No one had ever seen a more unusual band of soldiers. Or heard. As the men slowly advanced toward the front lines, no armor glinted in the sunlight; no war cry pierced the air. Instead, colorful robes adorned these soldiers’ shoulders, and they were armed with nothing but a song. And at the heart of the song were two words that seemed severely premature: “Give thanks.”

Give thanks to the Lord,     for his steadfast love endures forever. (2 Chronicles 20:21)

So sang the vanguard of King Jehoshaphat’s army; so marched his first men into war.

Their enemies, surely disoriented, perhaps took some courage, thinking Judah’s warriors had lost their minds. But as the next minutes would show, the soldiers’ song of thanks proved more powerful than any sword. For “when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed” (2 Chronicles 20:22).

Judah’s enemies were routed by song, vanquished by praise. And the first sounds to fill the expectant air of war were those two surprising words: “Give thanks.” Many a war today is won with the same words, even if our foes have changed. Many a sin lies slain, many a lie gets daggered, and many a devil flees at the sound of this weapon called “thank you.”

Weapon Called ‘Thank You’

Often, in Scripture, thanksgiving arises after deliverance — after God has answered the prayer, brought the rescue, trampled the enemy. But among the many examples of post-deliverance thanksgiving, we find several striking examples of the saints thanking God before the battle begins — as a weapon of war.

Alongside Jehoshaphat’s army, we might recall what Daniel did when faced with King Darius’s insane decree: “Whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions” (Daniel 6:7). Daniel would not, could not, endure a month of prayerless days, much less make petition to a creature of dust. So, “he got down on his knees three times a day and prayed, . . . as he had done previously” (Daniel 6:10).

Were I Daniel, my prayers would no doubt plead and beg and earnestly ask for deliverance. Daniel, however, did more: he “gave thanks before his God” (Daniel 6:10). Let kings rage and lions roar; Daniel will still be heard saying “thank you” to his God. And with this weapon, he silenced fear, proclaimed God’s faithfulness, and so trusted in his God all through the awful night.

“Under God, thanksgiving can become not only the raised cup after battle, but the drawn sword beforehand.”

Chief among gratitude’s soldiers, however, stands our own Lord Jesus, who knew how to thank his Father before the four thousand were fed (Mark 8:6), before Lazarus shook off his graveclothes (John 11:41), and even before his own betrayal. “He took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them” (Matthew 26:27). Maundy Thursday heard the agonized prayers of Gethsemane; it heard also the stunning sounds of gratitude. And in part through that “thank you,” Jesus saw more clearly the joy set before him, “that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29), and he found strength to trust until the empty tomb.

Under God, thanksgiving can become for us an army marching forward, declaring God’s steadfast love against the hordes of unbelief. It can become not only the raised cup after battle, but the drawn sword beforehand.

Counting Blessings, Killing Sins

Consider now your own life. You are no soldier marching toward battle, no Daniel facing the lions’ den, no Savior engulfed in darkness. But in Christ, you have many strong and subtle foes. And Godward gratitude is one of your sharpest swords.

Take worry. How do you repel a rising anxiety and welcome the peace that passes all understanding? How does your embattled mind become garrisoned by the forces of grace? Not only by “[letting] your requests be made known to God,” but also by doing so “with thanksgiving” (Philippians 4:6–7). “Father, though worry weighs on me so heavily, thank you. You have proved your faithfulness so many times; you will prove your faithfulness again.”

Or take sexual temptation. How do you create an atmosphere in your heart that chokes the lungs of lust? Not only by removing “filthiness,” “foolish talk,” and “crude joking” from mouth and mind, and not only by remembering that “everyone who is sexually immoral . . . has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God,” but also by filling your soul with the fragrance of gratitude. Instead of sexual sin, Paul says, “let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 5:4–5). For lust cannot live in an utterly thankful heart, a heart that gratefully knows God as its treasure.

Or take bitterness. How do you “let the peace of Christ rule in your heart” when someone in your community drives you crazy (Colossians 3:15)? How do you go on forgiving and forbearing instead of allowing anger to kill your love — or bitterness to cool it (Colossians 3:13–14)? In part, by obeying the command to “be thankful” (Colossians 3:15). When we sincerely thank God for his mercy in Christ, when we gratefully trace the kindness that covers our sins, another day of love feels a little more doable.

We’re not talking here about a bland and banal, cross-stitched and clichéd “count your blessings.” We’re talking about war. Thanksgiving is an act of war. We count our blessings to kill our sins.

Begin and Abound

A habit of thanksgiving, however, rarely comes easily — especially in the grip of temptation. Far easier to allow worry over the walls, to cede ground to lust, to open the gates before bitterness, than to boldly raise gratitude’s flag. And understandably so. When Paul travels to our sin’s twisted center, he finds there an ancient thanklessness: “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21). Sin never says “thank you” — not sincerely, not from the heart.

