CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 9
Difficulties Concerning Doubts
A great many Christians are slaves to a chronic habit of doubting. I do not mean doubts as to the existence of God or the truths of the Bible, but doubts as to their own personal relations with the God in whom they profess to believe, doubts as to the forgiveness of their sins, doubts as to their hopes of heaven, and doubts about their own inward experience. Their lives are made wretched, their usefulness is effectually hindered, and their communion with God is continually broken by their doubts.
Many of us remember our childish fascination, and yet horror, in the story of Christian’s imprisonment in Doubting Castle by the wicked giant Despair and our exultant sympathy in his escape through those massive gates and from the cruel tyrant. Little did we suspect then that we should ever find ourselves taken prisoner by the same giant and imprisoned in the same castle. But I fear that each one of us, if we were perfectly honest, would have to confess to at least one such experience and some of us perhaps to a great many.
It seems strange that people, whose very name of believers implies that their one chief characteristic is that they believe, should have to confess that they have doubts. And yet it is such a universal habit that if the name were to be given over again, the only fitting and descriptive name that could be given to many of God’s children would have to be that of doubters. In fact, most Christians have settled down under their doubts as to a sort of inevitable malady from which they suffer acutely but to which they must try to be resigned as a part of the necessary discipline of this earthly life; and they lament over their doubts as a man might lament over his rheumatism, making themselves out as “interesting cases” of special and peculiar trial, which require the tenderest sympathy and the utmost consideration.
This is too often true even of believers who are earnestly longing to enter upon the life and walk of faith and who have made, perhaps, many steps toward it. They may have gotten rid of the old doubts that once tormented them—whether their sins are really forgiven and whether they shall, after all, get safe to heaven—but they have not gotten rid of doubting. They have simply shifted the habit to a higher platform. This includes an interminable array of doubts concerning most of the declarations and promises our Father has made to His children. One after another they fight with these promises and refuse to believe them until they can have some more reliable proof of their being true than the simple word of their God; and then they wonder why they are permitted to walk in such darkness and look upon themselves almost in the light of martyrs and groan under the peculiar spiritual conflicts they are compelled to endure.
Doubts would be better named spiritual rebellions! Our fight is a fight of faith; and the moment we let in doubts, our fight ceases and our rebellion begins.
To drunkards and doubters alike, I would dare to do nothing else but proclaim the perfect deliverance which the Lord Jesus Christ has in store for them. I would beseech, entreat, and beg them, with all the power at my command, to avail themselves of that deliverance and be free from the bonds of their sin. In the sight of God, I truly believe doubting is in some cases as displeasing as lying. It certainly is more dishonoring to Him, for it attacks His truthfulness and defames His character. John says that “he that believeth not God hath made him a liar,” and it seems to me that hardly anything could be worse than thus to fasten on God the character of being a liar! Have you ever thought of this as the result of your doubting?
I remember seeing once the indignation and sorrow of a mother’s heart deeply stirred by a little doubting on the part of one of her children. She had brought two little girls to my house to leave them while she did some errands. One of them, with the happy confidence of childhood, abandoned herself to all the pleasures she could find in my nursery and sang and played until her mother’s return. The other one, with the wretched caution and mistrust of maturity, sat down alone in a corner to wonder, first, whether her mother would remember to come back for her and to fear she would be forgotten and then to imagine her mother would be glad of the chance to get rid of her anyhow because she was such a naughty girl. She ended with working herself up into a perfect frenzy of despair. I shall not easily forget the look on that mother’s face when upon her return the weeping little girl told what was the matter with her. Grief, wounded love, indignation, and pity all strove together for mastery, and the mother hardly knew who was most at fault, herself or the child, that such doubts should be possible.
Have you ever indulged in hard thoughts against those who have, as you think, injured you? Have you ever brooded over their unkindnesses, pried into their malice, and imagined all sorts of wrong and uncomfortable things about them? It made you wretched, of course; but it is a fascinating sort of wretchedness that you could not easily give up.
The luxury of doubting is very similar. Things have gone wrong with you in your experience. Your temptations have been strange. Your “case” is different from others. What is more natural than to conclude that for some reason God has forsaken you and does not love you and is indifferent to your welfare? How irresistible is the conviction that you are too wicked for Him to care for or too difficult for Him to manage! You do not mean to blame Him or accuse Him of injustice, for you feel that His indifference and rejection of you are, because of your unworthiness, fully deserved. Although you think it is yourself you are doubting, you are really doubting the Lord and are indulging in as hard and wrong thoughts of Him as ever you did of a human enemy. For He declares that He came to save, not the righteous, but sinners; and your very sinfulness and unworthiness, instead of being a reason why He should not love you and care for you, are really your chief claim upon His love and His care.
