The cure for doubts is faith; not prayer, nor fasting, nor working— just faith. Faith is believing God, believing just what God says. God has said many things and made many promises. Faith expects God to fulfill His word. Trust is faith holding on and waiting.
We are sanctified by faith; we enter into complete soul-rest by faith. There is no other way. We must come to God and simply ask Him to work His complete redemption in our hearts and fill us with the Spirit. After we give ourselves wholly to Him, after we lay all on the altar, there is nothing more that we can do except trust and obey. It is God's part to complete in us the work for salvation; our business is to trust Him to do it. We trust carpenters and builders to build our houses, we trust bankers with our money, we trust men every day and hour of our lives; shall we not trust God?
In all battles with doubt, go back to basic facts. Allow no confusion of mind, no agitation of spirit; calm every fear and find out just where and how you are. First, ask yourself if you are all the Lord's. Do you now lay on His altar your all? Do you now choose His will? Do you intend to serve Him? Do you answer, "Yes"? Put that down then as a settled fact. Never allow yourself to doubt a point that has been settled. Let it stay settled. Next ask yourself if you believe God is true to His word, if you believe He will do what He promised. If you say, "Yes," let that point be settled also. Stand by it. If you have met the conditions upon which God promised to cleanse and fill you, you must believe that God does these things for you.
Doubts have a way of coming in early in the morning. They are like bad neighbors, they come when they are not wanted. Doubts may arise because you do not "feel" as you should like to, or because you have made mistakes; or simply because you have been sorely tempted. You must learn that feeling is no true gage of your spiritual experience.
An encounter with doubts may be something like this: You awake in the morning and are possessed of a feeling that is utterly non-religious. You do not feel one whit as though you are fully saved and trusting, but just the opposite. Not having learned to pay no attention to this, but instead to jump up and praise and thank God for all His goodness, you begin to question, "Am I really and truly consecrated? Where are all my joyful feelings? Why do I feel this way? Surely something is wrong."
The longer you think, the more doubtful you become, and at last discouragement takes charge of your whole soul.
There is no harm, but good, in examining ourselves; it is all right to put hard and searching questions to our hearts as to our standing with God. But when doubts lead to such an examination, the result is usually disastrous.
Doubting gets to be a bad habit; one very hard to break. It is a sort of self-depreciating, self-deprecating, self-condemning habit. Doubting becomes easy and natural after the habit is formed. A chronic state of discouragement follows. You are as miserable as you can be. And yet the idea of abruptly cutting off the whole bad thing fills you with dismay. You are afraid to do it. A sort of up-and-down life seems preferable to a bold, upstanding victorious life. A sort of weakness or spiritual cowardice follows, too; and one habitually doubting prefers to be a pygmy, a dwarf, for Christ, rather than a real man, a warrior in Him.
Doubt has a dreadful reaction on the soul and mind. Its influence is deadening and damning. It shrivels and dries up the joy and spontaneity of service. It makes one feel inferior and weak. Instead of causing one to fight, doubts lead one to give up the fight; instead of prompting resistance, doubts make one lie down and get wounded and bruised. Doubts make us failures. They blight, mar, and drag down. They are the devil's own poison to kill off God's people.
There is only one thing to do to overcome doubts: have faith in God. Kill the doubts, or they will kill you. "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith" (1 John 5:4).