Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to the John Ankerberg Show Classics Edition. For decades, we've been privileged to host esteemed scholars discussing a wide range of topics, from apologetics and science to biblical prophecy and beyond. Join us as we revisit these timeless conversations and make them accessible to you wherever you are.

Guest (Male): Today on the John Ankerberg Show, are you a Christian who doubts? Why is it that after placing belief in Christ, you're plagued with questions about your faith? Why do you live each day wondering if you are truly a Christian and doubting whether God has really forgiven your sins? You fear going to hell but aren't sure you will go to heaven. Why do you have these doubts? Is there a biblical way to conquer your depressing thoughts of unbelief? Can you really get rid of all your doubts?

Today, John's guest is Dr. Gary Habermas, Chairman of the Department of Philosophy and Theology at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He is the author of more than 21 books, including a book on doubt called The Thomas Factor. We invite you to join us.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. Are you a Christian who has doubts about your salvation, about your relationship with God? You wonder where God is in times of tragedy or disappointment?

I know some of you have been struggling with doubt for years. Why? Because you've told us. You've almost given up hope that you'll experience what other Christians seem to experience all the time. And the Bible does promise peace and assurance to God's children. So why don't you have it? You certainly want it.

I think we also have to realize there are many kinds of doubts, but emotional doubt is probably the worst, the most destructive and debilitating of all the doubts you can have. Emotional doubt robs you of your joy with Christ. It burdens your worship, makes you feel guilty, keeps you from running to God with your problems. And when you do talk to God, all you seem to get is silence in return.

Dr. Gary Habermas is my guest today. What are the common myths about doubt?

Guest (Male): First of all, let me say this preface. I am not aware of a subject regarding which there are more twists and turns than this one. And what Christians commonly say to each other are not just wrong, they are pain-causing. Here are some of the things you hear about doubt, and all of these, in my opinion, are false.

Doubt only happens to intellectual people. It always happens and follows the same course. It's always followed answered by the same techniques. Doubt is always sin. Nothing good can come out of it. Perhaps doubt is even the unpardonable sin. Heroes of the faith never doubt. Only weak-minded people doubt. Strong Christians never doubt. And on and on and on.

Dr. John Ankerberg: I think people are drinking this in. They want to know more. Tell me some other stories of people that you've met across the country. I mean, you got to change the names, but tell me what else has happened.

Guest (Male): Some of these some of these, if the person wasn't hurting so much, you'd think it was humorous. But I I received a call from a from a man one time in the and the Northwest and and he said something like this to me. He said, "Hey, I want to know, I want to know for sure that I'm saved." And the person said to me, "Hey, I go to a prominent church out here, and if I told you my pastor's name, you would know the guy in a heartbeat. And if he knew I was calling you, he would say, 'John's the best worker in my church. He's not suffering doubts.' But let me tell you something, I'm not just suffering doubts. I'm not saved."

So, I started to ask the obligatory question and the guy jumped in and he said, "Hey, wait a minute, just a warning. I read your book on doubt. Don't call me an emotional doubter." We had already said enough. And I'm thinking to myself, "Emotional?" And he said, "Don't tell me that." And he said, "Hey, one more thing. Don't tell me to go pray and read the Bible. Everybody tells me that. I need something specific." So, here comes my obligation.

"John, have you ever trusted Christ your personal savior? You know who he is, what he's done?" And he said, "Hey, let me give you some math. I have trusted Christ as my savior at least 5,000 times." And he told me how he got there. He made it, he could get to the number. But and here's here's the question. How much pain do you have to have to trust Christ your personal savior 5,000 times?

So the guy said to me, "I'll tell you what, can I start calling you on Friday afternoons for as long as we need to talk? I'm going to pay you." I said, "You're not going to pay me." He said, "If I can't pay you, we're not going to talk." I said, "We're I guess we're not going to talk." He said, "Okay, we'll talk." And he started calling me on Fridays and we would talk for an hour or two each Friday.

Now after all these warnings, don't tell me this, don't tell me that, I'm not an easy guy to as time went on, he started getting a little stronger and a little stronger. We worked through some of this stuff. And toward the end, this this started in October. As we're getting toward December, he said, "Hey, I think I'm okay. I don't think I have to call you next week." I said, "Hey, that's good. That's good progress." And then he went one week and he said, "How about three weeks from today?" "Yeah, that's good. Three weeks from today is good."

