Develop spiritual discipline
10
Doubt: how to handle it
The previous four chapters have dealt with specific doubts and anxieties that cause concern to many Christians. Since this work is likely to be read by many students and young Christians, I have often addressed issues and doubts that occur in the early stages of growth in faith. But doubt is something experienced by all Christians, young and mature. In this chapter, I shall turn to deal with some more general strategies for coping with doubt, throughout the life of faith.
Faith and a hostile culture
We noted earlier how our culture seems to encourage doubt. This idea of the hostility of Western culture towards faith is not new. In 1942 C. S. Lewis described faith as existing on ‘enemy territory’. Writing during the Second World War, when much of continental Europe was occupied by Nazi armies, Lewis was trying to express the idea that faith was like a resistance movement, which was hostile to the invading power. That invading power was determined to stamp out any resistance it met. Since then, Western culture has become much more aggressively secular. Those committed to secular values have a vested interest in destroying the credibility of the Christian faith – and that means your personal faith as well. It is common for Christians to find themselves isolated at work, or ridiculed for their faith. They are conscious of the fact that their faith marks them out as ‘abnormal’ in the eyes of their colleagues. It’s almost as if you have to apologize for believing in God. Christian values and presuppositions are gradually being squeezed out of every area of modern Western culture. ‘Christianity is a fighting religion’ (C. S. Lewis). Faith, like a resistance movement, has to survive in a hostile environment. But it can survive.
Many Christians find the new aggressiveness of secular culture deeply disturbing. It seems to call their faith into question. The hostility of much of modern Western society seems highly threatening. It causes many Christians to become despondent. At best, the world seems indifferent to their faith; at worst, it treats it as absurd. Doubt can thus arise from a sense of bewilderment, of despondency, at the hostility of the world – often including close friends and relatives – to the gospel. How can I believe the gospel, when it meets such hostility and aggression?
There are three points to be made here, partly academic, partly pastoral. But their underlying theme is the same. Modern Western culture is going through a phase that is not just non-Christian, but actually anti-Christian. That means you must be realistic about the hostile attitudes against Christianity you are likely to encounter at every level. It has no bearing on whether Christianity is right or wrong. But it does place you under pressure, on account of your faith. So you must be realistic about the origin and purpose of this anti-Christian propaganda, and learn to cope with it. With that in mind, let’s look at these three points.
First, the popular reaction to an idea has no bearing on whether it is true or not. People may ridicule your faith in God – but that doesn’t mean it is wrong. Most people have little understanding of what Christianity is all about. Very often, they reject a caricature of the gospel, not the gospel itself. You may well find that once you begin to explain what Christians believe (and why they believe it!), some of the hostility and lack of understanding begins to disappear. ‘We have got used to the fact that people make fun of things they don’t understand’ (Goethe). It isn’t as if everyone has tried Christianity, and decided it is no good. Nor is it as if they’ve all thought deeply about it, and decided it can’t be right. Most people give Christianity little thought, and very often base even that on misunderstandings. You may find yourself in the privileged position of helping people come to faith, by removing their misconceptions and misunderstandings of the gospel.
Second, try to think yourself into the situation faced by the first Christians during the New Testament period. They were faced with hostility on every side. They were ridiculed as fools (an early anti-Christian graffito shows a man kneeling, worshipping a crucified man – with the head of an ass). They were few in number. There were enormous barriers of culture and language to overcome, if the gospel was to be spread. Try to think yourself into their situation, and imagine how incredibly despondent you might feel about it! Yet the first Christians weren’t unduly worried by these problems. They weren’t overwhelmed by the hostility of their environment. The resurrection of Jesus set those difficulties in perspective. The God who raised Jesus from the dead was with them, and on their side. And neither should we feel intimidated or threatened. In fact, the new hostility of secular culture to the gospel makes it easier for us to identify with the Christian communities we read about in the New Testament letters. Their situation is very like ours, in many respects. So take comfort from the experience of the early Christians, and let yourself be inspired and encouraged by their words and examples.
