After 3 weeks of meandering through the shadow land of doubt, we’ve come to a fork in the road. We’ve explored the deep difference between doubt and disbelief. Doubt is having two minds about the truth. It isn’t sure about the truth. Disbelief has one mind about the truth; it is sure it is false. And we’ve probed the recesses of our minds to discern whether the doubt there is really doubt or something else, like fear or questions. Finally, we discovered some important distinctions between the different kinds of doubt: the factual doubt that has its roots in a lack of knowledge about the truth; the emotional doubt that can be traced back to some trauma in life; and the volitional doubt that grows out of a rebellious attitude toward God. As we explored doubt, it may have felt to you as though we were wandering in some foggy bottomland, but my intention was to help you get a clear look at your doubt. Now today I want to challenge you to do something about it. It is decision time.
What will you do with your doubt? There are really two choices. You can accept it or reject it, treasure it in the spirit of postmodernism or fight it with everything you’ve got. Everything hinges on that fundamental decision. Do you want be done with doubt? Doubt, you know, can become like arthritis. My mother has a bit of arthritis. She and her doctor have done everything they can think of to get rid of the pain, mostly to no avail. She has finally resigned herself to the fact that it is a chronic condition. It’s just in her bones and she’ll have to live with it. In the same way, you may have doubt in your bones, because you come from a dysfunctional family or because you’ve had some terrible disappointments in life. As a result, you have a hard time trusting anyone, including Jesus. So doubt is in your spiritual bones, a chronic condition of your soul with which you’ll struggle all your life.
But don’t assume that too quickly. My back acts up now and then. It’s nothing serious. It’s not in my bones, not arthritis. In fact, my doctor has told me that if I would do certain exercises regularly, my back wouldn’t bother me. Guess what? I don’t do them. I know. That makes no sense. If I could get rid of the pain by doing the exercises, why wouldn’t I do them? Habit, mostly. I would have to change my habitual way of living. Well, that’s exactly the way some of us are with doubt. It causes us pain or at least robs us of the pleasures of following Jesus Christ. We could get rid of it, but we won’t do the exercises. In some crazy way we’ve grown accustomed to the pain. It’s a habit of the heart for us. None of what I tell you today will help you one bit unless you want to be done with the pain enough to do the exercises.
Now I fully understand that you may be too weary to try, or too skeptical, or too angry with God, or too stubborn. Before you will even try to get rid of doubt, you will need strength and hope and repentance and forgiveness. And there’s only one place to get such things. Exactly where the frantic father in our story went. He was weary. He had spent years dealing with a profoundly troubled son. If you’ve ever stayed awake all night with a sick crying baby, or if you have been the caregiver of a severely disabled child, you have an inkling of how exhausted this man was. Nothing had ever helped the boy. His condition was hopeless. The father had pinned his last hope on Jesus, but when he brought his son to Jesus, Jesus wasn’t there. As the previous story in Mark 9 revealed, Jesus was up there somewhere far away from the pain of life, being glorified on the Mount of Transfiguration. And even Jesus disciples—those early believers, the fledgling Christian church—were helpless in the face of such hopelessness. This man was at the end of his rope.
When Jesus finally comes into his life, this frantic father spills out the problem and grumbles about the disciples. When Jesus says, "Bring the boy to me," the boy falls to the ground in a convulsion and rolls around foaming at the mouth. It was an awful scene. The father says, "Sometimes it gets worse. The spirit that causes all this throws him into fire and water to kill him." Then he utters the prayer of desperation many of us know all too well. "If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us." Jesus responds by repeating those first three words back to the man, ‘If you can?’ Everything is possible for him who believes."
What hard words those are for people who believe and yet don’t see the answers to desperate prayers. There are two things we can do in that situation. We can get angry with Jesus and stop praying and allow our doubt to harden into unbelief. Or we can do what this man did. "Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief." The man had faith, but he also had some unbelief. He was of two minds, which as you may recall is the classic definition of doubt. He had two minds about Jesus and what he was able to do. He had doubt. And he does what we should all do with our doubt. Take it to Jesus and asks him to help. That sounds so simple that we may tend to dismiss it. But it is the heart of the remedy for doubt. Take it to Jesus and ask him to transform doubt to faith.
