The Rising Doubt

There’s an old hymn by George Croly titled “Spirit of God, Descend upon My Heart.” I especially like the fourth stanza, shown below.

Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh;

Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear.
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh,
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

The stanza focuses on internal struggles and the desire to respond to them properly. The speaker wants to learn to know God’s constant presence even when he does not feel it. He wants to learn to be patient when he does not see God’s answers to prayer. He wants to learn how to correctly bear the struggles of the soul. He lists two of those common struggles.

Sometimes the soul wants to give off a “rebel sigh.” This is not quite an outright outburst of defiance. Nevertheless, it is an expression of disagreement with God’s plan. It is a groan stemming from lack of submission, a heart-originated protest that wishes for things to be different. The previous post addressed this type of soul struggle. While a Christian may not understand, like, or agree with God’s work, he must yield to it. There should be no rebels among Christians.

The second type of soul struggle mentioned is the “rising doubt.” This one is also very common. When life doesn’t go the way a believer thinks it should, he is inclined to have doubts that accompany his protesting sighs. He starts to ask questions. “Is God really working in my life?” “Will God lead me?” “Is this promise for me, or is my case special?” “If I’m trying to do the right thing, why does it seem that nothing is working out?”

The hymn-writer speaks of checking or curtailing that doubt while it is still in the rising or formative stage. He wants to learn to stop that doubt dead in its tracks before it has a chance to grow larger. Doubts will do that. The initial doubt may be in a small area, but at its root, it is doubt of God. If a Christian starts to doubt God in one area, it is quite natural to begin doubting Him in other areas as well. When he starts to doubt God, the believer finds himself on a very dangerous path. Without realizing what is happening, he can quickly find himself doubting everything he has ever known of God.

Doubts are dangerous. Oh, how the Christian must guard against them! He must identify them for what they are, recognize their danger, and eliminate them before they do widespread damage. As the hymn-writer explains, God’s help is necessary to effectively meet this struggle of the soul.

“We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” II Corinthians 10:5 (NASB)

Yielding to the Potter

         The Vessel (Sonnet 20)
The potter sits intently at his wheel,
His full attention given to the jar.
Then suddenly his probing fingers feel
A flaw or lump or pebble that would mar.
The jar is spoiled; it must now be remade.
His hands reduce the clay into a ball.
His skill is followed and His will obeyed;
The clay is pliant, yielding at His call.
The potter works to press and shape and squeeze;
The quality no longer will be poor.
The final product is designed to please -
Without a doubt, far better than before.
Effective when the clay remains the clay,
And lets the skillful potter have his way.

The work is God’s. God selects and prepares the clay. He spins the wheel. He molds the clay and adjusts the shape. He evaluates the progress and identifies flaws. He chooses what the finished product should look like. God is a master potter, and He knows what He is doing. He will achieve His desired result.

Our part is to submit to His skillful hands. We can’t jump off the wheel. We can’t stiffen ourselves or refuse to be molded. We have to be willing to be squeezed and shaped. We need to trust the hands that are molding us.

“But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.” Jeremiah 18:4 (NASB)

Sometimes It Gets Ugly

In a lot of areas in life, things can look pretty messy before they actually look good. Think of landscaping a yard or remodeling a house. Crafts, cooking, and baking can look pretty chaotic and disastrous until the final product is achieved. We understand the concept of a work in progress. We accept the temporary mess as necessary for achieving the polished product.

The same is true of Christian growth. God purifies and sanctifies us in order to make us into beautiful masterpieces that bring glory to Him; His work, however, is progressive. Sometimes there are rather ugly-looking views along the way as we advance toward Christ-like maturity. We are not always adept at walking the right way, so sometimes we stumble awkwardly or even fall into the mud. We are on the right path and headed in the right direction, but we are not perfect.

Since starting this blog, I have been reminded often (it seems more often than normal) that I still have not achieved graceful elegance. This realization can have the tendency to be discouraging to any of us. It can be frustrating to see continued struggle in a certain area, renewed struggle with an old area, or awkward, halting attempts to learn the lessons God has for us. Rather than becoming discouraged, we need to think with wisdom rather than emotion.

The fact that something is challenging does not make it wrong. Difficulty is not the same as sin. Sometimes we equate the struggle to learn with spiritual failure. Let me give a practical example. Someone might consider himself a failure as a Christian because he has a hard time dealing with his mother’s death. That’s not a valid evaluation. That situation is hard by its very nature. It is a challenge and a struggle. The difficult circumstance, however, is intended and used by God to strengthen spiritual muscles and promote growth. Those results only come through challenge.

