Help for Those Who Doubt

There once was a man who went to see his local psychologist. When the doctor asked him what was bothering him, he said, “Doctor, I think I’m suffering from an inferiority complex.”

So over the next few weeks, the psychologist put the patient through an intensive battery of tests. Then there was a long wait while he tabulated the test data and charted the results.

Finally, the doctor called the man to come back to the office. “I have some interesting news for you.” he said. “That inferiority complex you thought you had? It’s no complex. You really are inferior.”

There are times when every one of us feels inferior. We feel alone, abandoned, discouraged. We feel like God is a million miles away and could care less about us. We feel the same way that a certain traveling executive named Joe Bayly felt like when we penned these words from a lonely hotel room:

I’m alone Lord.

Alone a thousand miles from home.

There’s no one here who knows my name

Except the hotel clerk, and he spelled it wrong.

No one to eat dinner with, laugh at my jokes, listen to my gripes,

Or be happy with me about what happened today and say “That’s great.”

No one who cares.

There’s just this lousy bed and slush in the street outside between the buildings.

I feel sorry for myself and I have plenty of reason to.

Maybe I ought to say I’m on top of it… Praise the Lord… Things are great.

But they’re not.

Tonight, it’s all gray slush.

I want you to know that if you’ve ever felt like that - or if you’re feeling like that right now - the Word of God has some encouragement for you today. There’s a section of Scripture tucked away in the book of 1 John that was meant especially for those times when our lives are full of gray slush.

It’s found in 1 John 3. Listen as I read it. I’m beginning in v.19.

This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

This passage is all about doubt. The kind of doubt that comes creeping into your life like the fog that sometimes rolls in off Lake Erie. You can barely sense it approaching, you can’t feel its tentacles wrapping themselves quietly around your soul. But then one day you look around and you realize that you can’t see things clearly anymore. Where once there was color and clarity in your life, now everything seems to be cloaked with a mantle of gray.

This passage in 1 John is about the kind of spiritual doubt that can cause you to question your relationship with God. To doubt his presence. To feel far from his love. To wonder whether you really are a child of God.

These two verses are about the Dilemma of Doubt. Let’s see what God has to say to us here.

I know that many of you are sports fans, so let’s think about the Dilemma of Doubt as though it were a sports event. There are four parties present at this sports event.

1. The Athlete, down on the playing field. That’s you. You’re the one that everybody has come to see perform. You’re the one down there in the arena of life, working hard and sweating up a storm. You’re the central character in this drama.

2. The Fan sitting up in the stands. Every sporting event has fans. Now if you know anything about fans, you know that they tend to be fickle. When things are going good down on the playing field, and the home team is doing well, the fans are great. They’re happy, they’re upbeat. They’re blowing horns and waving banners and cheering their lungs out. Souvenir sales are up at the concession stands.

But when things start to go badly, what happens? They boo, they jeer. Sometimes they even throw things at the players.

I had always heard, before I moved to Pennsylvania, that Philadelphia fans had a reputation for being this way. They don’t call them the Philadelphia Boo-Birds for nothing. Sometimes they even boo the national anthem!

So fans can be fickle; they can blow hot or cold. Who is the Fan in this Dilemma of Doubt we’re looking at? It’s your heart - your feelings, your emotions.

Now picture this: You are down there on the playing field, trying hard to do your best in the game of life, but your heart is up in the stands either cheering or jeering, depending on how well you’re doing.

Doesn’t that seem strange? Sometimes, your own heart, your own feelings, can be your worst supporter. There are a lot of times when you’ll be out there trying to live the Christian life, and your heart just isn’t with you. You’re heart is going “Booo! You’re nothing but a turkey. You’re a loser. You’ll never learn to play this game.” Your heart is rooting against you. That kind of fan support can get to be a problem!

3. The Critic. Every athlete has his critics. Every sports team has its critics. The Critic is the person who, no matter what you do, will never be on your side. He’s not fickle; he’s just downright hostile!

Ask the average Western New Yorker who his favorite football team is, and he’ll tell you that he has two: the Buffalo Bills, and whoever happens to be playing against the Dallas Cowboys that week. After the pain of the last couple of Super Bowls, I don’t think you’ll find too many people in Buffalo who would ever root for the Dallas Cowboys!

