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[silence] This is Glendale Presbyterian Church, People Moving Power. This tape includes the solo, "The Raising of Lazarus," sung by Lee Trenum, and the reading of scripture and a message by Reverend Mr. Bruce W. Thielman, titled,

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"Love Story, Part Two," on dealing with our doubts. At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn to side number two for the remainder of the message. [music]

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Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. When Jesus heard that, he said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the good, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby, might be glorified thereby." And when Jesus came, he saw that he had lain in the grave for days already.

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Then said Martha unto Jesus, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know that even now whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." Jesus saith unto her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

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And whosoever believeth and believeth in me shall never die." Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always.

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But because of the people which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that thou hast heard me." And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, "Who on earth come forth?" And he that was dead came forth. Jesus saith unto them, "Lose him, lose him, and let him go."

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[music] Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the gospel according to Mark, the ninth chapter, beginning with the verse which is numbered 14. "And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd about them and scribes arguing with them.

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And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. And he asked them, 'What are you discussing with them?' And one of the crowd answered him, 'Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a dumb spirit. And wherever it seizes him, it dashes him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.

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And I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.' And he answered them, 'O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.' And they brought the boy to him.

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And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, 'How long has he been like this?' And he said, 'From childhood, and it is often cast him into the fire and into the water to destroy him.

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But if you can do anything, if you will have pity on us, help us.' And Jesus said, 'If you can, all things are possible to him who believes.' And immediately the father of the child cried out and said, 'I believe; help my unbelief.' And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together,

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he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, 'You dumb and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.' And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out. And the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, 'He is dead.'

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But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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Amen. I would like very much to shake hands with this father. You see, I can identify with him in his doubts. Here's a man who has the courage to say, "I believe; help thou my unbelief."

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More than shaking his hand, I'd like to go and put my arm around him. You see, he felt the way most men feel. We can identify with him in this. The only difference between him and most of us is

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that he had the courage to admit the way he felt. "Lord, I believe; but help my unbelieving." Now, make no mistake about it. The doubt of this man was not an act of moral perversity.

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There are some people you know who refuse to believe simply because they are unwilling to accept the changes in their lives which belief would require. They look at Jesus, and they hear the call of Jesus, and they are honest enough to recognize that if they accept that call,

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some things in their lives are going to have to go. And they don't want those things to go, and so they manufacture doubts in order to repel the call of the Lord. That kind of doubt is an act of deceit,

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and that is not the doubt of this first-century father. And in like manner, this man's doubt is not an act of intellectual arrogance. There are persons you know who go about, particularly on college campuses, with their heads swathed in a halo of degrees,

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staggering everyone with the brilliancy of their negations. These people claim to have given themselves to the world of knowledge, and yet they consistently reject the foundational premise of all knowledge, which is humility.

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They claim to have given themselves over to scientific and logical thought, and yet consistently reject the first premise of science and of logic, namely that if there is any evidence for a thing, you must test it out, and that means laying your prejudices and your preferences aside.

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These people, you see, doubt principally because of conceit, but they are not like this father. His doubt isn't a doubt of deceit or conceit. His doubt is a doubt of himself, and a doubt of his own doubts,

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and a doubt of Jesus. And I can sympathize with him in the midst of this doubting. You see, when this man lived, this first-century father, 2,000 years ago, illness was looked upon as a punishment visited upon an individual

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or upon some individual that a person loved because of sin. Illness came about because you had in some way displeased God. And there is little doubt that every time this father looked at his epileptic son, he thought his son's sin was not what caused it.

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The boy was too small. Rather, it was his own sin. Now imagine what that would be like. To see your son, this one whom you prize above all others,

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thrown onto the ground, having to drag him from the fire and the sea into which he falls, having his back bent like a bow and his little muscles being torn from their ligaments, his ribcage distended till it shook with the fury of the raging beast of epilepsy that was inside of him, wiping foam from his purple lips and doing all of this

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and knowing or believing all the time that your son was suffering so because of your sin. That was the thought in the heart of this father. While his son was trying to die only once, he died a thousand times. Now, of course, we're spiritually sophisticated enough to understand

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that illness is not a punishment visited upon us by God. But at the same time, the doubts which that father had within himself, the sense of personal unworthiness, the sense of not having any value, the sense of being at the core of the things that aren't right with the world,