The question is, "How does Jesus help us get rid of our doubt?" Well, he might instantly drive it out, as he did with this evil spirit. But most often Jesus uses means to rid us of doubt. You probably already know what these means are. But the thing is that you have to actually use those means before Jesus will transform doubt to belief. Earlier I mentioned that there are three kinds of doubt. Jesus uses a different means with each kind.
In the case of factual doubt, doubt based on a lack of information or disagreement with the facts of the Christian faith, the means Jesus uses is the truth. The only thing that will drive away intellectual doubt is the truth. Over the years of my ministry I have instructed hundreds of people in the Christian faith in what I call The Pastors Class. It is nothing more than a review of basic Christianity using the Bible as my textbook. Many people who joined the class were filled with doubt. I could read their reservations in their closed body language and see it in their averted eyes. Their doubt came from very confused ideas and as I offered a clear and simple explanation of the Gospel, I could see the doubt recede before the truth.
You’ve heard the homespun wisdom in the saying, "Starve a cold and feed a fever." Or is it the other way around? I don’t know. But I do know that if you want to be cured of your doubt, you have to feed your faith and starve your doubt. We have to feed our mind large helpings of the truth of the Bible in order to overcome our doubt. But, amazingly, many people in this postmodern age feed their doubt instead, by stuffing their minds with objections to the Faith and by feasting on other religions and alternative spiritualities. I’m not saying we should be ignorant of what is happening in the world of religion, but a steady diet of anti—Christian stuff will make your doubt stronger and stronger. If you pray, "help me overcome my unbelief," you have to cooperate with the Spirit of Jesus and feed your faith the truth of the Bible.
With volitional doubt, doubt that is based on a stubborn refusal to give in to God’s will for your life, the means by which Jesus overcomes our unbelief is a strong call to repent. More information won’t help, because information isn’t the issue. I have an old friend who revels in his doubt. He is a seasoned Christian, a life—long member of the church, but he has chosen to doubt because he likes the feeling of liberation, of walking on the wild side, of being different. My friend doesn’t need more information. He needs to decide that simple, childlike faith in Jesus is better than his cherished doubt. He needs to repent of his chosen doubt.
He would not agree, but the issue for him is sin, his refusal to let Jesus be Lord of his life, including his will. If my friend would ever cry, "Jesus, help me overcome my unbelief," I suspect that Jesus would respond, "Fine, repent and make me Lord of your mind and your will." And do it now. You see if a person refuses to stop doubting because he enjoys the thrill of rebellion, that doubter may settle down into doubt as a habit of mind and that will finally become genuine unbelief. In his fine book on doubt entitled, In Two Minds, Os Guinness issues a strong word to the wise. "A choice to doubt is a choice for unbelief in the end." So repent and believe the good news.
Emotional doubt is more difficult to deal with because it is so emotional. It isn’t based on intellectual objections to the Christian faith or on rebellion against the Lordship of Jesus. It grows out of some deep hurt in life and the emotions that trauma has produced—anger, anxiety, depression, sorrow. In my message last week, I introduced you to Dan, a man I grew up with. We were raised in the same Christ—saturated community, but he became a doubter, while I became a preacher. I said last week that I didn’t understand where Dan’s doubt came from, but upon further reflection, I think I do. Dan suffers from emotional doubt, because that Christ saturated community did not treat him as Christ would. He was not accepted for who he was, so in reaction he rejected what they were. And now he is plagued by emotional doubt and the tangle of emotions such doubt brings—anger, anxiety, depression, sorrow. Thankfully, Phil. 4:6—9 shows us three means by which Jesus gives us the grace to deal with those emotions and move from doubt to faith.
First, there is prayer, of a specific kind, the kind that helps us with the anxiety and depression that feed our doubt. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God." When we are in the grip of anxiety and its evil twin depression, our minds move in a circle, around and around, repeating the same concerns over and over. This text says we should take that circle of worry and straighten it out, make it a list of concerns, transform each one into a request, and then present each of them to God. And as you do, give him thanks—thanks for all the good God has done and thanks for all the good he is going to do with your requests. It is possible to grumble your way into disbelief, so give thanks.