So, how might naturally thankless people wield the weapon of thanksgiving? We might consider a two-part plan: begin and abound.

Begin

A habit of thanksgiving grows, in part, from beginning our prayers with gratitude and praise. On some regular basis, then, we might resolve to say “thank you” before we say “help me.” Before we voice whatever burdens feel most pressing, we might pause, remember, and spend some time naming God’s past faithfulness, his present help.

Such a practice holds dangers, of course, because thanksgiving holds no value apart from what John Piper calls thanksfeeling. Habitually “thanking” God from a thankless heart warrants the rebuke of Jesus: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15:8). In fact, perhaps the worst prayer in the Gospels begins with “thank you” (Luke 18:11–12).

At the same time, Scripture gives us warrant to begin with thanksgiving; it also gives us hope that such a practice may nourish into our hearts not only the words, but the feeling too. The Levites of old “were to stand every morning, thanking and praising the Lord, and likewise at evening” (1 Chronicles 23:30). Whatever the circumstance, each day found the Levites adorning the dawn with thanksgiving and bedewing the dark with gratitude.

“Thanksgiving is an act of war. We count our blessings to kill our sins.”

In the New Testament, Paul commands us to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18) — indeed, to thank God “always and for everything” (Ephesians 5:20). Such commands suggest more than mere spontaneity. By grace, resolving to thank God “always” can push us to remember our many reasons for thankfulness. And remembrance, like a net thrown into the heart’s waters, often catches fresh feelings.

As you begin with thanksgiving, then, remember particular answers to past prayers. Remember the gifts God has scattered so generously about you. Remember how much you have that you don’t deserve — and how little you have that you do. Remember the main reason for gratitude named in the Old Testament: “For he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” (1 Chronicles 16:34, 41). And then trace that goodness and love in the figure of your dying Savior, resurrected Lord, ascended King, and coming Groom.

As we do so, the Lord may well set a table before us in the presence of our enemies — our own worry, our lust, our bitterness — and our cup will overflow with thanks.

Abound

If we regularly begin with thanksgiving, we may find ourselves slowly doing more: abounding in thanksgiving. Paul names such abounding as one of the central pillars of the everyday Christian life:

As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6–7)

Abounding in thanksgiving is not a discrete practice; it’s not a step of prayer on the way to petition. Abounding in thanksgiving is a lifestyle. When we abound, we find gratitude rising from our hearts as our bodies rise from bed. We say “thank you” unplanned, unpremeditated, as our eyes catch red falling leaves or the morning’s frosted dew. We bow our heads before meals not merely by brute force of habit but by a living impulse of the heart.

And when the forces of temptation advance, we wield thanksgiving like a weapon well used and close at hand. With Jehoshaphat’s singers, we march toward the battle with song. “Thank you!” we sing, and the sword descends. “I trust you!” we shout, and sin lies slain.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15115600/how-paul-motivates-impossible-love-in-marriage

Tucked away in my computer files is a little document named “What to Do with Doubt.” A remnant from a darker time.

The document was a note to self, an effort to look myself in the eyes and practice the soul-talk of the psalmist. Why are you doubting, O my soul, and why are you divided within me?

The suggestions begin fairly predictably. “Seek God,” the first one reads, followed by several verses. Or the fourth: “Don’t trust in yourself.” They begin to range toward the end, though. The sixteenth and nineteenth read, “Think of the prophecies Jesus fulfilled” and “Think of great saints.” Those who walk in the dark are glad for any starlight.

Such a document may seem strange to those who have never dealt with serious doubts — about God, Scripture, the gospel — and therefore have never wondered what to do with doubt. But then there are the Thomases of the world, people who, by some sad mixture of personality, background, and indwelling sin, have found themselves prone to saying, “Unless I see . . .” (John 20:25). We take our place among Christ’s disciples, but our faith can sometimes feel embattled, our souls divided.

We believe, but oh how we need help with our unbelief (Mark 9:24).

In Two Minds

Strangely enough, I never doubted the truth of God’s word during my nearly two decades as a nominal Christian. Only after the first joys of genuine faith, the first rush of deliverance, the first sights of Christ’s glory did I feel the first shadow of doubt. It came with the sudden violence of a mugger, and with similar effects: I lay for a while on the ground, bloody and wondering why.

Where did doubt come from, and why did it pick me? I have not a clue. I only know that one day in college, prior certainties began to shake, seemingly uncontrollably. Unwelcome, unlooked-for questions somehow gained entrance into my mind, and I found myself on the defense. Can Scripture really withstand scrutiny? the strange voice asked. And in darker moments, How do you know God even exists? I would fall asleep, night after night, debating the darkness, and morning by morning the questions returned.