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the same thoughts that were in the heart of that father with regard to himself are in the hearts of a lot of people who are met with us this day. And just like that father back in the first century, we keep these feelings of personal inadequacy, these doubtings of ourselves,

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very secret down inside. I know that we have these feelings because of a little experiment I conduct on a lot of different occasions. I like to go into an audience with whom I have not met before

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and ask them to take a piece of paper and a pencil, and then I say, "Now, I would like you to list on this piece of paper five weaknesses in your character, five weaknesses in your personality, five chinks in your armor, and when you are done,

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will you please raise your hand?" And in about one minute's time, everybody in the room will have his hand up. Now, I want you to reverse the process, I say. I want you to list five great strengths in your character,

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five things of which you are sure. I want you to list five of those places at which you are strongest, and when you are done, I want you to raise your hand. And at the end of one minute, there are never any hands up.

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At the end of two and three minutes, not all the hands are up, and I've never yet had every hand in the room go up. You see, we're much more sensitive to our weaknesses than we are to our strengths. We're much more able to identify the doubts and anxieties we have about ourselves

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than we are to identify those things in us on which we can depend. And because we tend to accentuate the negative, we limit what we can produce in life. You understand, of course, that expectation has a lot to do with how much we produce.

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They conducted recently an experiment in the San Francisco area. They took a group of elementary school students. These students were of absolutely average ability. And they divided these average students into two groups,

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and they gave one group to one teacher and the other group to another teacher, and they told this teacher, "Now, these students are fast learners. They're exceptional students." And they told the other teacher, "Now, these students are slow learners.

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They are going to take a longer time to learn than the normal." And both groups, you remember, were normal. And then at the end of the quarter, they came back to measure the accomplishments of the youngsters.

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And they found that the students of the teacher who had been told that your students are especially able, those students had gone far ahead of where anyone had the right to expect them to be. And on the other hand, the students whose teacher had been told

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these students are less than able, these students were far behind where there was every reasonable expectation that they should be. You see, when the teacher believed they were able to do it, when the teacher had confidence in what they were going to be able to do,

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that group moved ahead because expectation has a lot to do with end results. And we don't have, most of us, very high expectations about ourselves. We look at other people and say, "Well, we're not super Christians like they are."

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We just don't win every victory in our lives. We don't triumph over every trouble we confront. We don't experience an answer to every one of the prayers we pray. We can't say that our life is always a parade.

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Sometimes it's just a long, dull, boring march. That's what it is. I was sitting one morning about a year ago with the woman who is probably the most famous female evangelist in America.

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And we were at breakfast and I said to her, "What do you do when you come to a point of aridity in your spiritual life? What do you do when you feel down, when you're low and depressed? What do you do then?"

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And she looked at me and she said, "Why, I never feel that way." Of course, that ended the conversation. I only had two alternatives, you see. Either she was lying, in which case I didn't want to talk to her anymore,

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or else she was telling the truth, in which case I couldn't talk to her anymore because I just don't live on that kind of a spiritual plane. And I think most of us don't live on that kind of a spiritual plane and we keep this secret down inside of ourselves,

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doubting ourselves and holding on to it, you see. We begin to die inside. Emperor Frederick of the Holy Roman Empire was a very curious man and back in the 13th century he decided that he would like to know

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what language was spoken in the Garden of Eden. And he concocted an experiment to determine this. He took a certain number of babies and immediately after they were born he put them into an isolated area and he instructed the nurses

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who were going to take care of them to never speak a single word where those babies could hear. And he reasoned if these babies never heard any other speech, they would themselves begin to speak and whatever they spoke

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would be the natural language of man and that must be the language that was spoken in the Garden of Eden. I'm sure it must have been very hard for those nurses to hold those little babies and never utter a sound, but they did manage to do so.

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From the perspective of the experiment, everything was carried out as it should be. But Emperor Frederick never got any results because, you see, every one of the babies died. And they died because there was in them what there is in all of us,

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a desperate need for communication. And when we don't communicate, when these doubts which we have about ourselves and these anxieties and these fears, when these things are locked up down inside and we never share them, when we bury them beneath a multitude of things

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and only look at them when like zombies they rise up and chase after us with wide staring eyes, when that happens we cry out, "Oh God forbid that anyone should ever know what is in me!" And that's the way that father felt when he looked at his son.

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And then Jesus stands in front of him and he says, "All things are possible to those who believe. Do you believe?" And what could he say? Well, he said the most he could say.