And finally he said, "I don't need it anymore. I got it." He said, "I didn't tell you this, but I've been leading a Bible study in my church for a long time. I'm going to go back to that study with more zeal than I've ever had before." He said, "By the way, here's my business number, 800 number. If you know any men who are going through this, please tell them my name, tell them my phone number, call, I'll talk to them."

Sometime later, I should tell you too, this came just two months after my wife passed away. And so I was struggling with some of my own issues, not doubt issues, but similar emotional issues. And John wants to lay this big thing on me. Well, he's done three months later. And I felt so good. But I picked up the phone and I called him back sometime later, and he didn't return my call. And I said, "He's struggling again." Because emotional doubt is the story of lapses and relapses. And the emotions come back, you forget everything you learned.

He didn't return my call. I called again, left my name on his line. He called me and he said, "Oh, Dr. Habermas, this is so wonderful. I'm sorry, I've just been so busy with my business, but I want to tell you something. I've not lost the joy of my salvation. I'm not saying I haven't had any bad times, but I've not trust I've not prayed again. I'm doing fine. Keep sending people, you know," and it was so liberating. I'll tell you, next to seeing somebody come to the Lord, there is nothing like seeing people throw this yoke of pain off, and they're not doing anything differently, except they're telling themselves different things. And I think that's the key to emotional doubt, it's changing your thoughts.

Dr. John Ankerberg: I go to conferences all over the country. And when I preach, I'll give an invitation, I'll see people accept Christ as their savior. You go back two, three, four, five, six years in a row. You notice some guys raise their hand every year.

Guest (Male): Yes.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Okay. So help these people because doggone it, they want to have what that man finally found. So how do we get there? What else do we need to tell them?

Guest (Male): From the Old Testament to the New Testament, passages over and over again, they tell us the answer to faulty thinking, the answer to telling ourselves things that are not true, is to tell ourselves what is true. And oftentimes, I'm convinced, and passages, particularly in the Psalms and Proverbs, throughout the New Testament, Philippians 4 is a great passage, there are a lot of good texts.

The answer to faulty thinking, it's not only true thinking, but it's what we call the disciplines. Practicing things in our lives. And scripture says things like this, the antidote to being downcast, Psalm 42, 43. The antidote to being anxious is we can find all the following, pray, 1 Peter 5:7, casting all your cares, the word for anxiety, casting all your cares upon him for he cares for you.

Another is to praise. I will say in groups, how many of you have ever, thousands of people over over the years, how many of you have ever praised God during a time of doubt? Hands will go up all over. Give me some testimonies. Tell me what happens. And from all different perspectives, this is the only answer I've ever heard.

Praising God during emotional turmoil causes me to look at life from a new perspective. Causes me to look at life from God's perspective. By thinking different thoughts, I quit feeling the pain. And and person after person, here's what they say. When I pray, praise and thank, the mood goes away. The mood changes.

Dr. John Ankerberg: So why don't you do it more often?

Guest (Male): Well, it takes time to think like that. Yes, it does. But what do you want to do? Do you want to, you know, do you want to have this pain or do you want to change your thoughts? You can pray, you can praise. Philippians chapter 4 verse 8, says, "Change your thoughts." He says, "Be anxious for nothing," verse 6. And then he says, "By prayer, by thanksgiving," thirdly, verse 8, he says, "Whatever is good, whatever is truthful, meditate on these things," to think deeply. And verse 4, he says, "Whatever you've seen in me," I'm sorry, verse 9, he says the first fourth point, "Whatever you've seen in me, do these things."

So the here's the good news. A scriptural remedy is varied. You can mix and match. I think you can do what works for you. You can pray, you can praise, you can journal, you can call a friend. You can tell yourself truthful things instead of other things. And and here's a lie, for example. What if Jesus sends Christians to hell? That's a lie. But if you think that, especially at night, shades drawn, dark room, you can feel the flames licking at your toes. I mean, you can imagine that it's going down right there. And oh no, I'm thinking like this, I must be going to hell. It gets worse. The feeling gets worse. You change your thoughts.

And here's the most incredible truth in my estimation. Christians think that what happens to them, they got a lousy boss, they've got a child that's disobedient, a spouse who doesn't love them, whatever. We think that what happens to us determines where we are emotionally. I don't think that's true. I think the biggest thing that costs us our peace is not what happens to us. It's what we tell ourselves about what happens to us. It's an incredible truth.

