A Jude 3 Project study guide. Use time: about 45 minutes for a group.
The big question
Many believers carry questions they are afraid to say out loud, worried that doubt means weak faith. This guide sits with how Scripture actually treats hard questions, why a faith that cannot hold them is too small, and how to bring your own doubts honestly to God instead of letting them quietly pull you away.
Sit with this before you move past it
Do not rush to the resolution. Before this guide gets to answers, let the actual weight of the question land. If you have spent years afraid to ask God why, afraid that the question itself proves something is wrong with your faith, that fear has likely cost you something real: honesty in prayer, honesty in community, maybe honesty with yourself. This guide will not tell you the question was wrong. It will tell you the silence around it was.
What Scripture actually shows about questioning God
Genesis 15:1 to 6 records Abraham questioning God directly about the long delay of his promise, and God's response is not rebuke. It is reassurance. Habakkuk 1:1 to 4 records a prophet asking how long and why, complaining openly about injustice he sees in the world, and God receives the complaint rather than silencing it. Mark 15:34 records the most startling instance of all: Jesus himself, on the cross, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." If the question of abandonment crossed the lips of the Son of God, it is not disqualifying for you to ask it. And 2 Corinthians 12:7 to 9 shows Paul pleading for his thorn to be removed and being told no, but given grace instead. Sometimes the answer to a hard question is not removal of the pain. It is presence inside it.
Taken together, these are not isolated exceptions tucked into an otherwise tidy book. They are a pattern running from Genesis to the cross. The Bible does not merely tolerate hard questions from its most faithful people. It records them as part of what faithfulness looked like.
Sit with the question you have been avoiding
Dr. Esau McCaulley admitted he could not name a single biblical hero who never questioned God, and concluded it would be unfaithful to hold ordinary believers to a standard the Bible's own characters do not meet. Rev. Jenay Pitts-Murdoch went further, naming the real danger as a theology with no room for questions at all, not the questions themselves. Sit with that reversal. The problem you have been carrying may not be your doubt. It may be the framework that told you doubt was the problem.
Dr. Frederick Haynes III pointed to Gideon's blunt complaint to the angel of the Lord, if God is with us, why has all this happened, and said plainly, "If I can't ask that question, then my God is too small." Let that sit uncomfortably for a moment before moving on. What is the question you have been told is too big, too dangerous, or too disrespectful to ask God directly?
Where the deepest version of the question actually rests
When the question is not abstract but personal, where was God when this specific suffering happened to me or someone I love, Dr. Sarita Lyons points to one place that holds the full weight without flinching: the cross. "We point people to the cross, the only place where an innocent person ever suffered," she said. This is not a tidy resolution that makes the pain disappear. It is the claim that God did not answer suffering with an explanation from a distance. He answered it by entering it.
Sit with that claim rather than rushing past it into the next discussion question. Does it change anything that the God you are questioning has himself been on the receiving end of the very question you are asking?
Scripture to sit with
- Genesis 15:1 to 6. Abraham questions God about the delay of the promise, and God meets him with reassurance, not rebuke.
- Habakkuk 1:1 to 4. The prophet asks how long and why, complaining openly about injustice. God receives the complaint.
- Mark 15:34. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. Even Jesus voices the cry of abandonment from the cross.
- 2 Corinthians 12:7 to 9. Paul pleads for his thorn to be removed and is told no, but given grace. Sometimes the answer is presence, not removal.
Quotes worth discussing
- "It is unfaithful for us to have a requirement for people that the very characters in the book that we revere don't actually reflect." (Dr. Esau McCaulley)
- "Sometimes those questions aren't a resignation, but a resolve that God is the way." (Dr. Sarita Lyons)
- "I should hope that our God is big enough, broad enough, strong enough, caring enough to handle our questions. It is concerning when we have theologies that cannot make room for questions." (Rev. Jenay Pitts-Murdoch)
- "If I can't ask that question, then my God is too small." (Dr. Frederick Haynes III)
- "We have to be able to receive questions as invitations and not as indictments." (Rev. Jenay Pitts-Murdoch)
Discussion questions, for sitting with, not solving quickly
- What question about God or faith have you been afraid to say out loud? What makes it feel unsafe, specifically?
- Which biblical questioner do you most relate to right now: Abraham, Job, Habakkuk, or Jesus on the cross?
- Where has suffering raised your hardest questions, and how does Lyons's answer, that the cross is the only place an innocent person ever suffered, sit with you?
- Have your intellectual questions ever been a cover for something else going on in your heart, the way McCaulley describes his own?
- Does your church or community treat questions as invitations or as indictments? What would change if it became the former?
Lament: a practice, not a performance
This week, write down the one question you have been most afraid to ask, in full, without softening it. Bring it to God in prayer as honestly as the Psalms do, with no requirement that you resolve it by the end of the prayer. Then share it with one trusted believer, someone likely to receive it as an invitation rather than an indictment. A question spoken to God in trust is not a threat to your faith. It is often the doorway deeper into it.
If the question you are carrying involves thoughts of harming yourself, please do not carry it alone. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available anytime by call or text, and reaching out is itself an act of honesty God can meet.
Go deeper
This study draws on the Jude 3 Project Courageous Conversations panel on whether God can handle our questions. For a related study in this series, see the conversation on where God is when life is falling apart.
Closing reflection
This week, write down the question you have been most afraid to ask, and bring it to God in prayer as honestly as the Psalms do. Then share it with one trusted believer. A question spoken to God in trust is not a threat to faith. It is often the doorway deeper into it.