The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life

CHAPTER IX. DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING DOUBTS A great many Christians are slaves to an inveterate 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. No drunkard was more ever in bondage to his habit of drinking than they are to their habit of doubting. Every step of their spiritual progress is taken against the fearful odds of an army of doubts that are forever lying in wait to assail them at each favorable moment. Their lives are made wretched, their usefulness is effectually hindered, and their communion with God is continually broken by their doubts. And although the entrance of the soul upon the life of faith does, in many cases, take it altogether out of the region where these doubts live and flourish, yet even here it sometimes happens that the old tyrant will rise up and reassert his sway, and will cause the feet to stumble and the heart to fail, even when he cannot succeed in utterly turning the believer back into the dreary wilderness again. We all of us remember, doubtless, 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 that cruel tyrant. Little did we suspect, then, that we should never 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 chiefest characteristic is that they believe, should have to confess that they have doubts. And yet it is such a universal habit, that I feel, 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 a 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 towards it. They have got rid, it may be, of the old doubts that once tormented them, as to whether their sins are really forgiven, and whether they shall, after all, get safe to heaven. But they have not got rid of doubting. They have simply shifted the habit to a higher platform. They are saying, perhaps, Yes, I believe my sins are forgiven, and I am a child of God through faith in Jesus Christ. I dare not doubt this any more. But then, and this, but then, 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 when 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. Spiritual conflicts. Far better would they be named, did we call them spiritual rebellions. Our fight is to be a fight of faith. In the moment we let in doubts, our fight ceases, and our rebellion begins. I desire to put forth, if possible, a vigorous protest against this whole thing. Just as well might I join in with the laments of a drunkard, and unite with him in prayer, for grace to endure the discipline of his fatal appetite, as to give way for one instant to the weak complaints of these enslaved souls, and try to console them under their slavery. To one and to the other I would dare to do nothing else, but proclaim the perfect deliverance which the Lord Jesus Christ has in store for them, and beseech, entreat, and importune them, with all the power at my command, to avail themselves of it, and be free. Not for one moment would I listen to their despairing excuses. You ought to be free, you can be free, you must be free. Will you undertake to tell me that it is an inevitable necessity for God to be doubted by His children? Is it an inevitable necessity for your children to doubt you? Would you tolerate their doubts a single hour? Would you pity your son, and condole with him, and feel that he was an interesting case, if he should come to you and say, Father, I am such a doubter that I cannot believe I am your child, but that you really love me. And yet how often we hear a child of God excuse himself for his doubts by saying, Oh, but I am such a doubter that I cannot believe in God's love and forgiveness. And no one seems shocked at it. You might just as well say, with a light complacency, Oh, but I am such a liar that I cannot help telling lies, and expect people to consider it a sufficient excuse. In the sight of God, I verily believe doubting is in some cases as displeasing as lying. It certainly is more dishonoring to him, for it impugns his truthfulness and defames his character. John says that, He that believeth not God hath made him a liar. 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 she sang and played until her mother's return. The other one, with the wretched caution and mistrusted 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, and ended with working herself up into a perfect frenzy of despair. The look on that mother's face, when upon her return the weeping little girl told what was the matter with her, I shall not easily forget. 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. Perhaps such doubts might be possible with an earthly mother, but never, never with God. And a hundred times in my life since has that scene come up before me. With deepest teaching, it has compelled me, preemptorily, to refuse admittance to the doubts about my Heavenly Father's love and care and remembrance of me, that have clambered at the door of my heart for entrance. Doubting is, I am convinced, to many people a real luxury. And to deny themselves this luxury, would be the hardest piece of self-denial they have ever known. It is a luxury which, like the indulgence in some other luxuries, brings very sorrowful results. And, perhaps, looking at the sadness and misery it has brought into your own Christian experience, you may be inclined to say, Alas, it is no luxury to me, but only a fearful trial. But pause for a moment, try giving it up, and you will soon find out whether it is a luxury or not. Do not your doubts come, trooping into your door, as a company of sympathizing friends, who appreciate your hard case and have come to condole with you? And is it no luxury to sit down with them, and entertain them, and listen to their arguments, and join in with their condolences? Would it be no self-denial to turn resolutely from them, and refuse to hear a word they have to say? If you do not know, try it and see. Have you never tasted the luxury of indulging in hard thoughts up against those who have, as you think, injured you? Have you never known what a positive fascination it is to brood over their unkindness, and to pry into their malice, and to imagine all sorts of wrong and uncomfortable things about them? It has made you wretched, of course, but it has been a fascinating sort of wretchedness that you could not easily give up. Just like this is the luxury of doubting. Things have gone wrong with you in your experience. Dispensations have been mysterious, temptations have been peculiar, your case has seemed different from others. But 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. And this very subterfuge leaves you at liberty, under the guise of a just and true appreciation of your own shortcomings, to indulge in your dishonorable doubts. Although you think it is yourself you are doubting, you are really doubting the Lord, and are indulging in His 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 chiefest claim upon His love and His care. As well might be the poor little lamb that has wandered from the flock, and got lost in the wilderness, say, I am lost, and therefore the shepherd cannot love me, nor care for me, nor remember me. He only loves and cares for the lambs that never wander. As well might the ill man say, I am ill, and therefore the doctor will not come to see me, nor give me any medicine. He only cares for and visits well people. Jesus says, They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. And again He says, What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses 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 which he himself has