Likewise, if you’re from Long Island, you’ll never root for the New York Rangers. One of the fiercest rivalries in all the world of sports is that rivalry between the New York Islanders, and the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League.

When the Rangers venture out of Manhattan to play the Islanders at the Nassau County Coliseum, it’s like total war. They receive so much abuse from the Islander fans that it’s really quite funny to watch. Likewise, when the Islanders go to play at Madison Square Garden, the same thing happens.

But up until this year, the Islanders fans had one up on the Rangers fans. They had a trump card, so to speak. Their trump card was to stand up and chant in unison “1940… 1940”.

Why 1940? Because that was the last time that the New York Rangers had won the Stanley Cup, until they finally won it this year. When those Islanders fans were chanting 1940, they were reminding the Rangers of 54 years of failure and futility. 54 years of ultimately coming up a loser at the end of the season. The folks from Long Island took delight in rubbing salt into that wound.

Now, who’s the Critic in this Dilemma of Doubt we’ve been considering? Well, as you’ve probably guessed, it’s Satan. Some people say that Satan doesn’t exist. I like the answer D.L. Moody gave to that. He said “I know that Satan exists for two reasons: first, the Bible says so, and second, I’ve done business with him.”

Satan is our critic. He is our implacable foe. He is called in Revelation 12:10 “the accuser of the brethren”. He is against us from beginning to end. He has nothing good to say about us. He is totally hostile toward us. He is the enemy of our souls.

Job was a righteous man. He loved God and he lived a life of integrity. In fact, one day in heaven they were talking about what a neat guy he was. God said “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

And Satan happened to be there, and he said “Yeah, right! How can you be so naive? Job isn’t serving you because he loves you, he’s serving you because of what’s in it for him.”

That’s the kind of critic Satan is. Even when you do something good, he’s ready to dump on you. Question your motives. Doubt your sincerity.

And Satan’s at the game. He has season’s tickets. You are down there in the trenches, trying to put together a winning season for Jesus, and Satan’s up there in the stands - the Critic, shouting “1940… 1940… “ He’s up there reminding you and everybody else that you’re a loser, you’re a failure. And you know where he sits?

Somehow, he always manages to find an empty seat right beside your heart! Remember, your heart is your emotions, your feelings. Sometimes your heart is for you; sometimes your heart is against you. Your heart is just a fickle Fan.

But Satan wants to turn your heart from being a Fan into being a Critic just like he is. He wants to convince you, on the deepest emotional level, that you really are a loser, that you really are worthless, that God would never want to have anything to do with somebody as unlovable as you.

He wants to get you so tied up in knots on the heart level, questioning your own motives, doubting God’s love, that you become paralyzed as a Christian. Doubt is the process he uses; despair is the result he desires.

I have talked to a lot of Christians who struggle with feelings of inferiority and doubt. They have no assurance of their salvation; they have no assurance of their relationship with God, because they’ve been listening to their heart, and their heart has been listening to Satan.

Now the apostle John says that if you get into that kind of a bind - if you fall into the Slough of Despond next to the Castle of Doubt, there’s something worth knowing.

And that something is that your relationship with God does not depend on how you happen to feel at the moment. Your position in the standings doesn’t depend on whether the fans are booing or cheering. And it certainly doesn’t depend on whether the Critic is carping, because he most certainly will be. You can count on that.

Your standing as a Christian depends on objective facts, not subjective feelings. And facts are things you can know. Look at what John says again in v.19 - “This then is how we know that we belong to the truth.” The word “know” appears 41 times in the book of 1 John. This happens to be a book about assurance.

What is John referring to that you can know? He’s referring to what he has just said in v.18:

1 John 3:18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

He’s talking about living the Christian life. If you are loving people with actions and in truth, then that is the evidence that proves that you belong to the truth.

Did you know that the Christian life can be summed up in one statement? It’s found in v.23: “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”

Notice that the word “command” is singular. You can’t divorce believing in Jesus from loving one another. If you do the first, you’ll do the second. You cannot separate doctrine from practice. You can’t say “Oh, I believe in Jesus” and then go out and treat people like dirt.

