Is it more along the lines of doubting what you are to do, what the “right” or godly choice is in situations? Is God pleased with you kind of questions?

My heart aches with people who doubt. Doubt just exists for me–it is part of being empathetic, I think, because you always KNOW there is another way of looking at things. So it is hard to be confident and assured that you are right, okay, on the right path, etc.

Even more than doubt, though, I can relate to the “background uneasiness.” I am even more naturally anxious than I am doubting, I think. Over the past year, I have come to experience peace IN my anxiety. Joy IN my discouragement. I don’t think I noticed that or made space for it before, because the doubts and anxieties seemed to prove that I was NOT receiving God’s peace.

But then I started to wake up and see that God was there with me IN the anxiety. I don’t have to fight it (or anything else) to be in relationship with Him. He was walking me through, carrying me through, growing me THROUGH the anxiety and doubt. In a mysterious way, He was and is sanctifying the thing I was trying to fight so hard to overcome. But it wasn’t about me having to overcome it in order to let Him be God. He’s God there IN my anxieties and doubts. And that makes a huge difference, even if it doesn’t magically make me peaceful and joyful and confident!

I wonder if maybe you don’t have to worry about keeping the self-doubts at arm’s length. Maybe they will always be with you. But maybe God can be with you there in the doubts, and work through you there–a self-doubting person with God–in an amazing way. I don’t know. He’s pretty amazing what He can do in our not-so-overcoming lives, I think!

Theologically, maybe this is shaky ground. I don’t know for sure. (I told you I doubt myself! It’s just I drive some people nuts, like my counselor, with not being bothered about being self-doubting–ha! ha!) I know I’ve heard that the doubts and the anxieties are signs I’m not trusting. But, experientially, I’ve seen that I can still trust deeply in the middle of doubting. Internally, on the deepest level, I know peace from God, even when I’m still in darkness and chaos.

Does that make any sense? I’m not always sure!

There are a lot of things I don’t understand about God, but I never saw Him rejecting someone for not being perfect or not getting it perfect! As a matter of fact, I LOVE how He answers Job’s brazen questioning and Jeremiah’s doubting and wanting to throw in the towel. (Jeremiah 15 is one of my favorite chapters). He, better than any one else, knows that the people He created and died to redeem are weak and but dust. I love how honestly, sharply, patiently, lovingly and forgivingly Jesus interacted with Peter even when Peter kept blowing it.

He imputed His righteousness on you; He is sanctifying you and conforming you to His image. But, hey, if you could have done it on your own, and gotten “perfect enough” that He didn’t have to reject you, why should He have bothered to die, and then send His Holy Spirit to help you along?

But he is addressing something a lot more “black and white” than what I myself experience: the lack of assurance can be more of an “underground termite,” a spiritual miasma, a nagging “background uneasiness” that waxes more intense in the face of certain verses or certain types of utterances from pulpit or Christian book. In my case, it is rarely blackest despair (if only because I can’t handle utter despair, ), but still seriously peace & joy-robbing.

And the kinds of doubts you mentioned there in your post, OHHHHH, those are yet another category, for me totally distinct from the self-doubts (the former I can “simply” attribute to my puniness and His inscrutability [which makes them no less vexing in their own way], whereas the self-doubts I can’t keep at arm’s length so easily).

Thanks for your comments; they were encouraging.

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/OnlineBooks/ByTitle/

and selecting the book When the Darkness Will Not Lift. The section I’m referring to begins on pg. 40 in the book (pg. 41 of 82 in Adobe Reader).

I think sometimes we are so afraid of doubts, like they are the proof that our salvation is not real. Doubts become the ultimate enemy to be slain and put in the ground, or else we can have no assurance of salvation or spiritual victory or whatever. Something about that seems fake.

Sometimes doubt just IS. The perspective I come from is what is the direction I am looking with my doubt? Am I hardening my heart and turning away from God in hatred and refusal because of the things that don’t make sense? Or am I turning to God in my anguish and doubt and uncertainty, flailing out, crying, angry, worshipping, whatever, from the place of my doubting?

So many times when I hear someone express agonizing doubt, I see and hear a heart that is earnestly seeking the Lord, with face and heart turned towards Him, desperate for answers and hurting from confusion. Doubt like that is not hard-hearted unbelief or lack of faith or rejection of God and His will for us.

