stages of life on Doubts

Risen Lord, Loving Father ... and Ever-Present Spirit: Thank You for reaching into our doubts, giving us the faith we lack. Thank You for Your gracious condescension reaching from the glories of heave...

The Lord calls us to examine the wounds of the Risen One and to see there the depth of his love for us. Let us therefore approach the throne of God in confidence as we pray for the people of God in Ch...

In this short excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, the fictional demon Wormwood instructs his apprentice Screwtape to build on the doubts that often occur once the initial spiritual and emo...

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 2023 survey that was conducted by the Wall Street Journal in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago found that only 39% of the 1000 adults polled deemed religion “very important” to ...

“I wish, my brothers and sisters, that during this year you may live nearer to Christ than you have ever done before. Depend upon it, it is when we think much of Christ that we think little of ourselv...

Charles Spurgeon related a trip through the Lake District, when a dense fog descended on him and his fellow travelers, “we felt ourselves to be transported into a world of mystery where everything was...

We often get into ruts, on treadmills, caught up in patterns and habits that aren't useful. We don't stop to ask, what can I learn from this week that will keep next week from essentially bein...

The Benedictine nun Joan Chittister recounts a story she once heard by a communications professor, which she said fundamentally changed the way she thought about success and failure: A young boy was...

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

It happens sooner or later in every relationship: someone will let you down. We have a term for the earliest stages of a relationship: the “honeymoon phase”—that rosy time period when everything but d...

Light griefs can speak; great ones are dumb.

For one drop calls another down, till we are drowned in seas of grief.

When I was young, I was sure of many things; now there are only two things of which I am sure: one is that I am a miserable sinner; and the other, that Christ is an all-sufficient Savior. He is well-t...

Good people will mirror goodness in us, which is why we love them so much, Not so mature people will mirror their own unlived and confused life unto us, which is why they confuse and confound us so mu...

Life is always dull and insipid to those who have no great works on their hands to do and no lofty ideals to elevate their spirits.

Almighty God, we pray for your blessing on the church in this place. Here may the faithful find salvation, and the careless be awakened. Here may the doubting find faith, and the anxious be encou...

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart. May God bless you...

A pilgrim is formed by the question “Do I trust Him?”

Hard seasons can cause us to look at God in an unhealthy way. Instead of asking God what He needs us to see in these seasons, we may constantly find ourselves asking Him if He really knows what He is ...

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss—that is all. It will take mind and memory months and possibly years to gather the details and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss.

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? My cri...

In the midst of winter I discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

Faith...involves trusting in the future promises of God and waiting for their fulfillment.

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of ...

If youth but knew; if age but could.

When you accept the fact that sometimes seasons are dry and times are hard and that God is in control of both, you will discover a sense of divine refuge, because the hope then is in God and not in yo...