We are continuing season 10: the season of doubting and of spiritual darkness. We already looked at biblical five helps through this season for keeping the heart: (1) even when we may appear as hypocrites from time to time, that does not make us characteristically a hypocrite; (2) we should learn to regard both what can be said in our favour as well as what can be said against us; (3) griefs that come into our lives are not grounds for questioning the Faith; (4) a person in this season is often not an accurate judge of themselves; and (5) whatever the distress, it should drive us to God and not away from Him. Having given five helps, Flavel offers two more for those who still doubt:
When you have well digested these truths, if your doubts and distress remain, consider what is now to be offered.
1. Are you ready to conclude that you have no part in the favor of God, because you are visited with some extraordinary affliction? If so, do you then rightly conclude that great trials are tokens of God’s hatred? Does the Scripture teach this? And dare you infer the same with respect to all who have been as much or more afflicted than yourself? If the argument is good in your case, it is good in application to theirs, and more conclusive with respect to them, in proportion as their trials were greater than yours. Woe then to David, Job, Paul, and all who have been afflicted as they were! But had you passed along in quietness and prosperity; had God withheld those chastisements with which he ordinarily visits his people, would you not have had far more reason for doubts and distress than you now have?
We often, in our own trials, do not consider those who have been persecuted, abused, and martyred for their Faith. Yet, if we did, then we would come to realize that seeing our own grief as God’s hatred or disfavour discounts all those who suffered on behalf of Christ. This includes a multitude of saints recorded in Scripture, who serve as examples of the Faith! There was hardly a Christian in the Bible who was not persecuted and who suffered many griefs. Here is one example of Paul’s griefs. He was comparing himself to those who have reasons to boast by the flesh, boasting instead in Christ through his afflictions:
Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness (2 Cor. 11:23-30).
Paul took it as a badge of honour to suffer for Christ, seeing his persecution and griefs as bringing glory to Christ. So, far from leading him to question his religion, his griefs led him to boast all the more that he could be such a good representative for Christ. And that is what we are when we suffer on His behalf. What, then, if we complain or murmur or see our griefs as against our Faith? We nullify all honour and glory that is due Christ by not suffering in His stead. All things that come our way ought to be seen as God bestowing His abundant grace on us.
2. Do you rashly infer that the Lord has no love to you, because he has withdrawn the light of his countenance? Do you imagine your state to be hopeless, because it is dark and uncomfortable? Be not hasty in forming this conclusion. If any of the dispensations of God to his people will bear a favorable as well as a harsh construction, why should they not be construed in the best sense? And may not God have a design of love rather than of hatred in the dispensation under which you mourn? May he not depart for a season, without departing for ever? You are not the first that have mistaken the design of God in withdrawing himself. “Zion said, the Lord hath forsaken me, my Lord hath forgotten me.” But was it so? What saith the answer of God? “Can a woman forget her sucking child?” &c.
God uses both hardship and prosperity to grow us into Christlikeness. His choice of tool should not cause us to doubt, just as a skillful surgeon needs to use the right tool for the right procedure. He knows what He is doing, and He can always be trusted. Flavel continues:
But do you sink down under the apprehension that the evidences of a total and final desertion are discoverable in your experience? Have you then lost your conscientious tenderness with regard to sin? and are you inclined to forsake God? If so, you have reason indeed to be alarmed. But if your conscience is tenderly alive; if you are resolved to cleave to the Lord; if the language of your heart is, I cannot forsake God, I cannot live without his presence; though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: then you have reason to hope that he will visit you again. It is by these exercises that he still maintains his interest in you.
Once more. Are sense and feelings suitable to judge of the dispensations of God by? Can their testimony be safely relied on? Is it safe to argue thus; ‘If God had any love for my soul, I should feel it now as well as in former times; but I cannot feel it, therefore it is gone?’ May you not as well conclude, when the sun is invisible to you, that he has ceased to exist? Read Isaiah 1:10.
We ought to be concerned if we have grown numb to sin and are contemplating forsaking God. There will be times when we are not as sensitive to sin as in other times, but the Christian will always have some sensitivity to his sin. In cases when we do grow somewhat numb, we ourselves are grieving the Holy Spirit and stifling His work in us. In that case, the problem for our doubts should be obvious: we have not repented and come back into regular fellowship with God. Feelings cannot be relied on as accurate indicators for our status with God. Rather, what we look to is His Word. Take hold of those truths, and doubt will be dissolved.
Next time we will be looking at three reasons why we may feel cast down, and what the Biblical wisdom teaches about it.