He says, “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?” Any thoughts of Him, therefore, that are different from this that He Himself has said, are hard thoughts; and to indulge in them is far worse than to indulge in hard thoughts of any earthly friend or foe. From beginning to end of your Christian life it is always sinful to indulge in doubts. Doubts and discouragements are all from an evil source and are always untrue. A direct and emphatic denial is the only way to meet them.
Deliverance from the bondage of doubting must be by the same means as the deliverance from any other sin. It is found in Christ, and in Him alone. Hand your doubting over to Him as you have learned to hand your other temptations. I believe the only effectual remedy is to take a pledge against it, as you would urge a drunkard to do against drink, trusting in the Lord alone to keep you steadfast.
Like any other sin, the stronghold is in the will, and the will or purpose to doubt must be surrendered exactly as you surrender the will or purpose to yield to any other temptation. God always takes possession of a surrendered will. And if we come to the point of saying that we will not doubt and surrender this central fortress of our nature to Him, His blessed Spirit will begin at once to “work in us all the good pleasure of His will,” and we shall find ourselves kept from doubting by His mighty and overcoming power.
The liberty to doubt must be given up forever; and we must consent to a continuous life of inevitable trust. Make a definite transaction of this surrender of doubting and come to a point about it. It will not do to give it up by degrees. The total-abstinence principle is the only effectual one here.
Then, the surrender once made, rest absolutely upon the Lord for deliverance in each time of temptation. The moment the assault comes, lift up the shield of faith against it. Hand the very first suggestion of doubt over to the Lord and let Him manage it. Refuse to entertain the doubt a single moment. Do not stop to argue out the matter with yourself or with your doubts. Pay no attention to them whatever, but treat them with the utmost contempt. Shut your door in their very face, and emphatically deny every word they say to you. Then let the doubts clamor as they may. They cannot hurt you if you will not let them in.
Often it has happened to me to find, on awaking in the morning, a perfect army of doubts clamoring at my door for admittance. I have been compelled to lift up the “shield of faith” the moment I have become conscious of these suggestions of doubt, and handing the whole army over to the Lord to conquer, I have begun to assert, over and over, my faith in Him, in the simple words “God is my Father; I am His forgiven child; He does love me; Jesus saves me; Jesus saves me now!” The victory is always complete. The enemy has come in like a flood, but the “Spirit of the Lord has lifted up a standard against him,” and my doubts have been put to flight. Dear doubting souls, go and do likewise, and a similar victory shall be yours. No earthly father has ever declared or shown his fatherhood a fraction as unmistakably or as lovingly as your heavenly Father has declared and shown His. If you would not “make God a liar,” therefore, make your believing as inevitable and necessary a thing as your obedience. You would obey God, I believe, even though you should die in the act. Believe Him, also, even though the effort to believe should cost you your life. The conflict may be very severe; it may seem at times unendurable. But let your unchanging declaration be from this point on “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” When doubts come, meet them, not with arguments, but with affirmations of faith. All doubts are an attack of the enemy. The Holy Spirit never suggests them, never. He is the comforter, not the accuser; and He never shows us our need without at the same time revealing the divine supply.
Turn from them with horror, as you would from blasphemy, for they are blasphemy. You cannot, perhaps, hinder the suggestions of doubt from coming to you, any more than you can hinder the boys in the street from swearing as you go by. Just as you can refuse to listen to the boys or join in their oaths, so you can also refuse to listen to the doubts or join in with them. Write out your determination never to doubt again. Make it a real transaction between your soul and the Lord. Give up your liberty to doubt forever. Put your will in this matter over on the Lord’s side, and trust Him to keep you from falling. Tell Him all about your utter weakness and your long-encouraged habits of doubt, and how helpless you are before it, and commit the whole battle to Him. Tell Him you will not doubt again, putting forth all your willpower on His side, and against His enemy and yours. Then, from now on, keep your face steadfastly “looking unto Jesus,” away from yourself and away from your doubts, holding fast the profession of your faith without wavering, because “He is faithful that hath promised.” Rely on His faithfulness, not on your own. You have committed the keeping of your soul to Him as unto a “faithful creator,” and never again admit the possibility of His being unfaithful. Sooner or later you will come to know that it is true, and all doubts will vanish in the blaze of the glory of the absolute faithfulness of God!
Doubts and discouragements are, I believe, inlets by which evil enters, while faith is an impregnable wall against all evil.
Deliverance lies at your door. Try my plan, I beseech you, and see if it will not be true, that “according to your faith” it shall inevitably be unto you.