In fact, reflections on pain and suffering, which you mentioned earlier. Maybe pain and suffering is not so much the life in which I find myself, maybe it's the pain I put on myself by the way I talk to myself about this. Oh God must not love me. I must not be saved.

Now, there are secular examples too.

Dr. John Ankerberg: No, no, before you go further, slow it down. Give me a piece of yourself, make it personal. How did you work this out in your own doubts?

Guest (Male): Well, very slowly, because I was barking up the wrong tree. Loving apologetics, I thought the answer to emotional doubt is more facts. Read one more book, six more evidences. The way the philosopher says it is this: facts are necessary, but they're not sufficient. You need something besides facts. Here's what you need. You need a truthful basis rightly applied. How do you rightly apply it? We're back to square one again.

You pray and give your issues to the Lord. You thank him for what he's done. You praise him for who he is. You perhaps all these other things are taught in scripture. You can journal, you can talk, you can think about Jesus' miracles, God's miracles, you can concentrate on his creation. All these things, well, here's what happens. When you change the channel and you're not concentrating on the on the pain creating thoughts, you change the channel. That's that Monday afternoon, you know, football's on. Yes, I can handle anything with football.

Well, speaking as a Christian, I can handle anything if I'm saved too.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah, but let me let me get to you because I I know you better than a lot of other people. You're sitting there and with your first wife, you love her to pieces, and you're going through a series of things. You think maybe she's going to get better. Boom, you get bad news. Then you get another layer of bad news. You get another layer of bad news, and finally she dies. Now tell me, how do you praise God? Third layer, you're there's no more hope. She's going to die. She's laying there dying. You're going to go to the funeral. You tell me, is this thing working?

Guest (Male): Yeah, let me tell you a little story. While my wife was sick, she was sleeping 15, 18 hours a day. I would go downstairs and I would sit there and I would think. I was beat. I was feeding her through a tube in her stomach, giving her medicine, clean the tubes with vinegar water, hard day. Took the phone off the hook, didn't want to talk to anybody. Sat there feeling the exact kind of pain you're talking about.

Job and I got to be friends during those days. Got to did a book on grief, and I have a chapter in there called Job and Me. I don't say I suffered as much as Job did, but Job was my buddy. Job got to be my friend. And here's the thing I learned during that time that I try to apply to my thoughts. Job only wants to know one thing.

"Lord, you've taken my kids from me, my health, my friends, everything. Why am I suffering?" God never tells him. For 37 chapters, he struggles with this. And he demands his day in court. God talks to him in chapter 38. Now, at the end of the book, before he's blessed, Job no longer asks the question. Job says, he's satisfied.

Now here's my question. Why is Job satisfied without getting his question answered? And here's what I decided, one-liner, one sentence from the book of Job. Job realized that he knew enough about God to trust him in those things he didn't know. Now, here's Gary Habermas, 1995.

I pictured my Job 38. I think we'd all have a different Job 38. I pictured God coming to me and I'm saying, "Lord, why is Debbie up there dying? 43 years old. I got these children, helpless husband who doesn't do a very good job in the kitchen or anything else. And they've all got to be dressed and cleaned in school the next day."

And I pictured God saying, "Gary, I've got one question for you. Did I raise my son from the dead?" And I'd say, "Lord, I I've done all kinds of books on this. I mean, sure, you've raised your son from the dead. But that's 30 AD. I want to know about 1995. She's up there and she's suffering. What can I do?" "Gary, you obviously didn't get the point. Did I raise my son from the dead?" "Yes, Lord, but can we talk about 1995?" "Gary." And he gets more insistent, his voice gets a little bit louder. And finally, when I keep saying, "Lord, why?" He grabs me by the shirt, he pulls me close and he says, "You only have a PhD. You're not real swift. I want to say this real slowly and I want you to read my lips." "Okay, we'll go slowly. Did I raise my son from the dead?"

Now I'm thinking, "How does this fit in with Job?" And here's the bottom line. I think the Lord would try to impress upon me. If this is a world in which I raised my son from the dead, 30 AD, 1995, whatever, 2003. If this is a world in which I raised my son from the dead, this is a world in which there's an answer to suffering, even if I don't know what the answer is. I noticed nothing's happened, she's still up there and she's still suffering, but I changed what I was saying to myself.