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He said, "Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. Lord, I'm trying to believe, but my doubts about myself overcome me. Lord, you don't know what I'm like down inside. You don't understand what's hiding there.

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I don't know if there's anyone in all the world who really loves me. Because, you see, what people love is the shell I have erected. And I know that shell isn't really me. And I wonder all the time, would they really love me if they knew what I really am?"

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My heart goes out to this man, because I feel like that sometimes. A lot of times. Staring Jesus in the face, he said, "All right, you asked for it. So here's my soul, right out on the ground.

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And it's not very pretty. And these shaking hands? Well, these shaking hands are me. And these tears? Well, these tears are me. And this anxiety that you hear in my voice? Well, this anxiety is me.

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And I don't think very often about some God sitting up in the clouds on a golden throne with a scepter, moving all the affairs of men. But Jesus, when I look at you, well, I see something in your face that makes me think about God. So here it is, my beat-up soul.

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Just the way it looks. And if you pick it up, you're going to bruise it. And if you manhandle it, it's going to shrivel and die. And if you ignore it, well, I guess it will just slip silently away.

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But Jesus, if you put your soul down beside it and we can love, then maybe... See, he came to the place where he, for the first time, began to doubt his own doubts. He came to the place in answering Jesus where he began to question these anxieties and these fears he had down inside.

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You know, some of the most horrible things that have ever happened in the world have happened because of people who never doubted their own doubts. The Inquisition is a good example of that. Unspeakably cruel and bestial acts were visited by one man upon other men

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because that man could not bring himself to the place where he questioned his own presuppositions. A long time ago, there was a man named Ignatius Loyola who founded a monastic order in the Roman Catholic Church,

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which we know today as the Jesuits, and he set up 18 rules by which the affairs of this order would be conducted and rule number 13 read like this, "To arrive at the truth in all things, we ought always be ready to believe

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that what we see as white is black if the church so defines it." Well, when you start out with a presupposition like that, you're heading for tragedy. You see, honesty never has to fear doubt,

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just as democracy doesn't have to fear freedom of speech and the court doesn't have to fear a minority opinion and science doesn't have to fear remarkable, astonishing new discoveries. Just so faith never has to fear doubt

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because when doubt comes, it is the growing edge of faith. That's what Tennyson meant when he said, "There is more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds." This is what Socrates meant when he said,

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"The unexamined life is not worth living." This is what the distinguished pastoral psychiatrist Earl Loomis means when he talks about the quality of unbelief. There has to be a time, you see, when we pause to doubt our own doubts.

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The trouble is when most of us do that, we keep that secret too. We don't let anybody know the questions we're asking about our own questions. On one occasion, Bruce Larson, who was the president of Faith at Work, was told by a Roman Catholic priest about an experience in his life.

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This priest said, "I was brought up on a dairy farm "and the first job that I ever had on the dairy farm "was to go out with a wheelbarrow every morning "and shuffle up all the cow manure and put it into the wheelbarrow

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"and then push it out into the barnyard and put it into the manure pile." And he said, "I hated that job. "I couldn't tell you how much I hated that job. "And then when I was a little bit older, I went to the 4-H club

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"and I learned that wasn't manure, that was fertilizer. "And when I learned that, things became different." And learning that, he said, "I learned something else. "I learned that all these doubts that I have down inside

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"and all these questions about my doubts, "I've always looked on those as if they were manure, "as if they were something stinking and foul "that I didn't want anyone at all to know anything about.

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"So I kept them hidden here and now I've discovered "that if I'll bring these things up and confess them, "then in the moment of sharing these things, "they become that in which I begin to grow."

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[silence] That happened this last Wednesday afternoon. There hasn't been a time in the three and a half years that I've been here when I have failed to return

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one of your telephone calls or left a single one of your letters unanswered or failed to make the appointment that you wanted to have. Not one time. But when I'm working on my sermon,

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I like to put things off for a little while except the sermon. So Wednesday afternoon, I was engaged in the sermon and one of our young men came to see me. And the secretary said I was working on the sermon

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and he said it would just take a moment. And she said, "Well, all right." She buzzed in and I said, "Have him come in." And he came in and he could see all the papers there

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and I suppose I had a rather intense look on my face. I said, "How are you?" "Oh," he said, "Fine." I said, "Well, what can I do for you?"

