when you're not even doing the thing you're beginning to do. Please find a job better than that. Don't don't don't go down that road. I think of another neighbor of mine. I think of Lance.
Nathan Archer:Lance is someone who a lot of us today are, like, timid about conversations, about sex. Lance is not. Somehow, he, like, figures out how to make every conversation come back to sex. It's pretty strange. But it's I love Jesus, and I love him, and I want him to know Jesus.
Nathan Archer:And oftentimes, what ends up happening is as we're having conversations, we're, like, trying trying to win the other person over. And we know it. We know it's the case. But we're, like, such good friends. He and his partner and and my wife and I went to Vancouver Island together just last weekend and and connected and had brunch together and have a conversation.
Nathan Archer:Lance's story is not one of, abuse or frustration. He grew up in the church. Says he had had a relatively good experience. But while he was in the church, he just started to have some serious questions. Questions largely related to gender and sexuality.
Nathan Archer:Things that didn't make sense to him. Things that I saw in his friends about when his friends seemed like the way they were made, and things that didn't seem to line up with what was on the scripture. Yes. It was an intellectual thing, but it was also a personal experiential thing as well. I think it was Parker Kendra.
Nathan Archer:Kendra has stories of frustration. She's she's really into she's she's an artist, and she is really strong on, like, empowering women. Huge value for her. It's actually beautiful. She did not grow up in, in in faith.
Nathan Archer:Her grandpa their grandparents were Christians, are are Christians. And, what she got to witness was a grandpa who was a very hardened man, a man who, though professing to love Jesus, was not marked by love or kindness or generosity at all, but marked by an iron fist, and got to witness a grandma who seemed to be stifled. She said she never knew her grandma growing up. And in the moment her grandpa passed away, she felt like she witnessed her grandma come alive. All of a sudden, there was this freedom in her.
Nathan Archer:So for Kendra, there was this association of of watching what she saw as her Christian grandpa stifling her grandpa, and she wanted nothing to do with it. Last weekend, we were also for, my wife's sister named Sarah. Her grandma is indigenous. Sarah's not indigenous. This was like a step down situation.
Nathan Archer:He was going through a naming ceremony. Naming ceremonies are, like, hugely significant to the indigenous communities here on the island also to to be part of that. And I'm just sitting there, and, like, inevitably, you're making small talk with people and it comes up that you're a pastor. And, yeah, it's an interesting place to be on a reserve, and acknowledging that you love Jesus and you're a pastor, and a place that as I think about it and I think for the indigenous community, it's there are some of the most legitimate obstacles to Jesus in the world. In light of what happened with residential schools, in light of what white Christian men pushed onto indigenous people, there are some serious obstacles to faith.
Nathan Archer:So my goal here today is two things. We wanna normalize doubt without glorifying. Okay? Doubt is real. You will experience doubt.
Nathan Archer:If you are not experiencing doubt right now, it will come, but I don't wanna glorify it. Sometimes it's what happens. Sometimes we start to, like, normalize doubt, and it comes to the form where it's, like, the best thing that we can do is we can doubt, we can question. If you're someone who's actually wrestling with your faith, you know that it sucks. You know that it's not fun.
Nathan Archer:You know that you don't want to be experiencing it. You know that you want to feel like this firmness, this solidity, if you will. But what we want to do today is to learn how to normalize it without glorifying it. So I'm gonna pray, and then we are going to jump into some scripture. Father, we love you.
Nathan Archer:We worship you. And today, what we want is actually, more than anything, the spirit of your spirit. We want your spirit that convicts, that anchors, that is the the seal, the first fruit of heaven. God, we want all of these things to be present in this room. That means, yes, we want to, like, experience your spirit intellectually that we would understand more.
Nathan Archer:But I also pray, Lord, that as part of this weekend, people who have who are here, who are struggling with death force, longing to believe, who are asking you for something, would actually, like, receive some of your spirit this weekend, who would actually be blessed by you, who would encounter you. Praise in your name, Jesus. And everybody said, amen. Right. We are gonna read from John chapter 20 if you have a bible or can I trust you if I say you can look it up on your phone bibles that you won't go anywhere else?
Nathan Archer:Can I trust you? Yeah. Yes? Okay. Phone Bibles, you can look it up there as well.
Nathan Archer:It is going to be on the screen, but only on the screen once, and then we'll be referring back to it. John chapter 20. Would there be a volunteer who would want to read it either from the screen or if you had an NIV translation? You could read it from the NIV in your own bible. But we're just gonna use NIV just you got it?