Because this is no cop-out. It's only a cop-out if there's no resurrection. If there's a resurrection, then God has a reason. The only thing that's missing is this: I don't know where she's sick. But what will that change if I know and she's still dying? So I started changing my thinking and I thought this. I don't like this. She's very, very close to me. But given the fact that she's dying, I reiterated with myself daily that this is God's world. His son's been raised from the dead, and there's an answer to suffering, even though I don't know what it is. And, answer of answers, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul taunts death. Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory?

I realized if there's a good side to this, it's this. She's going to heaven. This is the sentence that helped my children the most. "Weep for yourself, kids, but don't weep for Mom. She wouldn't come back even if she could. She's doing fine." But I realized, she's not suffering anymore. The only what's lacking is my being with her. She's in a safe place. I'll be with her for eternity. She can't be touched. Moth and rust don't corrupt, thieves can't break in and steal.

It's not the way I want it, but here's the key. If it's a world in which God has raised his son from the dead, there's an answer to suffering, even though I don't know what it is. And I related that to Job. I know enough about God to trust him in those things I don't know. I have not changed anything in the world. I've not asked answered any questions, but all I've done is change the way I think about it. And all of a sudden, I'm not mad at God anymore.

One of my grad students called me during this time and he said, "Where would you be if it weren't for the resurrection of Jesus?" Incisive thought. I thought, "Oh my. That's what Paul means when he says, 'We suffer, but not as those without hope.' " There's a difference between suffering with hope and without hope. I'm still suffering, but with hope. Makes all the difference in the world. So again, I change what I say to myself, and my feelings change.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Great stuff. Great stuff, and I'm sure it's helped a lot of people what you've said. I want to move on, that is to the guy that says, "I want to believe, I can't believe."

Dr. John Ankerberg: I think we also have to realize there are many kinds of doubts, but emotional doubt is probably the worst, the most destructive and debilitating of all the doubts you can have. Emotional doubt robs you of your joy with Christ. It burdens your worship, makes you feel guilty, keeps you from running to God with your problems. And when you do talk to God, all you seem to get is silence in return.

Dr. Gary Habermas is my guest today. He's going to help us with this topic. Gary, bring us up to speed of where we've been the last couple weeks in terms of doubt. Because a lot of people that are listening to us, they've got doubts. They're Christians, people think they're the best Christians in the church and secretly they've got these doubts and it's and it's it's just eating away at them. Then there's some people that say, "I want to believe, I am a Christian, I want to believe, I can't seem to, I can't gear it up, I I can't believe." What's the matter with me? What is all this that's going on?

Guest (Male): To recap briefly. We said that doubt is uncertainty about God or one's relationship with him, and that manifests itself in a lot of forms. Is Christianity true? Did I say the right words? Personal assurance, pain and suffering, answers to prayer. And so we divided doubt into three categories: factual doubt, which is the least complicated, and the answer to factual doubt is the facts. Emotional doubt, which we might think the answer is the facts, but really it's not, it's changing the things we say because over and over again in scripture, we read that what we say to ourselves, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Over and over again, what we see is the things we tell ourselves determine how we feel. So the psalmist, the you know, and our the Proverbs and the epistles, we're told to change what we say, change our thinking.

Here's an interesting contrast. Romans 1 and 2, that catalog of sins at the end of Romans 1, "They believed a lie," it says. Romans 12 1 and 2, "I beseech you therefore brethren, give your life a living, give yourself to God as a living sacrifice by changing the way you think." The contrast is this, those who engage in sin believe a lie. Those who engage in truth change the way they think. We change our moods by what we tell ourselves. And we can't, here's here's the most liberating thought on the subject of emotional doubt I can think of.

You can't change, perhaps, what is happening to you right now. But you can change what you're saying to yourself about what's happening to you. And you can do that immediately. Well, the normal Christian response is, "Who gives a rip? If I can't change what's happening to me, then" They miss the point. What's happening to you does not cause as much pain as what you tell yourself about what happens to you. I can't affect all the things that happen to me, but I can change what I think immediately. It's like taking two aspirin and going to bed. I can change what I say now, that causes my most pain. Change what you say, you change how you feel. And that's in our power.

