john on Unbelief

Belief doesn’t create truth. Unbelief doesn’t destroy truth. Christian faith goes beyond reason but not against reason.

Writer Michael Novak says that doubt is not so much a dividing line that separates people into different camps, as it is a razor’s edge that runs through every soul. Many believers tend to think doubt...

Our God, as we stand before the empty tomb, like Mary and the disciples we find it hard to believe that Christ rose from the dead. Forgive our unbelief. Take from our minds the shadows of doubt and he...

Pastor: Father in Heaven, I have sinned times without number. I am guilty of pride and unbelief. I’ve failed to delight my heart in your Word and have neglected you in my daily life. All: My transgr...

Lord Jesus, I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, and of neglect to seek you in my daily life. My sins and shortcomings present me with a list of accusations, but ...

Pastor: God exalted Jesus at His right hand as Leader and Savior  People: to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Pastor: In repentant faith, we come before our Lord in confessi...

What is "Deconstruction"? What is it Not? Many pastors I know have told me that one of their most pressing pastoral concerns right now is knowing how to minister to people who are decons...

Prayer of Adoration We sing Hosanna before You, Jesus – Blessed are You who come in the name of the Lord our God! Hosanna in the highest! You are the Healer of our wounds, our hurts and our broken h...

What greater rebellion against God, what greater wickedness, what greater contempt of God is there than not believing His promise? For what is this but to make God a liar or to doubt that He is truthf...

We live in an age when belief comes hard because we’re much more afraid of being gullible (believing something that’s not true) than we are of being skeptical (not believing something that is true). W...

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is right.

I believe though I do not comprehend, and I hold by faith what I cannot grasp with the mind.

Have you ever noticed that the phrases in our culture favor doubt over faith? The famed missionary and theologian Lesslie Newbigin pointed this out when we speak of “Honest doubts” and “blind faith”. ...

Christianity has suffered more casualties from faux faith than from honest doubt.

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence…. Faith, being belief that isn...

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

Faith is believing what you know ain't so. (1897)Consider checking out our illustrations page on Faith.

Faith, thankfully, does not preclude doubt. It consists of staking your life on the rumor of grace.

I do not put much stock in "believing in God." The grammar of "belief" invites a far too rationalistic account of what it means to be a Christian. "Belief" implies propos...

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

Faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith is the presence of love.

Faith is seeing the invisible, but not the nonexistent.

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

The most insidious deception in human history is the lie that says, “God is against you.”

There is a Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy and Charlie Brown are walking home from school. Charlie Brown tells Lucy that he got straight As. Lucy responds, “I won’t believe it unless I see the report ...

When people are asked what they believe in, they give, not merely different answers, but different sorts of answers. Someone might say, “I believe in UFOs”—that means, I think UFOs are real. “I believ...

When most of us grow up in a faith tradition, we begin with an assumption that faith is good, while having doubts is bad. As we mature however, we realize that faith and doubt are not opposites, but i...

The call to 'believe in the gospel', or to 'believe in me', does not suggest that Jesus was inviting Galilean villagers to embrace a body of doctrine – not even a basic 'theory'...

[Regarding the Beloved Disciple who has believed without seeing:] The risen Jesus led these fragile disciples through their hesitation into authentic belief yet the faith of those who believe without ...