Nathan Archer:Yeah. Alright. Go ahead.
Participant 2:Now Thomas, also known as Didymus, one of the 12, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks on his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. A week later his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.
Participant 2:Then He said to Thomas, Put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe. Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God.
Participant 2:And Jesus told him, Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet have believed.
Nathan Archer:Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Who has heard this story before? Some people.
Nathan Archer:Okay. Similar question. Who has heard of Doubting Thomas? Doubting Thomas? Yes.
Nathan Archer:It's from the story, so you haven't heard, but this is Doubting Thomas. This is a story that comes directly after Jesus rose from the dead. K? So Jesus dies on the third day, is resurrected. Disciples aren't entirely sure what's going on, and then Jesus comes and appears to some of them.
Nathan Archer:I mean, we learned that Thomas was not actually there when Jesus first appeared. And then later on, Jesus appears. This is just in that context of trying to figure out your entire world's been reoriented. You thought that Jesus was just gonna, like, march into Jerusalem and become king of all Israel, King of all creation, which he did, but he did it by dying. So you're just, like, totally confused.
Nathan Archer:You haven't know what's going on. And you also know that Rome and Israel's Leaders are not happy with you because you feel like you're revolutionaries to them. So you're, like, hiding away in a locked house trying to be safe. This is the context of the story. What we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about three lies of doubt.
Nathan Archer:Three lies that the enemy likes to instill when it comes to doubt and struggling to believe in our faith. And the first one is this idea of the phrase doubting Thomas. It's how the church has remembered Thomas from this story alone. Thomas as the only disciple who did not believe in Jesus. We often think of doubt then as something that is a disappointment for God.
Nathan Archer:The first lie is the lie of disappointment. I think it's directly related to how we remember Thomas in this story. Thomas is the one who didn't believe he should have been like all the other disciples who believed. It's the question that comes like this, or we often will believe it like this. I have doubts, so Jesus loves me less.
Nathan Archer:He's disappointed in me. The problem is this is not at all how the story is portrayed. Why was Thomas not believing? If you go back, if you're seeing your bibles, you can see in verse 24, it says, now Thomas, also known as Didymus, which just means the twin. He was a twin, apparently.
Nathan Archer:One of the 12 was not with the disciples when Jesus came. Why did Thomas not believe? Because he wasn't in the room. It's not that everyone else had experienced the same thing and Thomas didn't and Thomas was more cynical and skeptical. It's literally because Jesus had come to the other 10 disciples, and this time, Judas is gone off, the other 10 disciples, and Thomas wasn't there.
Nathan Archer:This is not Thomas's fault. Right? This is not the story of someone who should have just believed harder, should have just trusted more. This is someone who has legitimate reasons to not believe in comparison to others. What you also do not see, if you were if you were to believe that Jesus was disappointed in Thomas, you would expect to come to see Jesus come and rebuke Thomas.
Nathan Archer:Right? You would expect to see him come and maybe pull it aside or in front of others, humiliate him and shame him and condemn him. Instead, what you see is Jesus comes and meets with Thomas. You see that Thomas says, unless I see the scars in his hands and his feet, I will not believe. What does Jesus do to that?
Nathan Archer:He shows up. He comes, and he shows Thomas his hands and his feet. Good question?
Participant 3:So what you're saying in other words is that Thomas was the only same same person among the disciples?
Nathan Archer:Not saying he's the only sane person. I'm saying that the other disciples, there's 10 so the 10 there's 11 disciples at this point in time. Great question. 11 disciples at this point in time. They're huddled away.
Nathan Archer:Thomas is not there. They're trying to figure out. They've heard rumors that Jesus is back from the dead. Jesus comes to the group of 10, and they get to witness Jesus is actually back from the dead. So, of course, they believe.
Nathan Archer:They've talked to him. They've had conversations. Thomas isn't there. All of them are saved, but Thomas wasn't there. So he comes back and he's hearing about the fact that, oh my goodness, like, Jesus is alive.
Nathan Archer:Like, I don't know. Like, I wasn't there. I didn't I didn't get to see it. I'm not sure. So so he is and all of them being sane, he his experience was just a genuinely different experience.
Nathan Archer:Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. Great question. So so Jesus does not come disappointed to Thomas.
Nathan Archer:No. He comes actually receiving Thomas. I just wanna speak this over some of you. Some of you have been believing this lie that comes through faith. It's not marked with the same strength or fervor or whatever as your friends.
