Losing Doubt or Caging Ourselves

This blog started on March 19, 2009 with some thoughts on confidence.  Here we are almost 5 years later with a minute-by-minute need for confidence in Him.  Apparently, this is a lifetime work.  As you grow in the Lord, confidence in His true all sufficiency is a necessity that will always need to be increased.  Once you think you might have the belief-and-no-doubt thing figured out, something will come along to prove you wrong.

Doubting and belief don't work together in pleasing Him.
You can't walk in the Spirit with doubt.
You can't pray in the Spirit with doubt.
You can't put on the full armor of God with doubt.
We can't see the glory of God for what it is unless doubt is overcome by belief.

Speaking for myself, it seems easier to doubt than to sin in any other way:
Stuck in traffic, needing to get somewhere, starting to feel stressed because... I'm doubting that He is enough for this too.
My day is "falling apart" with errors, losses, non-productivity, my own wasted time, etc...  Doubting, again, that He is enough.
I have failed as a parent.  Look at what my kids are thinking and doing!
If I had just done better at school, I would have been able to...

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose."  Romans 8:28  I know that, don't you think I know that?!
Well, doubt does come easy and that verse says "ALL things."  That includes everything from little annoyances to the devastating tragedies of life.

Martha was believing but doubting and Jesus told her this, "Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?"  John 11:40

Peter was believing, but started doubting and heard this, "Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?"

We might be quick to point out the unbelief or doubt driven failings in others who are born again while we are not living in the promise that "He who has begun a good work in you will be faithful to complete it..." Therefore, we tend to pray for them with doubt in our hearts.

Too many of us think that we've been fully believing since day one; that day we were born again.  Yet, every day it seems we are being proven wrong but not noticing; then wondering, "What is the problem that is keeping me from walking in the Spirit?" Unrecognized doubt has us caged.  We are supposed to be free.  Could it be that our tendency to doubt is under emphasized in teaching, (it is certainly not under emphasized in God's Word), and unnoticed in our own self judgement?  Notice that believing comes before hope and the power of the Holy Spirit in us:
"Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the Holy Spirit."  Romans 15:13

"Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!"