Third, appreciate the pastoral importance of support groups. Make sure you don’t get isolated, and have to cope with the pressures placed on you by society on your own. You need to be encouraged by other Christians. You need to spend time with other people whose ‘world-view’ is the same as yours. This is particularly important for Christian students at college or university, where pressure from secular beliefs and values can be considerable. The world aims to isolate you, to demoralize you, to break down your confidence in yourself and the gospel (read John 17:14–18). You need to be able to discuss problems you have in common – such as how to cope with the pressure brought on Christians by society in general, by your colleagues at work, or by your family and friends in particular. Doubt can be a symptom of inadequate pastoral support. Don’t just go to church – get involved in home groups, Bible study groups, special interest groups, house parties or camps. Encourage your fellow-Christians, and let them encourage you.
Don’t get preoccupied with your doubts
Don’t worry too much about doubt! Doubt focuses attention on yourself and your anxieties and stops you trusting in God. A preoccupation with doubt is just as pointless as a preoccupation with death: it doesn’t change the situation, and it distracts your attention from the opportunities the life of faith has to offer. Preoccupation with doubt is like constant spiritual introspection, in which you spend all your time looking inwards, at your own feelings and doubts – when you should be looking outwards, to the living God who brought your faith into being, and has promised to nourish and support that faith through the hard times. Preoccupation with doubt weakens or even cuts the lifeline between you and the living God; it distracts you from your life of prayer and devotion. This sort of pointless preoccupation with doubt paralyses your spiritual growth. You stagnate through lack of motivation to grow.
Doubt is like an attention-seeking child: when you pay attention to it, it demands you pay even more attention. You get locked into a vicious circle from which it is difficult to escape. If you feed your doubts, they grow! Yet doubt can bring home to us just how precious a thing faith is. It brings home to us how unthinkable life would be without the comforting presence of God. Doubt allows us to step briefly from the world of faith into the world of unbelief, and realize how hostile and frightening a place it must be. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence! So see doubt instead as an invitation to nourish your faith, and deprive your doubts of the attention they need to grow. Anyway, learn to see doubt positively. Don’t be depressed by it, or let it get the upper hand. View it as an opportunity, rather than as a problem. See it as an invitation to grow in faith and consolidate your spiritual resources, rather than as a sign of decay. Your faith will only decay if you let doubt overwhelm you.
Doubt is also an invitation to spiritual growth, because it can be a sign of a neglected faith – a faith that has been taken for granted and not nourished and allowed to grow. It points to a vulnerable faith. We need to work continually at all our relationships, consolidating and deepening them – and that applies to our relationship with God as well. Doubt is a sign that we’ve neglected our relationship with God. It’s not the symptom that’s important – it’s the malaise it indicates. It’s not the sign that’s important – it’s what it points to. Doubt signposts the need for spiritual renewal, growth and consolidation. So don’t get preoccupied with your doubts: instead, get to work on renewing, deepening and consolidating your faith in God. Just as a person who is undernourished is especially prone to illness, so a neglected and undernourished faith is particularly susceptible to doubt. Prevention, we are told, is better than cure – and this applies to doubt as much as anything else.
It is therefore important to develop strategies that enable your faith to develop. That doesn’t mean trying harder to believe: it means allowing your faith to rest on firmer personal and doctrinal foundations. I have already stressed the need to deepen your understanding of Christian doctrine: the more you understand your faith, the greater your confidence in its ideas. But what about the personal foundations of faith? What does it mean to develop the ‘personal foundations’ of faith? An exposition of the parable of the sower will help make this important way of coping with doubt clearer.
The parable of the sower
One of the most positive ways of handling doubt is to read the parable of the sower (Mark 4:1–20), and reflect carefully on its implications. It is one of the most powerful parables, vividly conveying some important points. One of its main emphases is the goodness of the seed. Whatever happens to the seed is a result of the ground on which it falls; it doesn’t reflect variable quality in the seed itself. As Jesus stresses, the seed represents the word of God. The word of God really is able to effect the transformation of our lives. Just as the word of God was able to call creation into existence (Genesis 1:1–27), so the same creative word is able to transform our sinful lives, recreating us after the likeness of God.
But what if we present that seed with unsuitable soil? What if we, by the reception we give that seed, make it difficult for it to take root and grow? Doubt is a symptom of poor soil that has been neglected and starved of nutrients. The parable is an invitation to consider what sort of ground we are providing for the seed – can it grow and flourish? Existing doubt may be overcome, and future doubt made less likely, by allowing the seed of the gospel to grow vigorously in the ground of your life (Hosea 10:12). That ground needs to be tilled and made fertile – something you can do. Considering two different kinds of seed helps to bring this point out clearly.
