How can I be sure?

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Well good morning. It's good to be here. We are finishing our series on the reason for God, trying to address some of the struggles a lot of people, especially in our culture in the last, oh, couple decades, are struggling with more than ever before. And it's kind of fun to sum it up today. I look forward to how grace changes everything as well. But before we begin, let's pray. Lord God, this is your day and we are yours. And Lord, I thank you for everyone who is here this morning and how you brought us together. We pray that now, Holy Spirit, you'd work through your word in such a way that you would, Well, help us, Lord, to believe a little more, but to see you more clearly and understand your love for us in the midst of doubts and questions and struggles. So Lord, bring your healing presence to bear, your good news for each of us. Be present. And be present at all the gospel churches in our area. We thank you so much that we are not alone by any means. You have blessed us with many Christian churches in Estero and Bonita Springs and Fort Myers that are all following you and in different expressions. And so, Lord, bless their worship and create a movement here in this area, Lord, a movement of your kingdom that goes well beyond Thrive and well beyond what we even anticipate or expect. All this we pray in Jesus' name, amen. So you can follow along with the sermon notes on the Bible app, and in it, you'll also find our text today. It's going to be from the Gospel of John, chapter 20, starting with verse 24, okay? Now, Thomas, one of the 12 called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. This was right after the resurrection. But he said to them, unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I will never believe. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace, be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands and put your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Thomas answered him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. So like I said at the beginning, today we come to the conclusion of our sermon series. And why did we even do this sermon series? I'm going to remind you again, you might be tired of that, but we did this sermon series because there are legitimate questions people have and struggles they have with believing in God in this day and age. Every culture in every time period has different cultural assumptions. They just assume this is the way it is, this is the way it is, and those assumptions make Christianity seem implausible. Like how can you believe that? You know, how easy is it to believe? It seems impossible. And you saw some of those individuals in that bumper video right before this sermon who struggle with some of those things. How do we address those? But it's not just people who don't believe in God. It's also for us who do, we struggle with these things. And so we're coming to the last in our series. And the question we're asking today is, what do I do with my doubts? How can I be sure? One of my favorite animated movies is Shrek. Do you remember in Shrek how he goes, ogres are like onions, they have layers? And the donkey says, well, what about a parfait? A parfait has layers too, or a cake. But I think this question, what do I do with my doubts, how can I be sure, has a lot of layers to it. And we're going to try to peel away some of them. For instance, one of the questions we might ask with this is, what do you mean by doubt? What are you going to do with them? Or what do you need to know for sure before you will believe? Or what do you mean, what do you believe believing means? You know, those are some of the questions that come with it. And I'm not trying to add to your doubts today about it. So there's a number of layers. And some of these layers deal with what's called epistemology. Have you ever heard that word before? How do we know what we know? And I think the one guy in the bumper video kind of brought that up. He goes, well, I'm not sure how we can be sure about anything. Did you notice that? And my question to him, it might be snarky, is how sure are you that you can't be sure? Do you understand? And why I'm saying that is because you have to finally, in the end, believe in something. You ground your ...