Battling fear and doubt

God keeps showing me the moment-by-momentness of the Christian life, and the inauthenticity of anything else. Recently it happened when I was planning to share a few fears and doubts with a friend in a letter that I was planning to write later in the day. I knew my friend to be a good counselor, and I expected that he would talk me out of my funk and back to sanity.

It was then that it struck me: In order to share those fears and doubts with my friend, I would have to hold on to them until the evening when I had time to sit down with a pad and pen. That means I would have to refuse to allow any other thoughts to intrude on my funk, if the Spirit should want to try to wedge in there with a little light or a redirection of thought.

This, I think, also points out a potential problem in the Christian counseling enterprise. Counseling, at its best, is great. But if we are not careful it can foster a kind of spiritual laziness as we, the counselee, take on the role of a waiter waiting around for rescue by a human custodian of wisdom, rather than doing our own rebuking of doubts and fears and all things contrary to the truth of God.

Paul tells us we have "weapons" of "warfare" that "have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

I used to think that was about apologetics and arguing with Unitarians. And of course that's partly what it is. But now I know it is also a rebuke to my laziness and an exhortation to search and destroy any hellish intruder in the stream of thoughts in my redeemed mind, a mind that is meant to be sole domain of the Spirit and not a bivouac of the devil.

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