Temptation, Failure and Doubt

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. 1 CORINTHIANS 10:13

Every teaching about victory over sin has to face some awkward facts. Christians who have given themselves wholly to God are still tempted, sometimes they still fall, and very often they doubt. Hannah Whitall Smith faced all three squarely in The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, in chapters that have probably helped more people than anything else she wrote, because they meet us exactly where the brighter chapters leave off.

Temptation is not sin

The first mistake, she says, is to expect that after we have entered the rest of faith, temptation will stop. When it comes back — often stronger than before — the soul concludes that this cannot be the promised land after all. But Israel met far more enemies inside Canaan than in the wilderness: walled cities, giants and thirty-one kings. Strong temptations, she says, are more often a sign of great grace than of little.

The second mistake is worse: to think that being tempted is itself a sin. The enemy whispers some evil thought, and then accuses us of it — how wicked you must be to think such a thing! — like a burglar who, when the owner resists him, shouts that the owner is the thief. So the soul feels condemned, grows discouraged, and a discouraged soul falls easily.

Her answer was plain. “It is no more a sin to hear evil whispers in our souls than to hear the swearing of bad men as we pass along the street.” The sin comes only when we stop, listen and join in. She told of a sheltered woman who was horrified by the dreadful thoughts that rushed in whenever she knelt to pray; when she learned to recognise them as the enemy’s and not her own, she turned her back on them and was set free.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. JAMES 1:12

“The power of temptation is in the fainting of our own hearts,” she wrote, and so she prized cheerfulness as a weapon. She passed on an allegory of the devil’s council: tempting a good man with pleasure will not work, nor with the hardness of virtue — but discourage him, and he is ours.

When we fall

Then she turned to failure. She did not pretend that trusting Christians never sin. “We are not preaching a state, but a walk.” Holiness is not a place we reach and then own for ever; it is a road we walk day by day, and we may step off it. What matters is what we do next.

A believer who falls is tempted either to give up, concluding that the whole thing was a delusion, or to hide the sin, calling it an infirmity to protect his doctrine. Both are fatal. The only way is honesty and an instant return. “Our sin is no reason for ceasing to trust, but only an unanswerable argument why we must trust more fully than ever.”

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 JOHN 1:9

When Israel was defeated at Ai, Joshua lay on his face in despair until evening. God’s response was brisk.

And the LORD said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? JOSHUA 7:10

She told two stories side by side. A man overcome by a temptation to treat a brother unkindly concluded he had never been born again, and spent three years in misery. He had done nothing but confess the sin for three years; he had never believed God forgave him, because he had never felt that He did. The other was a woman, two weeks into her new life, overtaken by a violent fit of anger. She ran to her room still boiling, confessed it, and said aloud that she believed God did forgive and cleanse. The sin and its cure had taken five minutes.

Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me. MICAH 7:8

The cask in the cellar

But she also pressed the reader to ask why a failure happened. Israel fell at Ai because of hidden sin in the camp. So she told of a clean-looking cask she had left unopened in a new house because it was too much trouble to carry up the stairs, though her conscience twinged every spring. Years later her house was overrun by moths. She suspected everything except the cask. When at last she had it opened, out they poured. Some small indulgence, left unexamined because it seemed harmless, lies behind many repeated failures.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. PSALM 139:23–24

The luxury of doubting

It is strange, Hannah remarked, that people whose very name is believers should have to confess to so much doubting. Her chapter on it is the most vigorous thing in the book. She did not console doubters. She told them to stop.

It matters which doubts she had in view. She was not writing about honest intellectual questions; she had passed through years of scepticism herself. Her target was the settled habit of doubting God’s love and faithfulness toward oneself — the Christian who says, yes, I believe my sins are forgiven, but then; and after the but comes a doubt about every promise God has made. Her most searching claim was this: “I am convinced that, for many, doubting is a luxury.” Try giving your doubts up, she said, and see. Do they not come like sympathetic friends, and is it not a luxury to sit with them and listen to their condolences?

And the most subtle doubts wear the costume of humility. We do not accuse God of injustice; we simply feel that we are too wicked for Him to care. But He came to save sinners. Our unworthiness is not a bar to His love; it is our claim on it.

But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. MATTHEW 9:12

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. LUKE 15:4–5

She told of a mother who left two little girls at Hannah’s house while she did errands. One played happily all afternoon. The other sat in a corner and worked herself into a frenzy, sure that her mother would forget her. When the mother returned and heard it, Hannah watched grief, wounded love and indignation fight for her face — and indignation won. That scene taught her to refuse the doubts that knocked at the door of her own heart.

Taking the pledge

How, then, is one delivered? By handing the doubting to the Lord like any other sin, and — because the stronghold is in the will — by something like a temperance pledge. Many people say, I hope I shall not doubt any more. Few say, I will not. Then, when the first doubt comes, do not argue with it. Lift the shield of faith at once and say something true. Her own formula was three words, repeated as often as needed: Jesus saves me.

Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. EPHESIANS 6:16

The best illustration is her own little daughter, now with the Lord, who announced one night at bedtime that she had had her first doubt: Satan had told her the Bible was not true, and she had told him she would believe it anyway. The next night he told her she was too naughty for Jesus to love. What did she say? “Satan, shut your mouth!” — and he could not make her unhappy one bit. A grander battle, said her mother, no soul ever fought.

Where she needs filling out

Some cautions. She repeats an old saying that all discouragement is from the devil, and she wrote that doubts are all from the devil and always untrue. As a weapon against morbid self-accusation and a comfortable habit, that is strong and useful medicine. As a rule, it is too sweeping. Some discouragement is the right grief of a conscience that has done wrong. Some doubts are honest questions; the Lord did not rebuke Thomas for wanting evidence, but offered it, and then called him to believe. And some doubting comes from depression or long grief, where a pledge alone will not mend it.

For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. 2 CORINTHIANS 7:10

And of some have compassion, making a difference: JUDE 1:22

Again, instant forgiveness from God does not cancel what we owe to people. If the sin wronged someone, returning to God includes making it right with them. Her stories are true to experience, but they are not a formula; Peter’s restoration after his fall took more than five minutes, and the Lord prayed for him through it. Yet with those cautions her central point stands: many Christians have made a home for failures and doubts that deserve eviction, and the way out is always the same — back to the faithful God, at once.

Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, JUDE 1:24

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Distinguish this week between the thought that comes and the thought you entertain. Refuse to feel guilty for the first; turn from it at once.

2. Next time you fail, confess immediately — within the minute — and believe you are forgiven because God says so.

3. Open your cask: name one small indulgence your conscience has twinged about for years, and bring it into the light.

4. Name the doubt you return to most often about God’s love for you. Is it an honest question or a comfortable habit?

5. Choose a short true sentence to say whenever doubt knocks — Jesus saves me, or a verse — and use it without arguing.

6. If your failure hurt someone, go and put it right; if you are struggling with depression or honest questions, tell a wise Christian friend rather than fighting alone.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have mistaken the enemy’s whispers for my own heart, and entertained doubts about Your love and called them humility.

When I am tempted, let me turn at once to You. When I fall, keep me from lying on my face, and from hiding my sin.

I give You my liberty to doubt. When the first doubt comes, let me lift the shield of faith and look at You.

Search me and show me whatever I have left unopened; where my questions are honest, answer them; where my heart is weary, carry me. Amen.