Questioning my faith

I'll pray for you man. God loves you. Life can be hard.

 

It's ok to doubt.

To quote Tim Mackie, "Humans words about doubting to God have become God's word about doubting to humans".

The Bible is full of doubters. People have mentioned Job but there's plenty of other doubters like Abraham, Gideon, Jeremiah, Thomas, Peter and plenty of others.

I've been through severe doubts and it can be scary. I'd say having a crisis of faith is like going through a divorce and maybe even worse because it's possible to lose everything. It's impossible for your life to not change if you have a crisis but if you come out of the other side it can be liberating. I was an agnostic for about 3 years and only recently have come out of that stage.

People have suggested talking to your Pastor in your church, but I'd say it all depends on the kind church you go to. I came with my doubts to people in my church and my questions were pretty much thrown back in my face. I was told that I shouldn't ask questions or that what I was saying wasn't true. My church was no help to at all. Other Christians outside my church were no help either. For me, it was reading/listening to certain authors, listening to certain podcasts and finding people in similar positions to me online. I'm a part of some really good groups on Facebook that have been really helpful.

Rob Bell basically saved me from becoming an atheist. Another author who has helped me quite recently is Sarah Beesy. She was actually a pastors wife who went through great doubts after giving birth to two stillborn babies and ended up leaving church for 8 years and thought she'd never go back She got rid of my criticism and helped me believe in God's love again. Some Christians hate her, but I don't care because they didn't help me believe in the love of God again but she did. Her latest book is called Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith. It might help you. She had a wonderful interview on The Deconstructionists podcast that I found very uplifting.

Here's a talk that she gave that caused me to from being cynical about everything to believing again:



Everyone's different so Sarah Bessey might not help you but she sure helped me.

One thing I'm convinced of is God loves us and most, if not all people (including Christians) don't know how much he loves us.

I am persuaded, you see, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor the present, nor the future, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in King Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:38-39

My prayer is this: that he will lay out all the riches of his glory to give you strength and power, through his spirit, in your inner being; that the king may make his home in your hearts, through faith; that love may be your root, your firm foundation; and that you may be strong enough (with all God’s holy ones) to grasp the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the king’s love – though actually it’s so deep that nobody can really know it! So may God fill you with all his fullness. - Ephesians 3:16-19

 

That's terrible, man. I'm so sorry for your suffering and despair. I don't really have the time to engage this sort of thing the way it deserves to be. For me it helps some to know that your own suffering can unite you to Christ, and that it was the least deserving of all who suffered the most, on behalf of all. A faith whose symbol is a cross will involve a lot of suffering. But in the end words can't ultimately help all that much in the middle of pain and despair.

Anyway, I thought I'd post this. It was a song that was played in the offertory at church a few weeks back, and my wife and I, in reflecting our own pain and broken dreams, found ourselves in tears. It is one of the very few Christian songs that gets suffering right.

Eternal Weight of Glory by Wendell Kimbrough

Now the days and hours and moments
Of our suff’ring seem so long;
And the toilsome wait and wond’ring
Threaten silence to our song.
Now our pain is real and pressing
Where our faith is thin and weak,
But our hope is set on Jesus;
And we cling to him, our strength.

Oh eternal weight of glory!
Oh inheritance divine!
We will see our Lord redeeming
Every past and future time.
All our pains will be transfigured,
Like the scars of Christ our Lord.
We will see the weight of glory,
And our broken years restored.

Chorus:
For behold! I tell a myst’ry:
At the trumpet sound we’ll wake
“Death is swallowed up in vict’ry!”
When we meet our King of Grace
Every year we thought was wasted
Every night we cried “How long?”
All will be a passing moment
In our Savior’s vict’ry song

We will see our wounded Savior.
We’ll behold him face to face;
And we’ll hear our anguished stories
Sung as vict’ry songs of grace.