Nathan Archer:You feel like God's actually disappointed with you, and that is a % not true. God delights in you. There's a quote by a guy named A. J. Swoboda in the middle of the book called After Doubting.
Nathan Archer:What he what he does at it is he talks about how often we perceive that doubt is the opposite of faith, that the more doubt you have, the less faith you have. But what he actually explains is doubt is actually the evidence of faith. If you are wrestling with something, if you are struggling to believe, that means you are inhabiting the space known as faith, where you are living out, you are struggling to believe in something that you can't fully see with your eyes. That is what faith is. So if you feel like you're in this space where, like, I just wish I could believe one of my friends.
Nathan Archer:I I wish that God was actually loving not to show like, God loves you deeply. He He cares for you. And your doubt is not evidence of his disappointment. It's actually evidence of your own faith struggling to become fulfilled in full conviction and devotion to Jesus. God is not disappointed in you.
Nathan Archer:It's the first lie that the enemy would like to instill. The second one is the lie of indifference. Maybe you're here and you're not thinking, like, I'm not I don't think Jesus is disappointing me. I just don't think he cares. I seem to struggle with doubt.
Nathan Archer:Nobody else nobody else struggles with doubt the same type of way or at least I'm not aware of people who struggle with doubt. And Jesus just seems to be doing his own happy little thing with others, and I'm just kind of going through the motions to my own discussion. I have doubts, and Jesus doesn't care. The rebuke I would like to give to that lie that the enemy would instill is to say that we see Jesus do something we don't see him do anywhere else. In verse 26, says this, a week later, Jesus' disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them.
Nathan Archer:Okay. So Thomas is now back with the disciples crew. And then it says this, though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them. Is that strange to you?
Nathan Archer:Is that weird? A little bit unfamiliar? It seems that after Jesus rose from the dead, his body, though, is the same, still had the same scars, somewhat somehow, it was the same. It was also capable of, like, walking through walls, teleporting? I don't know.
Nathan Archer:How else did Jesus get there? The doors were locked. This is included in the story for us to understand that Jesus, at this point, in his resurrection body, is capable of doing things that we are not. Just as an aside, some scholars think that this is an indication that when we are raised from the dead after Jesus returns, our body might be able to do something similar, that, like, a future Nathan might be able to walk through this wall right now. I don't know.
Nathan Archer:That's a total aside. Pretty crazy. Here's what's significant to me. The only reason we know this, that Jesus is capable of doing this, and the reason the time that Jesus chose to show his power in this is to come to someone who is doubting that they might believe. Jesus did not reserve his power to reward those who had deep conviction and firmness in their faith.
Nathan Archer:Jesus walked through walls so that someone who's doubting could believe. In fact, what we get to see at the end in verse 29 is that Jesus is actually doing this for the sake of all who would doubt. He says, because you have seen me, saying this to Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Jesus is doing this for Thomas, but he's also writing this story on behalf of every future person who's gonna be struggling to believe because they, like Thomas, could not see Jesus.
Nathan Archer:He wants to give a significant significant experience to doubting Thomas, not because he's disappointed in him, not because he's indifferent to him, but because he knows that for centuries down the road, people are going to be struggling to believe in the God that they cannot see, and he wants them to know that they are in fact seen. That God is not indifferent, that he sees them, that he cares, and that he would walk through walls in order for them to come and find him. Jesus is not indifferent. He cares deeply. The final lie is the lie of delay.
Nathan Archer:I have doubts, so God won't use me. Maybe you're here and you're not struggling with disappointment. You don't feel like God's disappointing you. You feel okay with that. Maybe you're here, it's like, oh, I don't think Jesus is indifferent to me.
Nathan Archer:I know that he loves me. But maybe your general obstacle is just this sense that, you know, until I have a stronger sense of confidence in my faith, stronger sense of confidence in Jesus, God would not use me yet. This is actually a prerequisite for belief. I'm a turn once again to the very fact that Jesus used this story to be something that for thousands of years now, people can reflect back on in their own resting of faith. Verse 29.
Nathan Archer:Because you, Thomas, have seen me. You have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. This story would not have existed without Thomas's doubt. The reason for thousands of years now, people almost thousands of years, people have been able to reflect back on this story to be affirmed in their own wrestling of faith.