I’ve realized that some of the times when my words looked the most despairing and full of doubt and uncertainty, were also the times I was clinging most tightly to the Lord in that place of doubt, even while I was (and still am) questioning so many things about God, His word, my faith, etc. Those words of doubt were the context of my deep-seated clinging to God and affirmation of what it meant for me to trust at that moment in time.

I hate it like everything when I go through doubting times. But I refuse to use the presence or absence of doubt itself (no matter how strong) as an evaluation of how I’m doing spiritually.

Brian:
You may never this side of heaven get rid of feeling guilty and condemned. But that just makes Satan (relatively speaking of course) even more defeated that, from that place, out of the abuse, he STILL cannot get you to stop trusting, believing and choosing God. Even if you never feel safe and secure and protected this side of heaven. Satan doesn’t win because he concocted the abuse you experienced. Satan doesn’t win because of doubts you can’t seem to step out of. Those are means to an end–to keep you from trusting God. You experience victory because of how your faith shines through the doubting and despair you are walking through.

I see the glory of God shining through you when you choose to trust and cling through awful feelings of guilt, condemnation and worthlessness. When you choose to trust, even though the abuse and unpredictability of your life makes trusting God seem (every day even) like the craziest choice in the world.

“Not sinning” is possible, but not by you. Only Jesus. Therefore, it might have been a good place for Jesus to look for assurance , but not you.

There is a sole, single criterion which our Master gives us for knowing where we are.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. -Jesus of Nazareth

That’s it. Nothing else. Zip, nada, bupkus.

John confirms.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. -John, the beloved disciple

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. -John, the beloved disciple

Love is assurance.

Love is assurance.

The love of God for us, reflected in us for the ones he purchased with his blood.

This is assurance. Praise God.

Long ago, exhausted from this perennial battle, I concluded that what we have to do is follow the example in ROMANS 4: “In hope against hope he believed.” Not let go of Him just like Jacob wouldn’t let go of that angel!

Blessings2U,

Jazzki

Erm, no. I meant ‘get rid of the guilt and condemnation without falling into a false assurance’. Being smugly, absolutely sure I’m going to Heaven and getting the surprise of my life afterwards would NOT be fun at all.

Part of it is the legacy of abuse I struggle with. I find it very, very difficult to believe I’m loved, and very, very easy to believe I’m hated. It doesn’t take hardly anything to convince me I’m in trouble and going to get a whuppin’. To believe that I’m loved and NOT destined for the flames takes a lot of effort on my part … and it doesn’t take hardly anything at all to put me back.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

however…I don’t want to get in the business of pronouncing that belief on other people (although I hold it to be true because of God’s grace) because that puts me in the seat of judgment. Which is by the way, a place I need to avoid at all costs!!!

As for those who think that “baptism, the Lord’s Supper, church membership with integrity, public worship, growth in grace, etc.” will increase assurance, all I can say is, would that this were true. A person can do all that (out of genuine love for God, not as opposed to Sola Fide) and still battle self-doubts. You can apply all kinds of “poultices”—spiritual and psychological—to diminish the doubts, but like the ocean, they persist—with high tides and low. Unlike the Salton sea, they never dry up.

Nor is this lack of assurance (in my case) from “looking inward too much.” It’s mostly from verses in the Scriptures as well as utterances from Christians (not directly me-ward, but what they preach/write in general about the Christian life and walk).

Also, I have a question: what is the difference between a hypocrite and someone afflicted by the “ROMANS 7 Syndrome”? Where do we draw the line between those two? How do we know that a “hypocrite” isn’t simply a bad case of “et justus et peccator”?

Thanks again, Michael, for this essay of yours.

Sorry, second comment I forgot to make …

… are you saying that these are works that a Christian must do in order to be saved, and someone who doesn’t do them is committing a mortal sin? Then how is your position different from the RCC? Where does Sola Fide fit into this?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

1) If we know people by their fruits, what do we say to those pagans, JWs, Mormons, etc., who exhibit them more clearly than Christians do?

2) If we have to have the right confession as well as the right action, how do I know my confession is the right one? To a large percentage of the Christian world, Baptists are heretics whose faith is worthless because it isn’t united to the One True Church. How do I know they aren’t telling the truth?

3) Some of us do not have and never have had assurance of our salvation because we struggle with guilt and condemnation. How do I hold onto that without latching onto a false assurance?

Respectfully,

Brian P.