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"Well, I'd like to talk a little while." I said, "Well, could we make an appointment? "You know, right now I'm in the midst of this and I don't want to-- "Yeah, so that'll be fine, certainly. When can we make it?"

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"Tomorrow afternoon at 4 o'clock." "That'll be great. That'll be good." And we made the appointment and he turned around and left and I had forgotten him before he even closed the door.

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And about a minute and a half later, there was another knock at the door. And I said, "Come in," and the same boy came back into the room. This time he wasn't smiling. There was a look of great seriousness on his face and he said,

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"Mr. Thielman, I really wasn't honest with you. "I need to talk to you now. "You see, I left school in order to be able to come over here, "but when I discovered that you were busy and I saw you were involved

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"and you said some other time, I just kind of went along with you. "You know, I wanted to be cool. "I didn't want to rock the preacher's boat or anything, "so I just said, 'All right, but I've got to talk to you right now.'"

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And I was so gripped by that honesty that I said, "Sit down," and I was as open as he was and we had a very beautiful time together. And it happened, you see, because we doubted our own doubts and reached out in truth.

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Now, that's what happened to this father, you see. He got to the place where he was ready to do that, but he couldn't do it until Jesus specifically asked him if he would do it. And the reason he couldn't initiate it on his own, you see,

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was because he not only doubted himself and doubted his doubts, but he doubted Jesus too. "Why would this Jesus want to talk to anybody like me? "Why would he be interested in someone like me?

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"When he sees what has happened to my son, he'll turn away." Why did this father feel that way about Jesus? Why? For the simple reason that he'd already met some of Jesus' disciples, and that's usually enough to turn anybody away.

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He ran into a group, you see, a group of them who were very busy trying to be like Jesus. They were going to do the Jesus bit. He brought his son over and they were going to take care of the whole thing,

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and of course they couldn't, and the whole situation degenerated until they were fighting and failing. That's what always happened when people tried to be like Jesus. Does that shock you when I say that?

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You're not supposed to try to be like Jesus. You're not Jesus. You're never going to be Jesus. You're supposed to be you, not Jesus. You only imitate something that is absent.

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There's no reason to make a copy if the original is right in front of you. We believe that Jesus is with us. If Jesus is with us, then there is no need for you to try to be Jesus. All you have to be is you.

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Haven't you ever encountered one of these people who walks up to you and begins to say that you can be a Christian provided that you have exactly the same experience that they have had? If it's minus one ingredient, there's something wrong with your faith.

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They want to jam you, you see, no matter what your shape, into their particular pattern. This has to happen, and this has to happen, and this has to happen. And do you know that you've been born again?

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And it's the old lapel grip, and on and on it goes. And do you know why they do that? Do you know why? Because you see, they're full of doubt too.

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And if they can get you to buy what they're selling, if they can get you to adopt their pattern, if they can get you to squeeze and twist and bend yourself until you fit into their hole,

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then they can say, "Aha, I must be right." He agrees, and that supports them. They're like spiritual dracula's that live off the blood of other people's commitment.

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And that's evil. Because what we're really called upon to do is to be ourselves with people and to tell about our victories, if we've won any,

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and our defeats. You know, Jesus only promised to be one place, and that was where two or three were gathered together in his name. And the name stands for the whole personality,

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and the personality of Jesus can be described in one word, "love." Jesus promised to be where love is, and love isn't something that puts you down. Love isn't something that tears you apart.

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Love is not something that makes you twist and contort yourself. Love is something that accepts you just the way you are. So this man, having been put off by the disciples, stands in front of Jesus, and he says,

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"Master, if you can, I mean, if you will have pity, if you will have mercy." You see, he starts out saying, "If you can," which implies that Jesus wouldn't be able to do it,

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but he knew that Jesus could do it. I mean, he'd heard about the miracles that Jesus had done. Perhaps he'd even seen them. I don't think he would have brought his son

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if he hadn't seen what Jesus could do. There was no doubt in his mind that Jesus could do it. The question was, would Jesus do it? Would Jesus do something like that for someone as miserable as he was?

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And oh, how I identify with that. How in the world could Jesus ever love anybody like me? It's too good to be true. This is a hard time of the year for me right now.

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I haven't been away on vacation since last summer, and there have been a lot of preaching missions and everything that's been going on, and we're in the middle of Lent,

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and I look ahead to four college campuses and the financial campaign and the beginning of the building of the new building and the lecture tour in Africa this summer,

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and then this Holy Land thing, which is going to take a tremendous amount of discipline and I'm caught up in the midst of a terrible diet. Don't laugh because it isn't funny.

