Doubt and Faith
I have often encouraged people to consider their doubts and not allow those doubts to prevent them from having faith. I have had conversations with people who could not yet make a decision to follow Jesus because they still had doubts about some aspect of Christian doctrine or their experience of God. I have been…
Continue readingGilead
Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American writer who won a Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her 2004 novel, Gilead. The story is told through the voice of a man named John Ames who has been a preacher in Gilead, Iowa all of his life just like his father and grandfather before him. He is a…
Continue readingDoubt
“Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.”* Paul Tillich, an influential theologian (1886 – 1965), wrote these words in his book, The Dynamics of Faith (1957). He is reminding us that faith often has an element of doubt. People I have met are often scared of such doubts. Some put…
Continue readingWe Do Not Lose Heart
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since…
Continue readingDescartes and Niettzche
Lesslie Newbigin (1909 – 1998) was a missionary and theologian in India and England. He has written some brilliant books including The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (SPCK/Eerdmans/WCC, 1989) and the one I am now reading, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Eerdmans, 1995). It is a short book, not difficult to…
Continue readingCommonplace
“There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly…” In Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner.
Continue readingThe Existence of God
To a woman who had a lack of faith in life after death: “No doubt it is devastating. One cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced.”“How? By What?”“By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be…
Continue readingTo Know You
”To Know You”(Words by Nichole Nordeman/Music by Nichole Nordeman & Mark Hammond) It’s well past midnight – And I’m awake with questions that won’t – Wait for daylight –Separating fact from my imaginary fiction – On this shelf of my conviction – I need to find a place– Where You and I can come face…
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