Here is a section from John Owen's (modernized) work "Spiritual Mindedness." It talks about how to deal with doubts and blasphemous thoughts Satan injects into the minds of believers.
Thoughts? Is this a good way to deal with these issues?
The spiritually minded person will say, 'Truly there is a reward for the righteous; truly there is a God who judges in the earth.' This will follow thoughts of the immensity of God's nature, of his eternal power, of his infinite wisdom, and of his absolute sovereignty. These thoughts will hold the souls of believers firm and steadfast in the most destructive storms of temptation that may fall upon them. But there are two troubles which weaker believers may encounter. Satan, knowing the weakness of our minds, will inject blasphemous thoughts into them when we try and think of infinite and incomprehensible things. he will tempt us to atheism by raising doubts, 'Is there really a God? How do you know that there is a God?' Satan did this in his first temptation. 'Has God said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?' This was how he tempted Christ. 'If you be the Son of God. Is there a God? What if there is no God?' So Paul tells us to take the shield of faith, by which you shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked' (Eph 6:16). Faith will quickly reject such diabolical suggestions. Christ said, 'Get behind me, Satan.' If a man has a petrol bomb thrown at him, he does not ask whether he will be burned but immediately does everything in his power to put out the fire. So in the same way, we must deal with the devil's fiery darts. If blasphemous thoughts persist after every effort to cast them out, return at once, without further argument, to your own experience. When the devil has asked you the question, if you answer him, he has got you. But if you ask yourself the question, and then answer it by your own experience, you will frustrate all the devil's designs on you. We are not to argue with the devil. We are to take the shield of faith to quench those fiery darts. If Satan succeeds in diverting us into long arguments for the existence of God, he has succeeded in drawing us away from the duty of meditating on God. Soon, every time we think of God we will begin to wonder if he really exists. The believer, therefore, is to retreat at once into his own experience. This will pour shame and contempt on the suggestions of Satan. Every believer who knows something of himself and of God's dealing with him, and has time to exercise the wisdom of faith concerning the ways God has dealt with him in the past and is dealing with him now, has the witness in himself of God's existence and eternal power. He also has the witness of all the other perfections of the divine nature which God is pleased to reveal and glorify in and by Jesus Christ. So, on this suggestion of Satan that there is no God, the believer will be able to say, 'The devil might do better to tell me that I am not alive and not breathing, that I do not eat food or keep myself warm by wearing clothes, that I do not know myself or anything else, for I have personal assurance and experience of God's existence.'
Thoughts? Is this a good way to deal with these issues?