So what we don't realize is, "Lord, why is all this coming down on me?" The answer is, the Lord's not doing anything to you. Change what you're thinking. That's the worst pain.

Dr. John Ankerberg: But you're not talking about this is just intellectual, this is not just positive thinking. It's not. Tell me what else this is.

Guest (Male): Here's a difference between positive thinking and Christianity. Christianity says that I don't pull myself up by my own bootstraps. Either, number one, works don't do this, I can't save myself. It comes through the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We say I do to him in light of who he is and what he's done. That's one stage. This is not positive thinking.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And he gives you a gift.

Guest (Male): And he gives us a gift, which is freely given. It's not positive thinking. A third way in which it's not positive thinking is this. It is not by my power that this is done. It's by God's power. I do not by thinking good thoughts, rah rah, I'm a big tough guy, I'm doing some mental weightlifting. It's not like that at all. God has said, you've got the Holy Spirit. We're talking to believers who doubt. God says you have the Holy Spirit. Practice some disciplines. You move into concert with him. By thinking different the correct things, we tap his power. We tap into him. It's So this is from start to finish, from unsaved to saved to doubting. We're not positive thinking here. We are following his directions and tapping into the power he's already given to us. It's by God's power that this is done.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Continue that. I mean, people come in and they received Christ and his gift by faith. Believed, felt, the whole ball of wax that they were saved. They went on, hit some obstacles, all of a sudden they don't feel saved. Okay? So they need to learn some things. They go in and out. Then they get the doubts. So advise those folks right there that are that they felt like they got in, and now they think, "Am I really in? Did I, you know, did I do it right? Did I do something wrong? What's happening here?"

Guest (Male): I send folks like that home with a homework assignment. Take a sheet of paper, divide it into three columns, and when a doubt occurs to you, and for some of these people it's 10 times a day. I mean, it's a plaguing, debilitating thing. Put a date down, put a time down. Second column, what am I saying to myself? Life's a bummer, God doesn't care, I may not be saved, I may be going to hell. And for each one of those, take a little block, and over on the far right column, put the answers, put biblical answers. God does not save send saved people to hell. Salvation does not depend on how I feel, it depends on what's been accomplished. If I already start feeling better by what I say to myself, maybe, just maybe, I should start saying different things to myself.

Again, Proverbs 15:15, "He that is of a cheerful heart hath a continual feast." We make that cheer. We respond to things. We all know people who no matter what happens, they're cheerful. That comes from what we say to ourselves and how we act. So I tell the person, every time it comes up, I want you to respond this way, and then when you get done, you'll see how this journaling over next two weeks, over next month. You'll see how you're going, and you start responding this way to things. This list gets shorter and shorter, this list gets longer and longer. But there's things a person can begin applying right there. The easiest remedy is uh uh Philippians 4, 6 through 9. Paul says, "Be anxious for nothing," and then he gives four bits of advice. He says again, "Pray," second, "Praise," third, verse 8, "Change your thoughts from these anxious thoughts to these thoughts," and fourthly, "Practice these things." This isn't this is pastoral, you know, advice from the Apostle Paul, who says, "You can try these things."

And here's the best thing to do. Next time you're going through it, try praising. Next time you're going through it, change what you're saying to yourself. See if you don't feel better. You can change moods like this, most of the time. You can change moods right away. It has to do with what you're saying. Now if a person tries it and it works once, maybe they'll try it twice. Now, I also say there are some band-aid remedies you can do. A band-aid remedy is this: next time you get down, go ride a bike, swim, walk with a friend, call a friend on the phone, go jog, fish, watch a ball game and get engrossed in it.

Those will work, but they're like snipping weeds off at the surface. It's like saying, "I want to get the weeds out of my lawn. I'll run the lawnmower." We know they're up next week. They will work because why? You're changing your focus. The minute you start thinking about jogging, you're not anxious. You quit jogging and you start getting anxious again. But the second kind of remedy is more powerful because the spiritual remedies go for the roots. You go after the poison that's in your system, and you get it out, you know, you you spray each one of those weeds individually, or in the old days, you pull them up by the roots.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Now, stay tuned as we revisit these timeless discussions and join us in celebrating the wealth of knowledge that continues to encourage and educate. To learn more, please visit JAshow.org. That's JAshow.org or subscribe to us on YouTube.