Paul promises that if we do that, and keep on doing it, the peace of God that passes understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. If your mind stops circling in anxiety and depression, your doubt will gradually be transformed into faith. Of course, if your anxiety and depression is deep enough and chronic enough, Jesus may have to use professional counseling or medications to get you to the point where you can pray as Philippians 4 says we should.
The second means Jesus uses to help us overcome our emotional doubt is thought control. "Think about such things," says Philippians 4:8. Doubt is having two minds, a mind full of both faith and unbelief, a mind that wavers between the truth of God and the things of the world. To unite a divided mind, you have to focus on things that are positive and faith feeding. Instead of thinking of all the lies in the world, think about the truth. Instead of dwelling on all the lowdown people in your life, focus on the noble ones. Think about what is right in your life, not what is wrong; what is pure, not what is dirty; what is lovely, not what is ugly. Control what your mind focuses on and Jesus will use that to overcome the emotional doubt that grows out of the lies and ugliness and injustice of life.
The third means by which Jesus overcomes doubt in our lives is our behavior. "Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you." Model your life on those who are mature in their faith and you will act your way into faith. Blaise Pascal, the great French thinker, hit the nail the head when he said that most doubt is based not on intellectual problems but on our passions. And practice will overcome our passions better than anything. Or as a psychiatrist friend once told me, "It is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than to think your way into a new way of acting."
So if you are plagued by emotional doubt, act like a mature believer. No, I’m not saying that you should fake it, that you should be a hypocrite. I’m not talking about trying to fool people into thinking that you are something you aren’t. I’m saying that you should try it, that you should be a serious practitioner of the faith even if you aren’t sure of it, so that your actions can lead your thoughts to confidence. I’m talking about spiritual discipline. Even as physical discipline, doing exercises you don’t want to do and don’t enjoy, will shape your body, so spiritual discipline will shape your soul and overcome your doubt.
So, keep reading your Bible, meditating on it deeply. Keep praying as Paul has just taught, even when it doesn’t bear immediate fruit. Keep talking to believers who are both confident of their faith and honest about their doubts. Keep coming to church. Bring your doubts to church, where Jesus can help you in so many ways to overcome it. Among them, of course, is the Lord’s Supper, in which God reminds and assures us that Jesus came to save sinners, including the likes of you and me.
Now, please don’t misunderstand this list of things I’ve given you to do. This is not some self—help list. You cannot get yourself out of doubt. If you have tried to talk yourself out if it, or will yourself out of it, or just feel better about it, you have discovered that it doesn’t work. This man in the story had it just right. Only Jesus can deliver us from doubt. So take it to him with this prayer and then use the various means he provides. Even as Jesus acted to do the impossible for this doubting father, he will deliver you from your doubt.
And if you doubt that, if you just can’t believe, at least do this. Keep an open mind. Keep it open to faith, open to Jesus. Keep wanting it. Keep asking Jesus for it. Keep doing what you can with all I’ve talked about today. And leave the rest to God who is merciful. One of the most comforting stories Jesus told featured a confident saint and an uncertain sinner. You’ll find it in Luke 18; it’s usually called, "The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The saint was so sure of his standing with God that his prayers sounded like self—congratulation. The sinner wasn’t at all sure of where he stood with God. You might say that he doubted his salvation. But he went to church, knelt in a corner, beat his breast, and cried, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." And Jesus concluded the story by saying that the sinner went home justified before God. Take your doubt to God in Christ and leave it with the God who is merciful.
Stan Mast
Stan Mast has been the Minister of Preaching at the LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church in downtown Grand Rapids, MI for the last 18 years. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1971 and has served four churches in the West and Midwest regions of the United States. He also served a 3 year stint as Coordinator of Field Education at Calvin Seminary. He has earned a BA degree from Calvin College and a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Calvin and a Doctor of Ministry from Denver Seminary. He is happily married to Sharon, a special education teacher, and they have two sons and four grandchildren. Stan is a voracious reader and works out regularly. He also calls himself a car nut and an “avid, but average” golfer.
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