Perhaps you have heard well-meaning folks facing difficult circumstances say, “Well, it’s just God’s will, and we can’t question it.”

We may have at times even expressed this idea ourselves. This statement usually arises from a mindset that trusting God without irreverently seeking to understand the deep mysteries of His ways is the marker of a genuine faith.

While this logic often springs from a sincere heart, is this the way we are intended to understand faith? Does biblical faith require us to suspend our questions?

If faithful people are never supposed to ask questions, none of our faith heroes were actually very faithful- Abraham (Gen 15:2), Moses (Exodus 3-4), David (Ps 22:1), and even Jesus (Mt 27:34) all expressed a questions desiring to know the Father’s will more fully. If Jesus, echoing David, could so publicly question His Father in the midst of His greatest trial, why do we so often presume that questioning why things happen is a sign of a weak faith?

Their questions were not a sign of a lack of faith, but a sign of a lack of clarity of why God had called them to a particular task or how a particular challenge was to be resolved. The questions were not just to gain information, but to more fully understand the why of their circumstances.

They actively wondered how a righteous God could (or would) bring about the very promises He had given when their outward circumstances seemed to declare just the opposite result was occurring. Do you ever wonder that too? I sure have at different points in my life.

In Judges, Gideon asks the Angel of the LORD, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’” (Judges 6:13) Is there an accusation in this query? Absolutely- at least on one level, but could his question not also be seen as confusion, frustration, or grief? Gideon believes the LORD has forsaken His people, and he lays his questions before God.

The LORD does not given Gideon a lecture; He instead empowers him with a clarifying mission. Often the answers we seek come not through a bright light of enlightenment but through a call to obedience and a reminder of God’s overarching promise that He will act for His glory and our good.

Sometimes Scripture answers questions by direct words or through the examples of others (Ps 119:105). Sometimes life’s circumstances resolve in such a way that we can seem to perceive the guiding hand of Providence working for our good (Rom 8:28). And sometimes the answers do not come, but we are the better for having asked the questions. If we learn more about God’s nature and our own spiritual journey through the process of questioning and struggle, may be the answer is not a single clean-cut truth, but the faith that emerges only through enduring the valleys of experience.

Paul writes in 1 Cor 13:12 that, “for now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” The fact we can only see dimly shouldn’t stop us from looking for God and examining our own lives as we seek to conform them to His will.

The promise of faith becoming sight should be seen an invitation to keep searching and wrestling with our faith- not an excuse to avoid exploring our hearts and seeking to know God more fully simply because our understanding in this moment is limited.

I believe that, by faith, one day we will know all we need to know, but until then may we have the courage to keep questioning and the conviction that He will answer in all the ways we most need here and now.