said, are hard thoughts, and to indulge in them is far worse than to indulge 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. This brings me to the practical part of the whole subject, as to how to get deliverance from this fatal habit. My answer would be that the deliverance from this must be by the same means as the deliverance from any other sin. It is to be found in Christ, and in Him only. You must hand your doubting over to Him, as you have learned to hand your other temptations. You must do it with just what you do, with your temper or your pride. That is, you must give it up to the Lord. I believe myself 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 surrendered 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 trouble is that in this matter of doubting, the Christian does not always make a full surrender, but is apt to reserve a little secret liberty to doubt, looking upon it as being sometimes a necessity. I do not want to doubt any more, we will say, or I hope I shall not, but it is hard to come to the point of saying, I will not doubt again, and no surrender is effectual until it reaches the point of saying, I will not. The liberty to doubt must be given up forever, and we must consent to a continuous life of inevitable trust. It is often necessary, I think, to make a definite transaction of this surrender of doubting, and come to a point about it. I believe it is quite as necessary in the case of a doubter as in the case of a drunkard. 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, we must rest absolutely upon the Lord for deliverance, in each time of temptation. The moment the assault comes, we must lift up the shield of faith against it. We must hand the very first suggestion of doubt over to the Lord, and must let Him manage it. We must refuse to entertain the doubt a single moment, let it come over so plausibly, or under whatever guise of humility, we must simply say, I dare not doubt, I must trust. God is my Father, and He does love me. Jesus saves me. He saves me now. Those three little words, repeated over and over, Jesus saves me, Jesus saves me, will put to flight the greatest army of doubts that ever assaulted any soul. I have tried it times without number, and have never known it to fail. Do not stop to argue about the matter with yourself, or with your doubts. Pay no attention to them whatever, but treat them with the utmost contempt. Shut your door on their very face, and emphatically deny every word they say to you. Bring up some, it is written, and hurl it after them. Look right at Jesus, and tell Him that you do trust Him, and that you intend to go on trusting Him. Then let the doubts clamor as they may, but they cannot hurt you if you will not let them in. I know it will look to you sometimes as though you were shutting your door against your best friends, and your hearts will long after your doubts more than ever the Israelites longed after the flesh pots of Egypt. But deny yourself, take up your cross in this matter, and quietly but firmly refuse ever to listen to a single word. Often it has happened to me to find, on awakening in the morning, a perfect army of doubts clamoring at my door for admittance. Nothing has seemed real, nothing has seemed true, and least of all has it seemed possible that I, miserable, wretched I, could be the object of the Lord's love, care, or notice. If I only had been at liberty to let these doubts in, and invite them to take seats, and make themselves at home, what a luxury I should many times have felt it to be! But years ago I made a pledge against doubting, and I would as soon think of violating my pledge against intoxicating liquor, as of violating this one. I have never dared to admit the first doubt. At such times, therefore, 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 has always been 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. And I have been able to join in the song of Moses, and the children of Israel, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation. Dear doubting souls, go and do likewise, and a similar victory shall be yours. You may think, perhaps, that doubts are a necessity in your case, owing to the peculiarity of your temperament. But I assure you, most emphatically, that this is not so. You are no more under a necessity to be doubtful as to your relationships to your Heavenly Father, than you are to be doubtful as to your relationships to your earthly Father. In both cases, the thing you must depend on is their word, not your feelings, and no earthly Father has ever declared Him or manifested His Fatherhood one thousandth part as unmistakably or as lovingly as your Heavenly Father has declared and manifested His. If you would not make God a liar, therefore, you must 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, and may seem at times unendurable, but let your unchanging declaration be from henceforth, though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. When doubts come, meet them, not with their arguments, but with assertions 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. Do not give heed to your doubts, therefore, for a moment. 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, and consequently you are not sinning in one case any more than in the other. But just as you can refuse to listen to the boys or join in their oaths, so can you also refuse to listen to the doubts or join in with them. They are not your doubts until you consent to them and adopt them as true. When they come, you must at once turn from them, as you would from swearing. Often a very good practical way of getting rid of them is to go at once and confess your faith in the strongest language possible, somewhere or to someone. If you cannot do this by word of mouth, write it in a letter, or repeat it over and over in your heart to the Lord. As you lay down this book, therefore, take up your pen and 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 will-power on His side, and against His enemy and yours. And then, henceforth, 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 who 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. You must never again admit the possibility of His being unfaithful. Believe He is faithful not because you feel it or see it, but because He says He is. Believe it whether you feel it or not. Believe it even when it seems to you that you are believing something that is absolutely untrue. Believe it actively, and believe it persistently. Cultivate a continuous habit of believing, and never let your faith waver for any seeming, however plausible it may be. The result will be that 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. It is an explorable rule in the spiritual life, that according to our faith it is to be unto us, and of course this rule must work both ways, and therefore we may fairly expect that it will be also unto us according to our doubts. Doubts and discouragements are, I believe, inlets by which evil enters, while faith is an impregnable wall against all evil. Dear doubting souls, my heart yearns over you with a tender sympathy. I know your sincerity and your earnestness in your struggles after an abiding experience of peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, and I know also how effectually your fatal habit of doubting has held you back. I would that my words might open your eyes to see the deliverance that lies at your very door. Try my plan, I beseech of you, and see if it will not be true that according to your faith it shall inevitably be unto you.