Nathan Archer:The reason it exists is because Jesus used Thomas's doubt for something far greater than Thomas could have imagined. If you were to put up an obstacle, put up some type of limitation because you're of your own doubt, you can do that, but it's just you. It's not God. God is fully interested in using you in the midst of your doubt, maybe even because of your doubt. Maybe even because that you're struggling to believe in the very thing that people around the world, millions of people are struggling with, God would use that.
Nathan Archer:You know, it's a way more relatable story than, oh, I've never struggled with God in my life. That's way more relatable story than that. Yeah. I'm still struggling to believe sometimes. There's things that I there's fears that I have.
Nathan Archer:There's there's things that don't make sense to me. There's a story in the gospels of Jesus who had gathered crowds around them. It's like peak of his popularity. He's like on the mountain. If you're trying to become like a celebrity megapaster, this is Jesus' moment.
Nathan Archer:And then he tells all these crowds essentially to become cannibals. He says, unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And the crowds are like, what the heck? And they leave. And then Jesus' disciples, he turns to them and he says, are you also now going to lead me?
Nathan Archer:And Peter speaks up and he just says, Lord, where are we going to go? You have the words of love. Peter doesn't say that makes sense. Peter acknowledges that was pretty weird, Jesus. That's probably not what we would have done strategically if we wanted to grow your ministry.
Nathan Archer:But I don't know where else to go. I've witnessed things in you. I've seen your seen the power of your voice, the way you can feel. I've experienced it in my own life, and I'm just, like, relying on that, even though things don't make sense to me right now. Peter might later on been hiding Jesus because he's doubting.
Nathan Archer:He rejects him three times because he's like, something's not adding up here. By the way, the only reason we know about that story, that famous story that's recorded multiple times, how Peter rejected Jesus three times, Jesus went to the cross, there were no other disciples around. The only reason we know that story is because Peter himself thought it was significant enough to share with other disciples. Peter shared with the other disciples his own humiliation, his own rejection of God as part of pushing other people into faith. This is the type of thing that our doubt does.
Nathan Archer:It makes us, like, incredibly relatable. It normalizes the struggle without glorifying it. Jesus' response to to to Thomas here is to stop doubting and believe. He wants Thomas to experience the life where he is not struggling with this doubt, this crippling fear, where everywhere else around him seems to be struggling or seems to be confident, and he himself is like the outsider. Jesus doesn't want that in Thomas.
Nathan Archer:He wants them to stop doubting. So three things you can do if you are in a situation where you are struggling with doubt. First one is just simply this, be honest. I know it sounds like incredibly simple, maybe too simple, but it's the first thing that we see Thomas do. Thomas goes to the other disciples.
Nathan Archer:They have told him, we have seen the Lord. And Thomas says, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hands into his side, I will not believe. You know what would be more common today in that situation? It'd be more common for someone to say if they see, like, we've seen the Lord. We've seen Jesus.
Nathan Archer:It'd be more common for someone to say, oh, that's cool. I'm happy for you. Well, that's awesome. Kind of me too, to shrug it off and then move on. We are not, like, up honest about our deep struggle and belief.
Nathan Archer:We don't we don't platform that. We like to platform the people who are so confident in their faith. We like to platform people who are doing incredible things for God, where thousands of people come to faith. We don't like platform people who are just, like, really struggling to believe who are just fighting for their faith. But you know how that changes?
Nathan Archer:That changes in your youth group by you being a person who's actually gonna be a lot of start to start us. And all of a sudden, there is a creation for all the other people in your space, which I'm gonna, like, guess is probably a %, but at the very least, 90% of people who are wrestling with their faith to actually acknowledge the same thing. Second thing, as we just mentioned, community. Stay in community. You know what it is tempting for Thomas to do?
Nathan Archer:To see that the the other disciples had had this certain experience and then to isolate themselves from all of them, to all themselves. Instead, what we find is that a week later, the disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Thomas, though he was struggling with his faith, though he did not believe, he thought Jesus was still in the tomb, while all the other disciples were exalting this resurrected king. He stayed with them. Again, we are people who like to go just where we feel like we fit in the most.
Nathan Archer:The people who think like us, who feel like us, who talk like us. Thomas is an example of something like, honestly, this is probably hard to be there for a week. Everyone else, like, their entire life's been changed. The only thing they can talk about is how this guy, this king died and then rose from the dead. He's just there.
Nathan Archer:I I I don't think I believe it. Like, it doesn't make sense to me. But he stayed. And if he hadn't have stayed, he might have missed Jesus. We don't know what happened if Thomas had left, but Jesus came back to Thomas in community with the other disciples.
