Most Christians have doubts from time to time. Moments of weakness where we scoff at something we read in the Bible, or question why something is the way it is. This happened to me this morning. I was reading a passage in Luke where it was talking about Jesus giving power to his apostles. My devotional went on to elaborate on Jesus’ authority to give and take power, and for the briefest of moments I thought how arrogant this was and why would Jesus have to physically give power. It was a very very small moment, almost merely a feeling than an actually thought out idea. I shook my head, literally, and tried to think of something else. After all, thoughts like these have no place in my Christian walk. Then it occurred to me that moments like these are almost crucial to my Christian walk. And simply trying to think of something else is not the answer. It’s easy to say “the Devil is putting bad thoughts in my head,” and while this may be true, I think it would only be giving him more credit to simply say “the devil made me do it” and shake it off. Any unwelcome thought, if not given over to God can turn into much more than a thought. If I followed my thought to conclusion on my own, obviously a seed of doubt or resentment toward God might have found its place. Simply throwing it out would only leave room for it to come back. What if I just relinquish control for a moment, which is hard for us humans to do sometimes. What if I let God carry the thought out? Instead of only this thought, I would have other thoughts to counter it. It would make my faith strong in my doubt to allow God to remind me of His purpose. In other words, God would have squashed the life out of that weed and turn it to dust! Bad thoughts in and of themselves are not wrong, it all depends on how we handle them. We as humans have a curious nature about us. Some random thought pops into our head and we have a tendency to take it apart and examine it up close. Satan may place ideas, but he certainly doesn’t make us dwell on them. We can carry our thoughts out to conclusion on our own, which will surely lead us to ruin. We can stay baby Christians by shrugging it off and giving the opportunity for the same doubt and fear to return. Or, we can give it over to God and the next time we are faced with this delima, we are prepared. I don’t want to say that I welcome all bad thoughts now, but I certainly don’t feel ashamed about it any more. Which consequently is another way Satan tries to attack us. Making us feel ashamed, or like we’re a bad person for thinking certain things. We won’t give it to God if it reveals our weakness right? Who wants to be exposed? But in reality the only shame and weakness that comes from unwelcome ideas is keeping them to ourselves, or not giving them any notice at all. There is no shame in going to God, and He is able to make us strong.