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There's nothing funny about it. I've lost 37 pounds, and every one of those pounds has been some kind of diet. I want you to know that.

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And in the midst of all of this, I just felt the need to get away and didn't know where and didn't know how because I didn't have the money to do it.

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And I opened a letter two weeks ago, and one of the members of our fellowship writes me a letter, and he says, "I know you're very tired,

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"and I know that after Easter you're going to be even more tired, "and the building campaign is just ahead, "so between Easter and the building campaign, "I would like you to be my guest all expenses

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"for two weeks' vacation on the island of Tahiti in the South Seas." Now, what do you do when you get a letter like that? I read that letter three times, and then I wrote him a letter to find out

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if what he said in his letter was what he really meant. Too good to be true, you see. And how much more so with Jesus. How could he love me enough to do something like that?

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And that's the way this father felt, so he just gave as much of himself as he could to as much of Jesus as he understood. He admitted his doubts,

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he accepted the unavoidability of his guilt, and he adopted what I call the Christological hypothesis. His heart was beating like the very clock of eternity, and the angels were hanging on the windowsills of heaven

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to see what was going to happen in this scene, and the whole course of human destiny had now funneled itself so that it was running through his heart. Would he be open in this moment, and being open be free?

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Or would he close up again, and being closed die? And Jesus looks at him and says, "All things are possible to those who believe." Now, who are you, and where are you, and what are you?

00:37:25.000 - 00:37:40.000

And he looked at Jesus, and he looked at the hills, and he looked at Jesus, and he looked at his hands, and he looked at the crowds, and he looked at Jesus, and he looked at his feet,

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and he looked at his son lying there on the ground in front of him, and he said, "Lord, I'm trying to believe. I believe, but help me in my unbelieving." And Jesus, so touched by his honesty,

00:38:14.000 - 00:38:39.000

did what was the most wonderful thing for him that he could have done. He healed his son, and then he took the little boy's hand, and he put it into the hand of the father. And that scene was so tender and so intimate

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that the Father draws a veil across it so that we cannot see this father and this boy and this Jesus going off into the dance of life together. It's like that man walking down the road on a hot day

00:39:02.000 - 00:39:24.000

who came to a great oak tree and sat down in its shade and said, "It's a happy coincidence that you are here." And the oak tree replied, "It's not a coincidence. I've been waiting for you for 400 years."

00:39:24.000 - 00:39:46.000

And Jesus was saying to this man, "It's not a coincidence. I've been waiting for you and waiting for you." That's what he's saying to you this morning. Through me he's saying, "It's not a coincidence that you're sitting where you're sitting right now.

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And this is my message to you. I love you. Is that okay?" Oh, my Lord, you don't understand what's down inside of me. I mean, if you really knew the...

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I mean, you know, I sin and I don't even tell the people that are close to me the things that I do and the things that I feel. Lord, you just... I mean... And Jesus says, "I love you. Is that okay?"

00:40:25.000 - 00:40:44.000

Well, I mean, you know, I'm not a super-Christian, Lord. I'm not one of these people whose lives are filled with the roll of drums and the sound of trumpets. I don't find all my prayers being answered. And I have fears and I can't stand up to every temptation that comes along.

00:40:44.000 - 00:41:13.000

And I'm not like them. I'm not sure that they're like that. But I at least know that I'm not like that. And if you're going to... And Jesus says, "I love you. Is that okay?" But Jesus, what about you? I mean, what are you going to expect of me?

00:41:13.000 - 00:41:38.000

I mean, I'll try, but I fail. What are you going to require of me? What do I have to be? I don't think I can match up. I don't think that I can be everything that you... Are you willing to put up with somebody like...

00:41:38.000 - 00:42:05.000

"I love you. Is that okay?" Open just a little bit and I will come in. And I will make you free. And I will put you with others who are free. I will remake you. It may take a year. It may take your lifetime.

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It may take all eternity. But if it happens when eternity itself is old, when it happens, I won't love you any more than I love you right now. For no one could love you any more than I do right now. I love you. Is that okay?

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Let us pray. Oh God, it's okay. It's okay. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

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The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you the peace. Oh shall you from the mountains rise, I want my world to know, the Lord of love and love to me, my only friend. Amen.