The seed sown in rocky places (verses 5–6, 16–17)
Here, the seed falls on rocky ground. This doesn’t mean ground littered with rocks; rather, it means ground with a very thin layer of soil over the solid rock beneath. The seed is able to germinate without difficulty. However, when it tries to take root, there is insufficient earth available. It is unable to develop a root that will enable it to gain access to water and necessary minerals, and to be physically stable. As a result, it cannot survive.
Some people develop a superficial faith in the gospel, which never takes root properly. Often, it is emotional in character, relying heavily upon experience of the presence of God or an unbalanced understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit. While such a faith is initially enormously enthusiastic, it lacks real substance. It is like the house built on sand, rather than rock – it lacks a solid foundation, being too dependent upon human emotional states and not relying upon the promises of God (Matthew 7:24–27). As a result, this faith is vulnerable to doubt. The moment God isn’t experienced as present, there is a temptation to assume he isn’t present at all.
To change this situation, you need to replace this rocky ground with good soil, so that the seed may take root. Stop relying upon your emotions and feelings, and let your faith feed upon the promises of God. It is very helpful to meditate upon the promises of God (e.g. in Psalms), reflecting upon their vitality and relevance. Try to read books that will deepen your understanding of the Christian faith – in other words, that will help you see how solid and substantial Christianity really is. You don’t need to read many, and you don’t need to read them quickly!
Much of the popular literature Christians read is biographical, about the lives and experiences of Christians. In many ways, of course, this is helpful. It allows you to see how others have faced challenges similar to yours. It gives you models for developing your own lifestyle as a Christian. It suggests things you might not otherwise have thought about. And it’s usually easy reading. Despite all these obvious advantages, a serious difficulty remains. Such books may tell you a lot about the people who wrote them, or the people they’re about – but they don’t necessarily teach you much about God. They don’t necessarily deepen your understanding of the Christian faith.
So try to spend time developing your understanding and knowledge of the Christian faith. It is by feeding your faith that you can starve your doubts to death. It is by letting your faith grow that your doubts will be choked. How? Some suggestions may prove helpful. Although they are aimed at a student readership, they are of relevance to a much wider audience.
1. Read Scripture regularly with a daily study plan. Keep a note of verses that seem helpful or relevant. Try memorizing them. Use a commentary to help you grasp the meaning of passages. And don’t allow your study to be of purely academic interest: your faith affects the way you act, your values and aspirations, as well as your ideas. Try to identify areas of your life in which you feel there is room for improvement in the light of your reading of Scripture, and especially your reflections on Jesus himself. Allow faith to become obedience. Allow your head and heart to interact!
And don’t get permanently locked into a pattern of Bible reading or prayer that reflects the specific rhythm of student life. You must be prepared to be adaptable. As a student, you may find you can set aside a period early in the morning or late at night for Bible study and prayer. But what happens if you become a parent, and have small children who prevent you getting a good night’s sleep? Or if you enter a career that makes severe demands at just those times you used to set aside for prayer? Be prepared to adapt. Develop new patterns of prayer – if necessary, grabbing time as and when it arises. It is more important to read Scripture and pray than to do these things at a fixed time. Let your prayer pattern be realistic, tailored to your present situation – not what things were like for you ten or twenty years ago.
2. Read books that will stimulate your thinking about the content of your faith. This will not merely help you develop your own Christian mind – it will give you the resources to help others think through similar questions. One of the most helpful writers in this connection is C. S. Lewis, now widely regarded as probably the most important popular Christian writer of the twentieth century. Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain and Miracles are excellent works with which to begin thinking through a range of important questions. His collection The Chronicles of Narnia, especially The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, presents many central Christian ideas in the form of a children’s tale, which has become a modern classic. You can cut your theological teeth on these, and enjoy yourself at the same time!