Let’s consider a different illustration. Imagine an Olympic figure skater. He probably started skating at the age of two. At first all he attempted was to stand on his feet, then to shuffle a little, and then to skate forward. He reached the point that he looked pretty good at the basics, and then he started adding things like skating backwards and doing figure eights. Over time he added some spinning, jumping, and stopping skills. Eventually, he started doing moves with funny names: axel, lutz, toe loop, and salchow. He learned butterfly jumps, camel spins, spread eagles, and death spirals. When he got really good, he started performing these moves in multiples, in combinations, and even with a partner. At each new stage and for each new skill, he fell down a lot. He got multiple bruises, maybe concussions, and possibly even broken bones. His initial attempts at each skill were awkward and shaky. Some skills took months to learn and years to master.

Would we look at that developing skater and call him a failure? When he stumbles on a triple lutz, do we consider it disaster? When he falls during a camel spin or drops his partner while practicing a lift, do we write him off? No, we recognize that he is learning and developing new skills. It may not always look pretty along the way, but he is improving and progressing. The stumbling and falling are actually signs of the skater’s quest for improvement, as he pushes himself past where he has been before. It is completely normal and expected that he will not master every new skill immediately.

It is the same with us as Christians. God is constantly challenging us to move higher and higher with Him. He introduces new challenges or multiple challenges or new combinations of challenges to stretch us. Our initial attempts are awkward, and it does take time to reach some mastery in each area. The fact that our responses sometimes look ugly does not mean we are failing; it means we are learning. I’m not excusing sin or saying there is no such thing as failure. It should be clear to us, however, that sometimes what we might be tempted to call failure is nothing more than the initial work needed to learn a new skill. We might fall down now just like we did ten years ago, but now we fall down while attempting a triple lutz; ten years ago we fell while simply trying to skate forward.

When we seem to struggle or feel unsteady on our feet, we must remember that the present difficulty is not the problem. The problem would be if we stop trying to learn and stop making attempts when the difficulty is placed before us. It is important to remember that God is the one doing the work, and He will see that it is done properly. If we return to the craft reference from the first paragraph, we can be reminded of God as a potter. He is making a vessel out of each of us. If necessary, He will crush the clay and start over, but He will keep working with us until we are what He wants us to be. It may look messy along the way, but in the end He will create something beautiful and pleasing to Him.

“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 (NASB)

Book Review: Loneliness

Elisabeth Elliot is well-known in Christian circles, primarily as the widow of Jim Elliot, one of five missionaries martyred in Ecuador by the Aucas. Many people are not aware that her second husband was taken from her by illness. In addition to these two seasons of widowhood, Elisabeth also spent many years as a single person prior to her marriage to Jim. Her life experiences, combined with her lifelong study of the Scriptures, qualify her to write about the topic of Loneliness.

She states that God designed people to enjoy companionship with each other as well as with God. After sin marred God’s beautiful plan, people find themselves lonely. They seek to fill their need in various disappointing ways without realizing that only God can truly assuage the loneliness or that God has purposes for their loneliness. Whether caused by rejection, singleness, an unhappy marriage, widowhood, divorce, or an empty nest, the pain of loneliness ought to be a force that drives one to God.

Elisabeth mentions the need to love God more than anyone else. In our trust of Him, an important part of dealing with the loss of loneliness is recognizing that God habitually uses death (or loss) as the starting place for new birth and new beginnings. When loneliness is accepted as a gift from God, one designed to contribute to His good plan, the lonely life can be offered back to God with the intention of serving Him through it. “Our loneliness cannot always be fixed, but it can always be accepted as the very will of God for now, and that turns it into something beautiful.” What seems to be only a burden can become the means of great blessing when it is used in the way that God intends. “If God had eliminated the problem He would have eliminated the particular kind of blessing which it bears.”

The author uses both personal stories and those of others to illustrate the various truths that she presents. While her tendency toward an older style of writing and her inclusion of certain poems and quotations of earlier eras can at times hinder clarity, there is much helpful truth that can be easily gleaned from her writings. The book demonstrates the heart of one who has developed both sensitivity to God and compassion for others. Loneliness was published in 1988 by Oliver Nelson, a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers.