Analogies on Faithlessness

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The Martyr's Mindset: Ignatius of Antioch and Death as Worship

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 16:25, Romans 8:17-18, Philippians 1:21, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Psalm 116:115, Daniel 3:, Daniel 6:

How many modern Christians consider dying to be the worst thing that can happen to them? We pray for safety, healing, and protection, and rightly so. However, do we live in the truth that death has tr...

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Hanging Between Heaven and Earth

Author

Anthony de Mello

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 14:10-16, 1 Kings 18:21-39, Matthew 14:28-31, James 1:5-6, Psalm 121:1-2

An atheist fell off a cliff. As he tumbled downward, he caught hold of the branch of a small tree. There he hung between heaven above and the rocks a thousand feet below, knowing he wasn’t going to be...

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Dawkins View of Faith (For Contrast)

Author

Richard Dawkins

Keywords

Scripture

James 2:18, Romans 10:17, John 20:29, 1 Peter 3:15, Romans 1:20

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...

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Daily Thanks and the Tragedy of a Consumer Culture

Author

D. L. Mayfield

Keywords

Consumerism

Melissa Florer-Bixler, a Mennonite pastor, told me, “One of my favorite stories from the Talmud comes from a wondering by the rabbis—why did the manna come once a day instead of once a year? They tell...

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A Mischief to Religion

Author

Joseph Glanvill

Keywords

Anti-Intellectualism has been a problem in the church for some time now. Consider the words of the 17th century English clergyman Joseph Glanvill, who had this to say about the role of reason in faith...

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The True Test of Faith

Author

Brennan Manning

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 16:7, Micah 6:8, Proverbs 22:2 , James 2:1-4, Luke 14:12-14 , Psalm 146:3-7

Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...

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What is Faith? Is it a Way of Knowing?

Author

Travis Dickinson

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 15:1-6, Exodus 14:10-14, Joshua 1:9, Psalm 23:, James 2:14-26

There’s no shortage of the religiously faithless who seem eager to tell us what faith is. Many of these characterizations of faith are reminiscent of Mark Twain’s precocious schoolboy who quipped, “Fa...

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Faith Requires Thought

Author

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 3:1, Psalm 19:1-2, Philippians 4:8, James 1:5, Romans 12:2, Proverbs 3:5-6

Faith according to our Lord’s teaching in this paragraph is primarily thinking; and the whole trouble with a man of little faith is that he does not think. He allows circumstances to bludgeon him. . ....

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The Faithfulness of a Few

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 28:20, Revelation 2:10, Matthew 5:10-12, Matthew 10:22, 2 Corinthians 4:8-10, 1 Peter 4:12-14, Romans 8:35-37, John 15:18-20, Psalm 31:23, Matthew 25:21, 1 Corinthians 4:2, 1 Timothy 6:12, Matthew 24:45-46

Pliny, a Roman Governor serving around 112 AD, faced a challenging situation regarding Christianity. Many Church historians believe that by his time, it had become illegal to profess the Christian fai...

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The Frustrating Unpredictability of Faith

Author

Don Everts and Doug Schaupp

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 6:9, John 3:8, Ecclesiastes 11:5, Isaiah 55:10-11, John 6:44

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...

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A Deeper Faith

Author

Bob Goff

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 11:28-30, Hebrews 10:24-25, 1 John 3:18, Romans 12:15, John 15:12-13, James 5:16, Galatians 6:2

In his introduction to Scott Sauls’ Book, Irresistable Faith, Bob Goff tells a story about a summer adventure hitchhiking across New England, which would ultimately lead to staying with a hermit in Ma...

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Lacking a Clear Path to Faith

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Scripture

1 Kings 20:40, Matthew 6:34, Romans 7:19, Romans 8:11-14

One common mistake is assuming that everyone else finds faith easy, while we alone struggle. Yet there is comfort in recognizing that we are not alone in our pursuit of Christ in the midst of a broken...

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Is Faith Blind?

Author

John Piper

Keywords

Faith

Scripture

Psalm 19:1-2, 2 Timothy 1:12, John 14:11, Proverbs 3:5-6, James 2:18, Romans 1:20, 1 Peter 3:15

In his book, A Peculiar Glory , John Piper provides an illustration of the kind of faith we are called to. This is no “blind faith,” in which we are supposed to simply believe without using our minds...

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The Devils Logic [Part 2 of 2]

Author

Jared C. Wilson

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 3:13, 2 Corinthians 11:14, Proverbs 7:21-23, James 1:14-15, Genesis 3:6

If I were making a list of benefits like the one Mike McKinley imagines, only this time using the devil’s actual logic, it might look more like this: Experience the excitement of new romance. Get th...