Nathan Archer:Right? It was a penal experience. They got to see Jesus walk through walls in community with one another. Individualism and independence is like they're like cliche phrases today. We like to do things on our own.
Nathan Archer:Our God is a God who likes to do things with people in community. From the beginning of time, he has built us for relationship. What did he say when he made Adam? It's not good for men to be alone. God likes to do things in community with people.
Nathan Archer:Stay in community even when you struggle. And then lastly, probably the hardest one, just be patient. Thomas had to wait there for a week. Like, Jesus Thomas didn't acknowledge, his fears, uncertainties, his doubts, and then like, bang, Jesus shows up. No.
Nathan Archer:Thomas acknowledged his doubts, and then he just had to sit there in fear and trembling for a week. For many people, a week is and you might probably have been familiar with this. A week is, like, pretty short, actually. It could take years. But that doesn't mean that God's not present.
Nathan Archer:In fact, patience is one of the things that God actually wants to work out of us. So the fruit of spirit is one of the things that he wants to foster deep within us, is that we're gonna be a patient people. And you know, like, the best way to make impatient people is to give them exactly what they want whenever they want it. That's, like, a key ingredient to making people impatient. You know what a key ingredient to make people patient is, though?
Nathan Archer:To actually allow people to go through struggles and wrestlings and doubt and present. I will be honest with that struggle. I'll continue to wait in community, but I'm believing that one day, god, you will show up. For me, this happened. As I said, I entered grade 12 not believing in Jesus.
Nathan Archer:I had probably from grade nine on had been struggling with that faith. I've been asking God for signs. In retrospect, God is always present, but I've never seen anything. I've entered grade 12 and I've had understood that I would be walking away from faith after I graduated. I remember the exact day the battle changed.
Nathan Archer:It was 11/17/2013, and all of a sudden, I was kneeling by my bed flipping through a Bible I had hardly read and just praying these words again and again about, god, I need you. Lord, I need you. Eventually, my thumb stopped and wrote up to one of David's Psalms. And in fact, I read the same words that had been, coming out of my mouth. I read them.
Nathan Archer:Now it's significant, but I mean, I'm like skeptical. I'm cynical. That could just be like, I didn't get any idea. It's just coincidence. But the experience afterwards is something that's still over a decade later.
Nathan Archer:I don't know how to put into words. We'll sing songs about being washed white as snow, and it was something like that type of experience where it was just like from the inside out, almost or maybe more so like from my head to my toes. It was just like being washed over with something, and I just knew I was never gonna be the same. I went to my youth pastor afterwards and just told her, I believe. That's all I had.
Nathan Archer:I believe. I don't know what else is going on, but I believe. There was this, like, joy. I just, like, couldn't stop smiling for a cubic stretch. You You know what happened?
Nathan Archer:For probably three or four years after that, I didn't struggle with belief in God once. I certainly sinned, which maybe is worse, to believe in God and then still, like, reject him anyways. Didn't struggle once. Really cool experience. Also, not my current experience.
Nathan Archer:I, like, personally encounter God. I've seen I've seen God heal my mom when she wasn't able to walk and she's now she ran down a mountain afterwards. I've seen God move, and yet I'm still enabled now today to try somehow convince myself that maybe it was all just like placebo effect. Maybe it didn't really happen. I'm here as someone who's still struggling, but I just like to confirm I've I've become firmly convinced that this is part of what it means to follow Jesus.
Nathan Archer:Again, in the words of AJ Swagoda, to struggle with one's faith is often the surest sign that the action happened. That's what I'm clinging to and what I invite you to cling to as well. Let's pray and then I'll finish up here. We do some q and a. So father, we love you and we thank you for the goodness of your son Jesus.
Nathan Archer:And what we ask, Lord, is for the patience to wait for you to arrive in our life. For the vision to see when it happens. For the relational trust that we would be honest alongside one another with our struggle and the safety of mentors and friends who have received us anyways. In all these things, Lord, more than anything we want you to be glorified. We want you to renew all things.
Nathan Archer:We want you to renew our minds and our hearts. We want you to renew our friendships and our families. We want you to renew our entire world, all of creation. Praise your name, Jesus. Everybody said Amen.
Nathan Archer:Amen. I would love to open it up to you for some q and a, any questions you might have. Pretty straightforward. One of the things I didn't do, like, I didn't talk about specific doubts just because this was trying to cover everything. So if there's specific doubts we wanted to talk about, you can do that.