The title of Os Guinness’s 1976 book on doubt captures the experience well: In Two Minds. Doubt divides and doubles you, Jekyll-and-Hydes you, splits you in the most uncomfortable places. With one mind, I only wanted to “trust in the Lord with all [my] heart, and . . . not lean on [my] own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5), but another mind called that intellectual escapism. With one mind, I read the Bible searching for sights of the Lord I loved, and with another mind I cast a skeptical eye. With one mind I trusted; with another mind I doubted. I was, as James says, “a double-minded man” (James 1:8).

It can make you desperate, doubt can. For almost two years, I burned through notebooks, journaling anguished thoughts and pleading prayers. I listened obsessively to sermons, searching for some voice that could cast away the demon. I contacted apologetics ministries on more than one occasion, once even calling at midnight. In a more charismatic strain, I felt an impulse one miserable night to read the entire book of Proverbs and pray for deliverance (I made it somewhere near the middle). And then, of course, I developed a document like “What to Do with Doubt.”

Desperate men in darkness grasp and stumble wildly. And sometimes, in the kind providence of God, they strike upon a path.

Paths Beyond Doubt

Just as the pathways into doubt are many and mysterious, so too are the pathways out. Jesus, for example, responded to diverse doubts with diverse mercies, as Jon Bloom observes: to John the Baptist he gave a gentle reminder (Matthew 11:2–6), to Peter a questioning reproof (Matthew 14:28–33), to Thomas a painful delay (John 20:24–29). Jesus is, as always, our best and only infallible guide out of doubt.

Nevertheless, doubt carries enough common elements that one doubter may say a few words to another. The following, then, are some of the paths I stumbled upon in the dark. None led me out instantly (deliverance from doubt rarely happens in a moment). But over time, they together became like “the path of the righteous [that] is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” (Proverbs 4:18).

1. Normalize doubt as a trial of faith.

Doubt came, as I said, with the unexpectedness and disorientation of a mugger — partly because, during all my years as a nominal Christian and my few months as a real one, I had never heard anyone talk about it. Lust, pride, greed, self-reliance, anger, impatience — these were known enemies, planned for and expected. Doubt was not. I was a bullet-wounded soldier who had never heard of guns.

Much of doubt’s power lies in this ability to dismay and disorient — to make us feel beyond the pale of normal Christian experience. How heartening it was to slowly grasp the truth: doubt, though unique in some ways, is a normal trial of faith, faced by saints throughout the ages. One of the devil’s first temptations (Genesis 3:1), doubt remains a favorite still.

I remember at one point in my doubts reading the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga describe doubt as simply another manifestation of the old self’s ongoing influence (Ephesians 4:22). Our old self is by nature unbelieving, trusting our own words over God’s. No wonder, then, that we who still possess “this body of death” sometimes still deal with doubt and unbelief (Romans 7:24).

Indeed, some of God’s people always have. Doubt may not be the most prevalent besetting sin among saints, but the likes of Moses (Exodus 3:13), Asaph (Psalm 77:7–9), Habakkuk (Habakkuk 1:2–4), Zechariah (Luke 1:18), John the Baptist (Matthew 11:2–3), Peter (Matthew 14:31), and Thomas (John 20:25) all battled versions of the dreaded foe. Doubts, then, do not send us beyond the pale. They do not render us automatic unbelievers. They instead rouse us to join the ranks of former saints, who responded to doubt as they responded to all other temptations and sins: with resistance.

2. Find some friends to confide in — dead and alive.

Treating doubt as an anomaly wounded me in more ways than one. Not only did I feel alone, in a dark world beyond the sun, but I hesitated to talk about it with anyone. I expected to find misunderstanding, befuddled glances, wary responses that suggested, “I don’t know what to do with you and I wish you wouldn’t have said that.” Instead, when I finally did share, I found mercy (Jude 22).

I know not everyone shares this experience. Not everyone gets to confide in friends so sympathetic. Yet I imagine that many silent doubters would be surprised at what they find should they speak. The shoulders of the saints, built to bear burdens (Galatians 6:2), are not too weak to carry our doubts. And either way, the risk is worth it, for doubt is too disorienting, too deceiving, too mind-darkening to escape on our own.

Alongside saints alive and nearby, we might also search for some dead or far-off. For me, the hymns of Red Mountain Church, the music of Andrew Peterson, the poetry of George Herbert, and the books of C.S. Lewis kept me company when others could not. These were kindred spirits, friends who knew how to articulate doubt’s inaudible agony (when I could not), and also how to apply God’s fathomless grace (when I dared not). They helped me imagine a life beyond doubt.