If you are experiencing doubt, you will find Lewis’s Screwtape Letters particularly fascinating. In this book Lewis speculates on the strategies and tactics of a senior and a junior devil, whose task it is to convert you to atheism! You will probably see doubt and temptation in a new light as a result. According to Lewis, doubt is something you must expect to happen. The stronger your faith, the more likely you are to be subjected to attack by doubt. Doubt is part of Screwtape’s strategy for paralysing and crippling your faith, and preventing you from being of some use to God. Doubt, like temptation, is something that Screwtape uses to distance you from God. If insights like this seem helpful, there are many more like them within the pages of The Screwtape Letters.
3. Read books that will stimulate your thinking about prayer and Christian devotion. Remember, people have been putting their trust in Jesus Christ for the past two thousand years, and many have written of their experiences in works that have become spiritual classics. Many of these are easy to get hold of: by dipping into them, you can help yourself develop your prayer and devotional life. There are times when many Christians find prayer difficult, or feel they are going through a spiritual dry patch – a period in which their spiritual life seems parched (see Psalms 63:1; 143:6). If this is your problem, don’t accept it passively – use it actively. Let God work through it. Reading classic works about prayer and devotion (an area often referred to as ‘spirituality’) can help you through these difficult periods, as well as providing a great stimulus at other times.
Some examples may prove helpful. In 1418, a book entitled The Imitation of Christ, written by Thomas à Kempis, began to be read widely, and soon became a classic. It is broken down into 114 short chapters, each usually less than a page long, rich in scriptural quotations and allusions, dealing with a single theme – for example, ‘On loving Jesus above all things’, ‘On close friendship with Jesus’, ‘On obedience, after the example of Christ’ or ‘On asking God’s help, and the certainty of his grace’. Although written by a monk for monks, the book has a freshness, profundity and power that have stimulated generations of believers. It is a work into which you can dip occasionally or read regularly. As a sample, here are some of his thoughts on doubt, taken from the chapter ‘On resisting temptations’:
The beginning of all evil temptation is an unstable mind and lack of trust in God. Just as a ship without a helm is driven to and fro by the waves, so a careless man, who abandons his proper course, is tempted in countless ways...So we must not despair when we are tempted, but earnestly pray to God to grant us his help in every need. For, as Paul says, ‘when you are tempted, God will provide a way to overcome it, so that you will be able to bear it’. So let us humble ourselves under the hand of God in every trial and difficulty, for he will save and raise up the humble in spirit.
By dipping into works such as these, useful ‘thoughts for the day’ can be gleaned. There are, of course, many other writers in addition to Thomas à Kempis – but he is an excellent starting point for those new to this type of writing. You might also like to try Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God. But remember that spirituality is largely a matter of personal taste! If you don’t like a writer, try someone else.
4. Try keeping a spiritual diary in which you can jot down scriptural references that seem helpful to your needs, or quotations from books you have read that helped you think through a problem, or that seemed to cast light on some difficulty. You could just note page references to books, if you found sections that seemed relevant to your needs. Later, you can read through this book and benefit from your accumulated insights. We all know how easy it is to forget where a useful passage is, just when we need it most!
The seed sown among thorns (verses 7, 18–19)
Some seed fell on ground in which other plants (thorns) were already growing. There would have been intense competition for water, light and space in which to grow. The problem is well known to every gardener: before planting seed, first get rid of all the weeds! If you don’t, they will choke the seed as it attempts to grow. The seed of the gospel has been planted in your life. It is already growing. But that growth can easily be threatened.
Try to imagine how a professional gardener goes about planting valuable seeds. He won’t throw them on uncleared ground, where other plants can deprive them of the sunlight, warmth and moisture essential to their germination and growth. He’ll create the most favourable growing conditions he can, ensuring that nothing will get in the way of his valuable seeds. He’ll plant them in compost, free from other seeds or plants. He’ll ensure they receive warmth, light and adequate water.
God has already planted the seed of the gospel in your heart and mind. It is already growing. You can be assured of that. Now it’s up to you to encourage its growth. This means uprooting thorns and other such plants, which will prevent the seed of the gospel from growing properly. If this isn’t done, the seed hasn’t much of a chance. It will be choked by plants that are already there. Faith cannot grow in this situation, and will be exceptionally vulnerable to doubt. To allow faith to grow and develop its resistance to doubt, you must eliminate competition for your heart and mind. You must help it to grow by removing obstacles to that growth.