Nathan Archer:Also, you don't have to stay. Like, if you if you wanna get going what time does the main session start? Ten. Ten? Yes.
Nathan Archer:We got some time here, but, I'm just gonna I'm okay with silence. So I'm just gonna sit down, create some space. And then when it feels like an appropriate amount of time, we'll dismiss. Bye. Any questions you want, fire them away.
Nathan Archer:Yeah. So sometimes when you look at other believers, you have experiences. You look at yourself, it's a Yeah. It's good. Even one of the things you said of, like, leaning into the your own experience, one of the struggles that you have, just leaning into that.
Nathan Archer:So so I mentioned, like, my my struggle with faith has largely been, like, logical inconsistency, I would say. What's fascinating now is on the other side, which we call the other side a decade later, but, one of, like, the deepest callings that I have that I that I sense from god is actually to, like, use my mind to wrestle with big ideas for the sake of others, to to try and wrestle out and see how this faith of ours, this faith that's been passed on for centuries, is actually the most beautiful intellectual picture of all of creation. That's one of the callings that I feel like I have. That I would like. I again, as you were saying, like, I felt like I was going the opposite direction.
Nathan Archer:This very, like, mind, this intellectual side of me was gonna be the thing that would make me resist God and is actually gonna be the thing that is used. So love that. Beautiful. Other questions? Yeah.
Participant 4:Do you think, like, if you're in a place where you know, like, you do believe in, like, in God in the Bible, but you're still doing stuff that goes against the Bible does that mean you aren't really believing and you're not being honest with yourself?
Nathan Archer:that's a great question. I I want to distinguish between the type of belief where we're talking about, like, are you saved and the type of belief where it's like, I'm I'm wrestling. So I'm my answer here is not at all a question of whether or not you're saved. I I think in that type of, like, wrestling %, if you believe in Jesus, you don't have to, like, make sure that you've now never sinned again in order to be rescued from death forever. But I do think it's, like, fair language, and I think it's James that talks about, if you if you, I'm gonna blank on the words here.
Nathan Archer:But essentially, the idea of, like, if you are sinning, if you are rejecting God, it's a marker of a lack of belief. And you don't truly believe these things are true to some degree. So, yes, but not in a way that's like salvation. Does that make sense? Do you understand?
Nathan Archer:Do you understand what I'm making? Yeah. Yeah. But but I do think what ends up happening is, like, if you can find ways to, like, through honesty, through community, through patience, to actually, like, strengthen your faith, what starts to happen as you as you believe this and then, like, further convictions, you're like, I actually don't really wanna sin because I'm just starting to believe more and more that this is the way of life, and I want to do this. So first question.
Nathan Archer:Yeah. That's such a real question. If you couldn't hear it, it's, you feel like you've been walking through these things. You feel like you've been honest. You've been in community.
Nathan Archer:You're trying to be patient, and now you're just tired. That's such a real question. I don't have a perfect answer. I think that's part of the struggle of doubt is it's like there's something very isolating about it where you feel like you're on on your own. So what I would lean into is, like, the next level of honesty that you've just done is, like, no longer, like, I'm just trying to believe, but the second step, like, I'm just, like, tired of this journey.
Nathan Archer:And I and I think dream situation, this isn't possible for everyone, but dream situation is you actually have friends who know that about you. So if you're if you have a friend who has someone in your life who do a best in a certain way, and you could do this by the way as a friend who has your own doubts, to be the type of person who just had random moments is like, hey. God brought me to mind or God brought me to mind. Here's a verse that's, like, sticking out to me for you. It is like it's crazy how God will use those, like, spontaneous moments to just, like, speak to people directly.
Nathan Archer:I remember in high school, since it was after after, like, my encounter experience, there'd just be times where I was like, I don't know if this is how God works, but, like, someone's come to mind, often came while while I was, like, not wanting to fall asleep at 1AM. I don't know. So maybe I just wanted to text someone. But I would just text them, and, like, how frequently the response back would be like, this is crazy that, like, this verse came to mind for you. To be honest, I had, like, three verses that I just, like, cycled through.
Nathan Archer:Like, I wasn't super spiritual with it. I've said a few verses. But there's just something about being a friend to people who are doubting, where you're just saying, I'm thinking about you and praying for you, and this is what I think God's would do it to me for you. So to share what you just said with your friends and maybe to invite you to, like, hey. If you wouldn't mind just, like, texting me, like, a verse here or there, I think that might be a next step.
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