Today we will be looking at three more reasons often used for justifying doubt, and show how they are not really reasons at all. In this, the battle is for the mind, and knowing how to address the lies in our heads with biblical wisdom is a crucial practice. Here is Flavel on number 4:
4. Is the want of that enlargement in private which you find in public exercises an occasion of doubts and fears? Consider then whether there are not some circumstances attending public duties which are peculiarly calculated to excite your feelings and elevate your mind, and which cannot affect you in private. If so, your exercises in secret, if performed faithfully and in a suitable manner, may be profitable, though they have not all the characteristics of those in public. If you imagine that you have spiritual enlargement and enjoyment in public exercises while you neglect private duties, doubtless you deceive yourself. Indeed if you live in the neglect of secret duties or are careless about them, you have great reason to fear. But if you regularly and faithfully perform them, it does not follow that they are vain and worthless, or that they are not of great value, because they are not attended with so much enlargement as you sometimes find in public. And what if the Spirit is pleased more highly to favor you with his gracious influence in one place and at one time than another, should this be a reason for murmuring and unbelief, or for thankfulness?
The important element here is the consistency of our private duties to God. If we do them faithfully, keeping our hearts in their doing, then we are doing well. However, if public experiences are being seen as a substitute for our own private time with God, then there is a serious problem. In that case, all of our public exercises are “vain and worthless.” This is because it is our time with God in private that sets the standard for our time in public and not the other way around. Public exercise of our Faith may help enrich your private time, but it cannot be a replacement. A heart engaged in prayer, Bible-reading, and faithful study, should be viewed as our lifeline, and our active inward-obedience to God’s commandments its evidence. Drop these out, and you drop everything out. It is like expecting someone to live without internal organs. You can dress up the body all you like for the public to see, but the person is still lifeless. Rather, we need to be faithful in our private practice and that will, in turn, ground our public practice.
5. The vile or blasphemous suggestions of Satan sometimes occasion great perplexity and distress.—They seem to lay open an abyss of corruption in the heart, and to say there can be no grace here. But there may be grace in the heart where such thoughts are injected, though not in the heart which consents to and cherishes them. Do you then abhor and oppose them? do you utterly refuse to prostitute yourself to their influence, and strive to keep holy and reverend thoughts of God, and of all religious objects? If so, such suggestions are involuntary, and no evidence against your piety.
There is a difference between alien thoughts that are being imposed upon us—which we fight against—and thoughts that well up from our hearts and are seized upon to relish in sin. The former characterizes the Christian, and the regular practice of the latter the unbeliever. That is not to say that the Christian does not ever relish sin, but that there will always be a battle; a battle that God arms us for victory: tools for keeping the heart. So, we should not despair because we have wicked thoughts imposed on us. Rather, sin only happens when they are entertained, and even that would be outside the regular character of the Christian. So, your fight against sin is evidence that you are, in fact, saved.
6. Is the seeming denial of your prayers an occasion of despondency? Are you disposed to say, “If God had any regard for my soul he would have heard my petitions before now; but I have no answer from him, and therefore no interest in him?” But stay: though God’s abhorring and finally rejecting prayer is an evidence that he rejects the person who prays, yet, dare you conclude that he has rejected you, because an answer to your prayers is delayed, or because you do not discover it if granted? “May not God bear long with his own elect, that cry unto him day and night?”
Others have stumbled upon the same ground with you: “I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless thou heardst the voice of my supplication.” Now are there not some things in your experience which indicate that your prayers are not rejected, though answer to them is deferred? Are you not disposed to continue praying though you do not discover an answer? Are you not disposed still to ascribe righteousness to God, while you consider the cause of his silence as being in yourself? Thus did David: “O my God, I cry in the day time, and thou hearest not; and in the night, and am not silent: but thou art holy,” &c. Does not the delay of an answer to your prayers excite you to examine your own heart and try your ways, that you may find and remove the difficulty? If so, you may have reason for humiliation, but not for despair.
Thus I have shown you how to keep your heart in dark and doubting seasons. God forbid that any false heart should encourage itself from these things. It is lamentable, that when we give saints and sinners their proper portions, each is so prone to take up the other’s part.
God answers our prayers based on how they line up with what He desires for us, which is for His glory and our sanctification. We need to also watch for how He may answer our prayers, looking back to see if we are growing in accordance to our prayers. We also need to watch how we respond to our circumstances, as they are often orchestrated in answer to them. In this way, we need to be careful that our circumstances affect us in such a way as to make us malleable to God’s working in them. If we continue to resist, then we show that our heart was not really in our prayer. Also, as we line up what we desire with what God teaches He desires in His Word, then we will have more of our prayers answered in the affirmative. We also need to keep in mind that our own plans are not what God regards, but His own directing of our steps. So, while we plan our lives responsibly, we need to submit to God’s shaping influence and see all that He does as for our good and His glory. With these in mind, we have no reason to despair based on how God answers our prayers. If they are “no,” then that is for the best. If it is “wait,” then we should patiently wait on Him. Regardless of the answers, we should always seek to keep our hearts right with Him, and that will help us to be more effective as soldiers of prayer.
We need to also recognize that when we respond in doubt and act as though we are in despair, we are then acting as though we are ourselves hopeless sinners. In doubting, we take up the part of the unbeliever, acting in a way that denies the sure hope we have in Christ. When we come to recognize this switch, then what we need to do is truly take up the hope of the saints; a hope that has been described throughout the Bible (and much of which has also been taught in this devotional series). Doubt and despair are the lot of the sinner outside the grace of God. Hope and growing assurance are the lot of the saint.
Next time we will be looking at season 11: when sufferings for religion are laid upon us.