There is a psalm that begins, “I waited patiently for the Lord, he inclined to me and heard my cry” (Psalm 40:1). What follows is a celebration of God’s goodness after a season in a “desolate pit” and “muddy clay.” It’s a psalm that David Sheets has come to understand deeply. He writes:
In college, Jesus changed me. I grew up in a Christian home, but I hadn’t made a decision about whether or not I would follow Jesus. Then one night, praying in bed, God spoke Luke 9:23 strongly in my heart, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (ESV). There were things I needed to lay down, and in that moment I did. I gave up everything that I might gain him. My love for Jesus grew quickly. I became obsessed with his Word and knowing him more. I experienced intimate friendship with the Lord.
After college, I went on staff with a college ministry called The Navigators. I had become passionate about knowing Christ and making him known, and working in full-time ministry gave me ample opportunities for both. I married my wife, Julia, and partnered with her in the gospel as we shared Jesus and discipled students at our alma mater. Life was good.
During our second year with The Navigators, I remember praying what felt like a bold and dangerous prayer: “God, whatever it takes, I want to know you more.” The prayer scared me. I struggle with anxiety, and I thought (and feared!) that the Lord would use some kind of tragedy to bring me to a place where I all I had to rely on was him. I knew from older, more mature Christians that God often accomplishes this through trials. But I set my heart toward God and asked anyway. I wanted more of him.
During that same year, Julia and I went through a months-long process of deciding whether or not we would continue with full-time ministry. As we considered God’s calling, he made it clear that it was time for me to again pursue filmmaking, a long-time passion. But one fear nagged at me: “What if I leave my faith for the things of this world?” Ministry was a spiritual fence that I trusted to protect me from the temptations of the world. I saw it as a way to guarantee that I would continue to walk with Jesus for the rest of my life. But I also knew what the Word of God said: I was sealed by the Holy Spirit. No one could snatch me from Jesus’s hand. So we left ministry and in 2014, we moved to Chicago, where I started a videography business.
And so began one of the most professionally rewarding and spiritually devastating periods of my life. Even as the business took off and I loved the creative work, I couldn’t help but feel like this new vocational calling was not really useful to God. How could it be compared to the endless opportunities to share Christ in college ministry? What I’d learned about how to reach college students with the gospel didn’t translate well in my new circumstances, and that was bewildering. I was more alone than I had ever been, leaving behind the comfort of tight-knit Christian community to live and work in a place with few Christians and going from working closely with Julia to working on opposite shifts (she worked nights as a nurse).
My mind started to turn over doubts and questions. How does the creation account make sense? How can the God of the Old Testament be called good? How much of salvation is God’s sovereignty and how much man’s responsibility? Where is the justice in sending people to hell? What of the souls of children and the mentally disabled? Maybe these questions were always there, ignored and unaddressed. I kept trying to push them away, to just will myself into faith, but they kept gnawing away at the fabric of my faith. Sometimes I took them out and examined them, hoping that reading books on the subject or asking God to show me the truth would resolve the doubt for good or that I’d be able to live with the mystery of God’s nature like other Christians seemed to be able to do.
This wrestling was exhausting for my mind and my spirit and it would continue, off and on, for the next 7 years until I was worn down and my faith was little more than a thread. More times than I can count, I considered walking away from Jesus. I was losing years of my life to this season of spiritual storms. And yet, there was one truth I could not shake. In the darkest moments, after I had again broken down crying in Julia’s arms and told her how utterly hopeless I felt, I would find myself repeating something I knew to be true even as so many other doubts crashed around me: “I am the Lord’s, and he will keep me.”
Then all of the sudden, near the beginning of 2021, God moved. I was journaling, trying as I had for so many years to listen to him. In the softest way, the Holy Spirit whispered to my heart and dispelled my doubts entirely: Abide in my love. He did not answer all my questions nor reveal some hidden thing that will move the heart of every believer who wrestles with doubt. No, my doubts dissolved because Jesus showed up and spoke. It was as though the scales fell from my eyes and I could see Christ clearly again.
It took several days before I realized the significance of what had happened. I had asked many times that God would not let me muster up some short-lived, emotionally-driven catharsis to bring me out of my doubts. But this wasn’t that. He had truly intervened. A new joy and freedom began to accompany my worship as my heart exulted in the Lord’s deliverance. Praying, singing praise, reading his Word, and experiencing fellowship became sweet again. Even sweeter than before I left ministry.
More than once, I asked God “Why are you letting me go through this?” Recently the Holy Spirit brought Psalm 40 to mind: “He brought me up from a desolate pit, out of the muddy clay, and set my feet on a rock, making my steps secure” (v. 2). As I read that psalm, I see the ways Jesus has changed me during my years of doubt. It says, “Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust…” (v. 4, ESV). That’s me because God has placed himself at the center of my confidence, and he has confirmed the one truth I’d held on to: “As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me; your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me!” (v.11, ESV).
The Holy Spirit has pointed out to me the number of years he had held onto me: seven. The number used so often in God’s Word to represent completion. He said to me, I have kept you for seven years. Always look back on this time and know that I will keep you forever. I prayed to know God more, and he answered.