What sort of obstacles? The parable identifies several: the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire to possess other things (verse 19). Basic human ambition, the desire to be rich and famous, the thirst to outperform our competitors, anxieties about money and status – all these are competing for growing space with the gospel within our lives. To change the image slightly, they are competing for our loyalty. You cannot ‘serve two masters’, such as God and money (Matthew 6:24). This point is made with especial clarity in 1 Timothy 6:8–10, which stresses the destructive effects of total dedication to the quest for money.
A faith under such pressure is highly vulnerable to doubt. Anxieties about status, security, power or money can easily encroach on our relationship with God. Jesus spoke powerfully of the effects of the cares and anxieties of the world upon faith, and commended studying the birds of the air and the lilies of the field as an example of the tranquillity of faith (Matthew 6:25–34). Note the constant stress: do not worry. Do not be anxious. Trust in God, and all else will fall into perspective. It is by seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness – rather than worldly status or possessions – that peace of mind and growth in faith come, bringing in their wake what we need for our daily life.
This section of the parable of the sower thus points to a definite course of action on our part. We are being asked to examine ourselves, to ask what our priorities are. It is helpful to make a list of the matters uppermost in your mind at the moment, grading them in order of importance. For most of us, drawing up a list like this is a revealing affair, bringing home to us how preoccupied we are with anxieties and concerns that have no direct bearing upon our Christian life. If we do not look after our faith, can we be surprised if it falters occasionally? If we direct all our efforts towards other goals, we have correspondingly less time and inclin-ation to work at our relationship with God. In fact, by concentrating our attention upon matters relating to our status, wealth and power, we are actually encouraging the growth of thorns, which will choke the seed of the gospel (to use the imagery of the parable).
Doubt can therefore be a symptom of a neglected faith, a faith that has been untended and uncared for. Nevertheless, that neglect can be reversed. The thorn bushes that have up to now been choking it can be removed, gradually or immediately. You can take steps to eliminate the anxieties that so often give rise to doubt. The first stage in this process is identifying these anxieties, and attempting to trace their causes. You can do this on your own, or in consultation with a friend or older Christian. What sort of anxieties are we talking about?
You can try to answer this question yourself. Note down on a sheet of paper the thoughts uppermost in your mind. What thoughts are dominant at this moment? Who or what is top of your list of mental priorities? Most Christians, if they are being honest, find that God tends to come low down on a list like this. Other matters assume greater importance. Drawing up this kind of list is an excellent way of recalling us to God. Yet Martin Luther once remarked that ‘where your heart is, and where your security is, that has become your God’. In other words, whatever we give mental priority to is our God – what a frightening thought! Our anxieties thus help us see what we treat as being really important, and show us how easy it is to let God slip down our list of priorities.
Your faith affects your everyday life – but your faith is also affected by everyday life. Your faith isn’t like some kind of watertight compartment, insulated against everything else! What you believe about God affects the way you live – your hopes, your moral standards, and your general outlook on life. But this interaction is two-way. What’s happening to you in your everyday life affects the quality of your faith. If you are depressed about your career or your family, if a relationship is going wrong, or if you are worried about money – then don’t be surprised if these anxieties reduce your spiritual well-being.
For most people, the types of anxiety that can give rise to doubt are far more mundane than those that arise from the worlds of power politics and high finance. Let’s look at some obvious examples. Again, although they focus on student concerns, they apply equally well to other situations.
1. Personal relationships. It is quite common for someone already involved in a personal relationship to become a Christian, while the other person involved doesn’t. This can cause enormous difficulties and tensions. In the first place, becoming a Christian involves a new interest in God, which expresses itself in certain obvious ways – such as a new interest in reading the Bible, talking about Jesus Christ, going to church, getting involved with Christian groups, and so forth. This change can be very distressing for the other party, who is probably unable to understand what has happened, let alone share in it. In the second place, it means becoming involved with a new group of people – at church, at the college or campus Christian union, or at a local home group. The other party feels excluded from these.