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Faith Like a Journey

Author

Samuel Rodriguez

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 40:31, Acts 20:24, Hebrews 12:1-2, James 1:2-4, Proverbs 3:5-6, Psalm 37:23-24, Philippians 3:13-14

While global flights and online booking have made travel easier in many ways, other aspects, often related to safety and security, still create challenges. As often as I fly, I could tell you plenty o...

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Disregarding God’s Prohibitions

Author

Mark D. Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 6:1-2, 1 John 1:9, 1 Corinthians 6:18, James 1:14-15, Matthew 5:27-28, Hebrews 13:4, Proverbs 6:32

Some years ago I had a pastoral relationship with a couple of people who were deeply in love with each other. They believed that God wanted them to get married so they could consummate their love. The...

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Doubt over Faith?

Author

Lesslie Newbigin

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 9:24, Romans 10:17, John 20:27, 1 John 4:1, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Proverbs 3:5-6

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”. ...

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What Trust Looks Like at its Brightest

Author

Peter Enns

Keywords

Scripture

John 20:24-29, Mark 9:24, Job 23:3-4, 8-10, Job 19:25-27, Psalm 23:4, Psalm 13:1-2, 5

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...

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His House of Cards

Author

Austin Fischer

Keywords

A few years ago, a pastor of an evangelical-fundamentalist church with whom I’m acquainted announced on the Sunday after Easter that he had become an atheist. He told his stunned congregation that he ...

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Deceitful Hearts and Desert Shrubs

Author

Casey Clark

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 17:9

We may find it hard to believe Jeremiah’s words that the heart is “deceitful above all things.” We would rather look outward and think, Yes, others may be quite foolish and misguided. But I have a ...

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Existential Brokenheartedness

Author

Austin Fischer

Keywords

Scripture

1 Peter 1:6-7, Habakkuk 1:2-3, John 16:33, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Isaiah 53:3, Psalm 22:1, Romans 8:18

In this short excerpt, pastor and author Austin Fischer describes a surprising dynamic that sometimes occurs in the life of a Christian: believing so strongly in a loving God that one cannot fathom th...

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A Dying Man’s Last Words

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

A man was dying and he called his wife to his bedside. He affectionately told her he loved her but he also had to confess something to her. “I haven’t been 100% faithful to you in our marriage. I’m so...

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Devastated by Divorce

Author

Craig Groeschel

Keywords

Recently I talked to a friend who had been a faithful pastor for more than two decades. After raising four kids with his wife of almost thirty years, he came home one day to the shock of his life. His...

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Circumstances or God’s Faithfulness

Author

C. J. Mahaney

Keywords

Scripture

Lamentations 3:22-23, Philippians 4:6-7, Psalm 28:7, Isaiah 26:3-4, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Romans 8:28

On a daily basis we’re faced with two simple choices. We can either listen to ourselves and our constantly changing feelings about our circumstances, or we can talk to ourselves about the unchanging t...

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Triumph and Failure in the World of Faith

Author

Ben Patterson

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 40:31, Romans 8:28, Psalm 27:14, James 1:2-4, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Psalm 130:5-6

Triumph and failure always go together in the wait of faith. They are the head and tail of the same coin. Show me a person who has had no struggle with waiting, whose faith has known no swings between...

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Certainty vs. Vulnerability

Author

Austin Fischer

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 5:6, John 20:27, Mark 9:24, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Romans 8:24-25, James 1:5-6

In this excerpt from his book Faith in the Shadows, pastor and author Austin Fischer shares a surprising truth about the need to be vulnerable with our own faith if we are likely to have a positive im...

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When the Israelites Abandoned God’s Authority

Author

David Klinghoffer

Keywords

In the Bible, the children of Israel fall into disastrous behavior patterns whenever they abandon the majestic authority of God revealed to them through Moses at Mount Sinai. In fact, they commenced r...

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Not All Who Wander are Lost

Author

Travis Dickinson

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:1-15, Genesis 12:1-9, Job 1:42, Psalm 139:, Acts 9:1-19

In the novel The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien, there is a poem called the “Riddle of Strider.” One stanza goes like this: All that is gold does not glitter; Not all who wan...

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What If Satan Told The Truth When He Tempted Us? [Part 1 of 2]

Author

Mike McKinley

Keywords

Think for a second what it would be like if Satan were to tell the truth when he tempted people? Could you picture what that would look like? Imagine if Satan tried to tempt us honestly; it might go s...

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Called to Faithfulness

Author

Trevor Hudson

Keywords

Many years ago, I watched a documentary on the remarkable ministry of Mother Teresa among the poverty-stricken people of Calcutta. At one stage there was a moving exchange between her and the commenta...

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