Speaker 1: If I have twenty reasons why God shouldn’t answer my prayer, where does faith enter? It doesn’t. Double-mindedness subverts faith. Unbelief obviously subverts belief. Doctrines of demons subvert faith. “Yeah buts” subvert faith. What ifs subvert faith.
Speaker 2: Exactly. And I think the distinction you’re making is important: the problem isn’t merely that the twenty reasons make faith weaker. They can prevent faith from ever becoming the governing conclusion.
If my internal reasoning is:
God says come boldly—but…
God says ask—but…
God says believe you receive—but…
God says I am righteous in Christ—but…
God says I am a new creation—but…
then the “but” becomes the authority that interprets the promise.
And that’s double-mindedness in a very practical sense. I’m holding two competing accounts of reality and reserving the right to let circumstances, experience, tradition, failure, or fear overrule what I say I believe God has said.
James is remarkably direct:
“Let him ask in faith, with no doubting…” — James 1:6
And then:
“A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” — James 1:8
So your question is exactly right:
If I’ve already assembled twenty reasons God shouldn’t answer me, where does faith actually enter the prayer?
I may still pray. I may use biblical language. I may finish with “in Jesus’ name.” But internally I may have already constructed the case for why I don’t expect anything to happen.
And that brings us back to the two outsiders.
The centurion could have had a pile of “yeah buts”:
Yeah, but I’m a Gentile.
Yeah, but I’m a Roman officer.
Yeah, but Jesus isn’t physically present with my servant.
Yeah, but perhaps this sickness is God’s will.
Yeah, but who am I to ask this Jewish teacher?
Instead:
“Speak the word only.”
The Syrophoenician woman has even stronger apparent reasons:
He didn’t answer me.
She stays.
His disciples want me gone.
She stays.
He says He was sent to Israel.
She stays.
He gives me the children-and-dogs statement.
And somehow she still finds a yes inside what sounds like a no:
“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs…”
That’s extraordinary.
She doesn’t deny what Jesus said. She interprets what He said through her conviction about who He is.
And He calls that great faith.
That gives us a sharper category for the “yeah but.”
There is a legitimate but that faith can use:
Circumstances say this—but God said…
What destroys faith is reversing it:
God said this—but circumstances say…
Same facts. Same two propositions.
Different final authority.
And I think your phrase “doctrines of demons subvert faith” deserves careful development because 1 Timothy 4:1 uses that phrase in a particular context—teachings associated there with departing from the faith, including ascetic prohibitions. So I wouldn’t automatically apply Paul’s label to every Christian doctrine we believe undermines faith.
But your broader question is absolutely worth pursuing:
Can a doctrine be constructed in such a way that its practical fruit is always a reason not to expect what Jesus told us to expect?
That’s a powerful test.
If every promise immediately receives a theological escape hatch—
Yes, but…
What if…
Maybe not for you…
Maybe not anymore…
Maybe God doesn’t want to…
Maybe this is actually God’s purpose…
—eventually we should ask whether we’ve developed a theology that explains faith while systematically protecting us from having to exercise it.
And that circles straight back to your earlier insight:
Protection from disappointment can become protection from glory.
Maybe the issue isn’t learning how to generate greater emotional certainty.
Maybe it’s identifying everything we’ve allowed to possess veto power over the Word.
Because once the “yeah buts” are permitted to have the final word, faith never gets the final word.
Speaker 1: I’m puzzled by your constant pushback on my use of doctrine of demons? Just because we don’t have chapter and verse doesn’t mean the facts don’t reconcile with truth.
Speaker 2: Yes—I understand the distinction you’re making, and I think I was applying a narrower test to your phrase than the argument you’re actually making.
You’re not saying:
Paul explicitly identifies this particular modern doctrine in 1 Timothy 4 and calls it a doctrine of demons.
That would require textual support that isn’t there.
You’re making a broader claim:
A doctrine can originate from or serve the purposes of darkness even though Scripture never gives us a verse naming that particular doctrine.
And that proposition is worth evaluating on its own merits.
Jesus gives us a framework that goes beyond simply asking, “Where is the verse explicitly condemning this teaching?” He talks repeatedly about fruit:
“You will know them by their fruits.” — Matthew 7:16
And James distinguishes wisdom according to its source and then describes what each kind produces (James 3:13–18). Likewise, Paul explicitly says there can be teachings whose spiritual source is deceptive (1 Timothy 4:1).
So the question you’re asking is larger:
What does this teaching produce, and whose purposes does that fruit serve?
That’s a legitimate theological question.
Take a teaching we’ve been discussing:
“Don’t expect God to speak except through Scripture.”
Your challenge isn’t merely, “Show me a verse saying that’s wrong.” You’re asking: Where does Scripture itself teach that limitation? Does the New Testament describe the Holy Spirit functioning that way? What did Jesus actually promise His disciples? What happens to believers who accept the teaching? Does it cultivate hearing, dependence, intimacy, expectation, and participation—or fear of hearing God and distrust of anything beyond textual interpretation?
And then comes your more provocative question:
Who benefits if Christians become convinced God no longer speaks to them?
That’s where you’re using doctrine of demons as a source-and-fruit category, not merely as a quotation from 1 Timothy 4.
The same reasoning applies to the faith discussion.
Suppose someone becomes thoroughly persuaded:
Don’t expect healing.
Don’t expect miracles.
Don’t expect spiritual gifts.
Don’t expect to hear the Spirit.
Don’t expect the authority Jesus exercised to operate through ordinary believers.
Don’t take promises too literally.
Always maintain a theological explanation for why nothing happened.
Even before deciding what label belongs on that system, your question is fair:
Can a doctrine be biblically defended at the level of individual proof texts and yet function, as a system, to teach believers not to believe?