It is difficult for someone who has just become a Christian to avoid feeling the tension this change has created within the personal relationship, and they may become prone to anxiety and distress. In fact, sadly, it is quite common for the relationship to break up as a result. The tension within this relationship, while it lasts (either the tension or the relationship itself), is like a thorn bush, which can seriously interfere with the growth of faith and the development of Christian maturity. If you are in such a position concerning a relationship, and find doubt a problem, it is advisable to attempt to resolve the difficulties within that relationship (e.g. by sharing your new-found faith and what it means to you). Perhaps the other party will feel able to accept your position, and may even eventually come to share it. However, it is necessary to inject a note of sombre realism into this discussion, by pointing out that the more usual course is for the relationship to break up. So, a simple word of advice: let your serious relationships be with other Christians!
At this stage, most student relationships are of an exploratory nature, not necessarily leading to permanence as in marriage. The trauma caused by the breaking up of such a relationship is thus not as severe as it might otherwise be. This difficulty is much more serious, of course, within a marriage, when one of the partners comes to faith, leaving the other in a state of unbelief. The tensions this can create are considerable, and require handling with sensitivity and compassion. While a detailed response to this difficulty is impossible within the limited space of this work, the suggestions for further reading should prove helpful in coping with and perhaps resolving such a situation.
2. Work. Some students find themselves seriously behind with their work, due to illness, a fundamental inability to cope with their subject, laziness, or a lack of personal discipline. The pressure that work can create is considerable and may totally dominate a student’s horizons. As a result of this pressure, a student can easily become swamped with work and thrown into a state of despair. All his or her resources are drawn into the struggle to keep up with essay deadlines or topic assignments, with everything else being neglected in order to focus on this one objective. It is hardly surprising that God tends to get squeezed out of such situations. If this is happening to you, it is important to realize what is going on. There are ways of coping with work, and the stress it causes, which you will find explored in the material suggested for further reading: investigate these!
If you lack discipline in work, you will probably also lack discipline in prayer and studying Scripture. If you take a laid-back attitude to your work, you will probably also take the same attitude to your faith. The result is a vulnerable and superficial faith. Why not aim for a sense of personal discipline in both your work and your faith?
3. Anxiety about the future. It is perfectly understandable that you should be anxious about the future, especially during your final year at college or university. The decisions you make can be of considerable importance in affecting your future career, and have enormous implications for the remainder of your life. Some students feel overwhelmed by such anxieties, once more making them vulnerable to doubt. It is important you commit such decisions to God. Ask him for guidance, wisdom and courage to make the right decisions. But above all, ask for peace of mind as you explore possibilities for the future. The Old Testament word for ‘faith’ can be translated as ‘being strong in the Lord’: learn to trust in him, to commit the unknown future to the known care of the Lord. See yourself as being like Abraham or Joshua, setting out into the unknown future, secure in the knowledge that, wherever they went and whatever happened to them, the Lord would be with them by their side (Genesis 12:1–2; Joshua 1:1–9). There is much material available on vocational guidance, which you might find helpful; you will find some suggestions at the end of this chapter.
These, then, are some of the ways in which faith can be weakened through outside factors. Remember this if you feel low or depressed, and far from God. You are not immune from outside influences – in fact, all of us are highly vulnerable to them. Try to identify what is making you feel anxious, and see if you can do something about it. Try to develop a sense of spiritual discipline, as suggested below, and try not to be unduly influenced by your circumstances.
Develop spiritual discipline
Many Christians draw back from the idea of spiritual discipline. They may suspect it is inconsistent with the freedom of the gospel. They may view it as a lapse into some form of legalism. Actually, it’s nothing of the sort. It is a means by which God may graciously deepen our faith in him, our knowledge of him, and our obedience to him. It means taking God seriously enough to try to ensure we spend time with him, despite all the pressures on us. It means acknowledging we cannot hope to keep going as Christians without the continual support of God, and thus structuring our lives to allow that support to get through. This is no legalism, a routine for a routine’s sake: rather, it is a sign of the deepening obedience and commitment that are the hallmarks of a maturing faith.
Suppose you take up a demanding job in a major international corporation, or in a caring agency in which considerable demands are made of your time and attention. It is easy to become so busy, so preoccupied with countless matters, that it becomes difficult to find time to spend with God. Everything else seems to get in the way. Many professionals look back with envy at their time as students, wishing they had as much spare time now as they had then! Developing a spiritual discipline means setting time aside as a matter of deliberate policy to be with God.
