What does First B Jackson teach about doubt and faith?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on doubt and faith takes doubt seriously rather than brushing it aside. When Pastor Ray preached from Matthew 11, he made a point of naming who was doing the doubting: John the Baptist, the man who had baptized Jesus, heard the Father's voice from heaven, and been filled with the Holy Spirit before he was born. If John could sit in a prison cell and genuinely wonder whether any of it was real, then struggling with faith is not a sign that someone has lost it. Jesus did not rebuke John for asking. He told John's disciples to go back and report what they were seeing, pointing to the works that lined up exactly with what he had said he came to do.
Pastor Blake, preaching from Mark 9, stayed close to the father of the demon-possessed boy for the same reason. The man did not pretend to have faith he did not have. He cried out that he believed, but asked Jesus to help him overcome his unbelief. Blake drew a distinction the room was meant to hold onto: faith is not something a person produces by trying harder. He described it as God's divine persuasion, always a gift. The way to receive more of it is to do what the father did, yield, admit the lack, and ask God to supply what is missing. That honesty in the middle of wavering is itself a movement toward faith, not away from it.
Taken together, these messages treat doubt not as the opposite of faith but as something that can exist inside it. The pattern across both texts is the same: a person in genuine struggle, an honest cry, and Jesus moving toward them rather than away. The teaching at First B consistently points people back to that same posture, bringing what little faith they have and asking God to do the rest.
Taught from Mark 9:14-29 · Matthew 11:2-5
The passage taught · Mark 4:24
24 He said to them, “Take heed what you hear. With whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you, and more will be given to you who hear.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- March 7, 2022 Bring the Boy to Me In Mark 9, a desperate father and struggling disciples teach us that faith is a gift we ask God to grow, and prayer is where real power begins.
- May 31, 2015 Go and Tell John the Things Which You Hear and See Pastor Ray returns from a mission trip to Guatemala and ties what the team witnessed there to John the Baptist's question from prison: "Are you the coming one?"
Mentioned along the way
- April 14, 2024 Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead Luke 24 traces the risen Jesus from an empty tomb to the Emmaus road, showing confused disciples how Scripture always pointed to a suffering and risen Christ.
- December 8, 2019 By Faith: Abel, Enoch, and Noah Hebrews 11 traces the faith of Abel, Enoch, and Noah, showing how trusting God over what we can see shapes a life that pleases Him.
- January 22, 2017 The All Sufficiency of Christ Paul opens Colossians by grounding Christian hope in the sufficiency of Christ, not ritual or superstition, and praying believers would grow in God's will and knowledge.