Putting Doubt on a Diet

In our first year of marriage, my wife and I moved into a rental house built in the early 1900s. The cracks in the windows let in hot air in the summer and cold air in the winter. In July, the smell of cat urine in one of the upstairs closets came alive and roamed the halls. The furnace barely took the chill out of the rooms in December, even though we stapled blankets over all the windows. 

These issues would have been funny newlywed memories to look back on with laughter, but not the basement. The basement was no laughing matter. 

In the basement, we discovered a smell much worse than cat urine hanging so thick in the air you could taste it. The stone walls were a spooky backdrop of cracked bricks, and the floor was incomplete with sections of dirt that turned to mud when it rained. 

We would have never ventured below the first floor, but the washer and dryer were down there, so every load of laundry forced us to endure the mud, the smell, and the spookiness. My wife and I wondered if someone had been murdered down there. A dead body rotting in the basement would explain the smell, the cheap rent, and maybe the stains on the ground. 

Our neighbors soon informed us the smell wasn’t from a corpse. 

It was from a goat.

The previous tenants had kept a goat who lived, ate, pooped, and smelled as a full-time basement resident for several years.

If you’ve ever wondered, when a goat is a previous tenant, he can pass his smell onto your clothes even though he doesn’t live there anymore.

Smells have a way of attaching to memory, and even though we moved out of that house years ago, I can easily recall the smell of the goat.

Doubt is like a hungry goat in the basement of our minds. Doubt loves living down deep, attaching its stink to our memories, voraciously eating everything, and causing us to question ourselves and our capabilities. We know the hungry goat named doubt. Doubt loves to see us second-guess the decisions we’ve made or goals we’ve set. When we feel insecure about things we can’t control, it’s usually because doubt has escaped from the basement and is running free in our minds. 

The Distinct Voices of Doubt:

Doubt has a distinct voice. It’s the voice baying when we take on the big assignment from our boss:

• “You don’t have what it takes to deliver.” 

It’s the voice saying:

• “You’ll never save your marriage or get out of debt.” 

It’s also the voice whimpering:

• You answered those questions in your job interview weakly. 

Doubt enticingly acknowledges your good intentions, tells you the goals you’ve set are reasonable, but then chips away at your footing by reminding you of all the areas and ways your plan will fail.

So, what do we do with the goat living in our basement? 

“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.”  John 20:27 NIV

Question:  What doubts have you been feeding in your life? What specific doubts have plagued you as a Christian speaker, writer, or leader?  What is your best tip or Scripture for defeating doubt?