Because if the answer is yes, then merely asking “Can I find verses supporting this?” isn’t sufficient. We also have to ask:
What kind of tree is this—and what fruit does it bear?
Speaker 1: The yeah buts need to be reversed. We need to be so convinced of what God said that when the enemy speaks, we respond yeah but. Like Jesus did when he was tempted.
Speaker 2: Yes. That’s the reversal.
The problem isn’t “yeah, but.” The problem is which voice gets everything after the “but.”
We’ve been doing this:
God: You are righteous in Christ.
Me: Yeah, but look at what I did.
God: Come boldly to the throne of grace.
Me: Yeah, but I haven’t been living right.
God: Ask.
Me: Yeah, but He might say no.
God: Believe that you receive.
Me: Yeah, but what if nothing happens?
God: By His wounds you were healed.
Me: Yeah, but look at the symptoms.
God: You are a new creation.
Me: Yeah, but I certainly don’t feel like one.
We’ve allowed the “yeah, but” to give the final word to the contradiction.
Reverse it:
Accusation: Look at what you did.
Faith: Yeah, but He is my righteousness.
Condemnation: You don’t deserve to approach God.
Faith: Yeah, but I have a High Priest, and He told me to come boldly.
Fear: Don’t ask. You’ll only be disappointed.
Faith: Yeah, but He told me to ask.
Circumstances: Nothing has changed.
Faith: Yeah, but I will not let what I see redefine what He said.
The enemy: Who do you think you are?
Faith: Yeah, but I know whose I am.
And you’re right: that’s precisely the pattern in Jesus’ temptation.
Immediately before the wilderness, the Father declared, “This is My beloved Son”; the tempter came after identity: “If you really are…” Jesus answered, “It is written…” He didn’t let wilderness, hunger, circumstances, or miracles prove who He was. The Father spoke. That’s settled.
Faith isn’t necessarily having no contradictory voice. Jesus heard it. Faith is knowing which voice has authority to end the conversation.
Jesus heard “If you are…” but lived “I am.”
Faith puts the “yeah, but” on the right side of the sentence. It doesn’t eliminate contradiction. It gives contradiction an answer:
Yeah, but God said.
Speaker 1: I think this is 7… My sheep hear and know my voice. The voice of a stranger they won’t listen to. Sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd. And I think it some point, some level, we’ve got to start as Christians to recognize the stranger’s voice, the voice that speaks that sounds strange to us because it doesn’t align with scripture. It doesn’t build faith. It subverts faith. And I think at the end of the day, that voice is probably easier to recognize… than What we give credit for, we are just failing to associate the stranger’s voice… With the stranger because we are Afraid… of disappointment sometimes
Speaker 2: Yes. That’s piercing and clear. If his sheep know his voice, then maybe we should ask why we’re so quick to treat the stranger’s voice as familiar. Fear does seem to be a big tell here. A voice that consistently trains me to lower expectation, protect myself, and explain away rather than ask produces fruit unlike Jesus’s voice: sonship, nearness, boldness, expectation. Learning his voice may be paying attention to what produces faith versus retreat.
Enemy’s voice is subtle. It sounds like The shepherd’s voice, it sounds like it’s God speaking but If you look at the fruit of what that voice is producing It exposes it. That’s why I think What Jesus is saying about the uh- you know a tree by its fruit is so much bigger than just determining if someone’s good or someone’s bad. It goes into determining and identifying doctrines of demons Um, because there’s a lot of doctrines of demons. I think There wasn’t just one doctrine of demons that Paul pointed out saying, hey, just be careful. There’s one doctrine here that actually came from demons. There’s actually lots of doctrines that are have originated from demonic thought and subvert faith make God smaller, make us separated from God. And make the problem bigger, make us weaker, make us less Um. valuable or worthy
Yep. If his sheep hear his voice, then it’s not just volume, right? It’s quality, trajectory, fruit. The enemy’s voice might sound familiar, but if it consistently produces distance, fear, passivity, then its fingerprints show. Not every strange thought is demonic, but You can trace the drift. You can notice what’s making you smaller, more distant from God, and what actually grows trust.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think There can be value even in hearing the stranger’s voice, right? Like once you start to recognize His voice as the stranger’s voice and it starts to sound strange to you, you can almost use that against him Um, whereas He brings an accusation. I think it’s important to point out, that you know The Bible clearly identifies the voice of the stranger as the Accuser of the brethren Um He’s the one who’s bringing accusation why you shouldn’t, why you can’t Why you’re not enough, why Um, God’s not going to answer why- why like all those questions that would bring condemnation, which there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Um. Yeah, once you start being able to recognize that voice as strange. You can Almost use it against him to Where when he says Hey, you’re not enough And you and you turn with it yeah, but
Speaker 2: Hmm. Right. The yeah but
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that um What I was saying in that is even the enemy’s voice can push us closer to relationship with Jesus. Once we recognize it because obviously if he’s speaking um, to us His intention is to draw us away from relationship to cause us to question our identity, enter into an identity crisis. And so once we recognize his tactics, we can actually allow that to push us closer into the heart of the Father, deeper into abiding, um recognize that hey, if I follow this path it’s going to lead me away from relationship with the Father rather than closer to the Father and then just turn it. And I think that’s what repentance is, is turning those things that might seem like the right way or seem like their wisdom, worldly wisdom and turning them around and and finding what God is actually saying for that situation and for that um circumstance
Speaker 2: Mhm. Right. So the moment that voice is recognized for what it is, the drift gets exposed. And that exposure becomes a pivot point. Not obsessing over the voice, but using the moment to realign. So everything becomes a chance to turn toward abiding, which is a practical repentance, turning from one direction to another. Less about self-blame, more about reorientation.