(In our social-media age, a brief caveat may be in order: confiding in face-to-face friends is far better than indiscriminately posting online. Doubts are not for hiding — but neither are they for publishing in real time. In all likelihood, our own perspective is too distorted, and social-media counsel too unreliable, for public sharing to be fruitful.)

“Doubt is inherently isolating. It can feel especially shameful, and sometimes impossible to explain.”

Doubt is inherently isolating. It can feel especially shameful, and sometimes impossible to explain. But seclusion does us no favors — and fellowship can work slow wonders.

3. Take time away from doubt.

Because doubt wraps its fingers around the very throat of faith, it has a way of demanding attention. A man being throttled struggles to consider other matters. Ironically enough, however, one of the worst things we can do — one of the worst things I did, anyway — is focus obsessively on doubt. For doubt, like some other enemies, often dies slant.

Of course, finding direct answers to our most vexing questions can bring relief, sometimes great relief. I can remember finding several solutions to my doubts, in books or sermons or conversations with friends, that pried a finger or two off the throat. But direct answers were only part of the solution to my doubts — and not, I would venture, the most important part.

Looking back, I can see that many of my attempts to overcome doubt were like a man trying to change his appearance by staring harder and harder in the mirror: they only curved me more deeply inward. I needed to pray about more than my doubts; I needed to read and watch more than apologetics resources; I needed to journal about more than my own internal afflictions. Doubt needs sunshine, full and clear, and my grapples with doubt often took me to the cellar.

What then can doubters do beyond seeking answers? Sit long under the sky of God’s glory, breathing deeply creation’s soul oxygen (Psalm 19:1; Psalm 104:24). Escape self by weeping and rejoicing with God’s people (Romans 12:15). Sit in the gathering and sing of glories far above you and problems not your own (Colossians 3:16). Find mind rest in the hard labor of a worthy vocation (Colossians 3:23). And above all, slowly, prayerfully, and longingly consider Jesus (Hebrews 3:1).

4. Keep seeking God.

Doubt for long enough, and you may begin to despair of ever escaping doubt. This is just who I am — the way I’m wired, you may think. I can remember days or weeks in my deepest season of doubt where a kind of fatalism set into my bones. Fighting felt like little use. The deep internal division seemed unbudgeable. I began recasting my future in terms of doubt.

Mercifully, God always roused me after a time, reminding me of a simple truth that doubt — or any long struggle — easily overshadows: God saves. The living God is a rescuing, delivering God, who enters in from the outside and shatters the bars of our expectations. He is a Pharaoh-crushing, sea-parting God; a sky-splitting, earth-shaking God; a Christ-giving, tomb-emptying God — and his hand cannot be stayed. For him, the impossible is only a word away.

And therefore, Jesus’s words in Matthew 7:7–8 put an end to all fatalism:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

“In defiance of the darkness, ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking.”

Doubt may feel too entrenched to dig out. Its shadows may seem to cover too much of the soul. Even still, in defiance of the darkness, ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking. For at one time or another, in one place or another, with one word or another, the threefold promise will come to pass: “It will be given to you . . . you will find . . . it will be opened to you.”

5. Wait patiently for deliverance.

We may, however, need to wait a while. “Ask, and it will be given to you” — but he doesn’t say how much time may separate the first asking from the final giving. And for some, the time may linger long.

How instructive to remember Thomas’s story:

“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later . . . (John 20:25–26)

Eight days later. Why eight days? If locked doors couldn’t keep Jesus from reaching Thomas (John 20:26), surely time was no obstacle. The risen Lord was not hindered. He tarried on purpose, allowing Thomas to wait not for an hour or an afternoon, but for eight anguished days.

He has his reasons, as always. We don’t know all of them. But we do know that when Jesus waits to rescue his people, mercy governs his waiting. For doubt not only tempts and tortures; it teaches. Here in the waiting, we learn, with Thomas, just how fragile our faith is unless God upholds it. We learn the necessary virtue of self-distrust (Proverbs 3:5). We learn to sympathize with others’ weaknesses. And we learn to seek God in the face of the despair that says, “You will not find him.”

My Lord, My God

The delays of Jesus toward his people are merciful delays, ever and always. And in time, those who wait faithfully will feel the truth in William Cowper’s hymn “Jehovah Jireh — The Lord Will Provide”:

Wait for his seasonable aid,And though it tarry, wait:The promise may be long delay’d,But cannot come too late.

For those who stay near Jesus while they wait, we have good reason to hope they will eventually say with Thomas — knees bent, heart awed, doubts hushed — “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

In all your questions, then, bend your ear to hear the voice of Jesus. Strain your eyes to see him. Pray that he himself will come, speak peace, and lead you to the land of light, beyond all darkness and doubting.