What’s John saying here? He’s saying that if you find, when you look at your life, that your lifestyle has been changed from selfishness to selflessness, then you can know that God has done a work in you.

If you are struggling with spiritual doubt, the best way to combat it is to get busy loving and serving other people. A Christian who is actively involved in ministry is much more happy, content, and secure in his faith than a Christian who isn’t.

But you’ve got to remember that your relationship with God does not stand or fall on how you feel about that relationship. Sometimes you’ll feel good about it. You’ll feel close to God. But sometimes you’ll feel terrible; like God is a million miles away.

It doesn’t matter how you feel, because there is an objective ground that stands beneath your subjective feelings. That ground is the work of God in providing your salvation in Jesus Christ. And if you know that, then you can weather those times when “the storms of doubt and fear assail”.

C.S. Lewis said “Faith is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted in spite of your change of moods.”

Now I mentioned that there were four participants in this Dilemma of Doubt. So far, we’ve looked at three: the Athlete (that’s you); the Fickle Fan (that’s your heart); and the Carping Critic (that’s the devil)…

4. The Coach. In every sporting event, there’s a coach. He’s usually unseen - in the dugout, or behind the bench. He’s not highly visible, but he exerts a tremendous influence on the game.

What does a good coach do? A coach helps to prepare and equip a player to play the game successfully. A good coach makes sure that his players know the basics.

One day, back in the 1960’s, after the Green Bay Packers had played a horrible game, their coach, the legendary Vince Lombardi got them all into the classroom. The players shifted uneasily in their seats, wondering what Lombardi was going to say to them after their miserable performance. After a long period of silence, Coach Lombardi took a ball in his hands and said “This, gentlemen, is a football.” He took them back to basics.

A good coach makes sure that his players know the fundamentals. He makes sure they know the rules of the game. He helps each individual player to develop his skills through constant practice.

A good coach is an encourager. I had the privilege of meeting Tom Landry, the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys. I like Coach Landry’s definition of a coach. “A coach is someone who can get you to do what you don’t want to do, so that you can become the player you do want to be.”

He gets you doing blocking drills, he gets you doing wind-sprints. He makes you memorize the play book. He puts you through pain, and sweat, and hard work so that by the opening kick-off, you’ll be ready.

There are times when a coach has to criticize his players if he sees them making mistakes, or doing things wrong. But what is the difference between a Coach and a Critic? The difference is that the Coach is committed to the success of the player; the Critic is not. That means that the coach’s criticism is always going to be constructive, not destructive.

All five of my sons played Little League baseball this past year. My middle son Philip had a coach who was a real student of the game. He went out of his way to teach the boys the finer points of baseball the way it was meant to be played.

If a boy made an error in the field, this coach wouldn’t yell at him or embarrass him in front of everybody. He’d just quietly draw him aside between innings, put his arm around his shoulder and explain how to do it better next time. I saw him do this game after game, and I watched Phil’s team improve radically throughout the course of the season, until by the end, they were the best team in the league.

Well, who is the Coach in our scenario of Doubt? The Coach is God’s Holy Spirit. Look at verse 24: “this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”

God hasn’t left us out there on the playing field to fend for ourselves. He has given us a Coach - His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes alongside us and puts an arm around our shoulder. He helps us to succeed at the game of life the way God wants it to be played. He encourages us when we need encouraging.

But sometimes he has to confront us when we mess up, when we blow a play. But he always does so in a loving way, looking to correct us, not to condemn us.

Remember, God is committed to your success as a Christian. The devil will always try to erode your confidence in your relationship with God. His goal is to make you feel so bad about your failures and your sins that you’ll finally throw in the towel and conclude that not even God can help you. And the devil will try to get your heart on his side.

But God has provided you with salvation through his Son Jesus Christ, and he has given you His Holy Spirit as a deposit on the good things to come; a seal of the promises that he has made to you. So be encouraged! There’s help for those who doubt.

Remember, there’s…

- the Athlete

- the Fan

- the Critic

- the Coach

Now let’s go play the game of life. And let’s listen to the Coach.