If you’re going through a spiritual dry patch and are finding the going rough, all the pressures of work or family that come to bear on you will make it difficult for you to find time to be alone with God. Yet your growth in faith depends on being able to spend time in this way. And if you aren’t able to spend time with God, in prayer and adoration, you’ll find your faith becomes vulnerable. You’re under pressure, and won’t have access to the spiritual resources to cope with it. Give God some breaks by allowing him space to draw alongside you.
By developing a spiritual discipline, you can build time into your routine to set aside for God – and nothing and nobody else! If you can start developing a discipline like this as a student, you’ll find it will stay with you afterwards. What kind of time? Some prefer to set aside time early in the morning, before the day’s work begins. It allows you time to commit the coming day to God, and ask for his strength and guidance to face all it will bring. Some people find it helpful to pray with their diaries open in front of them. For others, the best time is late at night, when the pressures of the day are lifted. The day’s work is over, the children are asleep, the world is quiet: you can spend time reading, meditating and praying in peace. And try to keep Sunday special, despite all the pressure to work right through the weekend. If you’re too busy to spend time with God, you’re busier than God ever meant you to be.
The worst thing you can do in the event of a spiritual dry patch is to give up going to church, spending time with Christian friends and colleagues, or reading Scripture. These can keep you going when your prayer life seems to dry up. They are like roots, searching for precious moisture in a dry land. Jeremiah likened someone who trusts in the Lord to a tree planted by a stream (Jeremiah 17:7–8):
Blessed are those who trust in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.
So, keep your roots in place, waiting for the water to return – and return it will.
Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD.(Psalm 27:14, NIV)
Let’s look at the way spiritual discipline can help you handle doubt. First, it helps make your faith less vulnerable. It builds time for reading of Scripture, for praying, for waiting on God, into what can become an unbearably busy timetable. It ensures you aren’t cut off from your lifeline to God. It gives you access to vital spiritual resources, which you will need to cope with the pressures of life.
When I studied biology at school, I remember learning about the water-spider. This little spider lives on the bottom of ponds, in a small gossamer case looking like a thimble. This case has a hole at its base, through which the spider can enter. On reaching the surface of the pond, the spider entraps air bubbles by means of hooked hairs. He then dives down to the case, and sets the air bubbles free inside the case. After several such trips, the spider has accumulated enough air to allow him to live in his case for some time beneath the water. Even though the environment is alien and hostile, the spider can survive – on account of his air supply from the upper world. However, eventually the oxygen in that vital air supply is used up. The spider is then obliged to return to the surface, and to gather more air. Without it, he cannot survive beneath the surface of the water.
As Christians, we are in a situation similar to that water-spider. We exist in a hostile environment, nourished and supported by resources from above. But our resources must be renewed and replenished – otherwise, they will run out. The spiritual life demands continual access to spiritual resources. The spider’s regular journeys to the surface of the water remind us of our need for regular fellowship with God, in order that our batteries may be recharged and our resources renewed (to jumble together several helpful images). We cannot allow those resources to become dangerously low: we do not know when we may need to draw heavily upon them. Just as the foolish maidens allowed the oil supplies in their lamps to grow dangerously low (Matthew 25:1–13), such that they missed the opportunity of greeting the bridegroom, so we must be disciplined in maintaining our spiritual resources. You never know when you might need them – and need them badly.
Second, spiritual discipline can help you handle doubt by preventing you from burning your bridges (usually by accident, rather than design) if you do go through a period of doubt. Younger Christians in particular are tempted to give up praying and reading Scripture if they stop experiencing God as present in their lives. Not only can experience be an unreliable guide to the reality and presence of God – by overreacting in this way, you make it more difficult for God to draw close to you again. The sense of expectation of God is lost. At the first sign of doubt, some young Christians panic and abandon their faith – needlessly. Soldiers learn discipline so they will not panic at the first sight of a threat. If you have developed a sense of spiritual discipline, you will reap the rewards of patience. For Christianity is not an easy ride through life, but is a struggle against sin, disobedience and doubt, all of which attempt to tear us away from God. It is a battle, in which discipline adds strength to your own spiritual resources and allows you to draw increasingly upon the might of God.
These, then, are some strategies both for coping with doubt and making your faith less vulnerable. Remember that a superficial faith is a vulnerable faith, just as a shallow-rooted plant is easily uprooted. So let those roots grow!