evidence that He is.
What that means is that if we’re experiencing doubt, the way out of that
doubt is not simply going to be trying to find more evidence. The way out
is to start living as if what the Lord says is true. That means submitting our
lives completely to Him and striving to obey His commandments. Once we
have done this, once we start to notice the changes in our lives that this brings
about, then we start to see the actual truth behind what we’ve been learning.
We’ll still have some doubt, but we’ll also start to see the truth more clearly.
That seems backwards, but this really is the way it works. People over
the years have noticed that when the Lord gave His commandments to the
children of Israel, their response was not, “All that Jehovah has spoken, we will
hear and do,” but, “All that Jehovah has spoken, we will do and hear.” (Exodus
19:8)
The doing comes first, and only after that, because they have obeyed, are
the people truly able to hear and comprehend.
We see something similar throughout John. A major theme of that gospel
is that only those who are in obedience to God will be able to recognize Jesus
as Lord. So, John 3:20-21 says: “For everyone practicing evil hates the light and
does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does
the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have
been done in God.” It is doing the truth that allows us to come to the light.
And so, in addition to adopting the affirmative principle – “I will believe
what the Word says because it is from God” – if we want to believe, we need
to act in obedience to the Lord. This is summed up in the short book Doctrine
of Faith:
If anyone should think within himself, or say to someone else, “Who is able to have
the internal acknowledgment of truth which is faith? Not I”; let me tell him how he
may have it: Shun evils as sins, and come to the Lord, and you will have as much of
it as you desire. (Faith 12)
That passage speaks of the need to shun evils as sins if we want to come
into real sight of the truth. Our love of evil clouds our ability to see the truth.
But the passage also speaks of one other vital thing: the need to “come to the
Lord.” This is the other main thing we need if we want to have a sight of truth:
we need to approach the Lord Jesus Christ directly as God, in thought and in
prayer.
We might not see immediately why this is the case; and we can only
completely understand it once we’ve actually done it. But the general reason is
this: the Lord Jesus Christ is God in human form, and when we think of Him,
talk to Him, pray to Him, follow Him, and obey Him, we are drawn into a
conjunction with Him in a way that is impossible if we have a vague or distant
idea of God as an impersonal force. In Jesus, we see the true, human face of
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