beliefs on Firm Belief

Doubt is really the felt tension that exists between a belief you have and a contrary claim you do not yet believe…Simply put, doubt is that experience of one of our beliefs seeming like it might be f...

To a twentieth-century mind the notion of a virgin birth is intrinsically and preposterously inconceivable. If a woman claims–such claims are made from time to time–to have become pregnant without sex...

Let’s talk about how our beliefs shape our actions, especially when fear is involved. You've probably heard the phrase, "ideas have consequences," right? It's easy to see this in act...

When we aim at certainty when it comes to our Christian beliefs, it sets us up for failure. …Imagine someone with a lot of time on their hands who painstakingly constructs a five-foot-high house of...

One day when George MacDonald, the great Scottish preacher and writer, was talking with his son, the conversation turned to heaven and the prophets’ version of the end of all things. “It seems too goo...

G. K. Chesterton was well-known (and iconoclastic) in his defense of tradition in a time when progress was all the rage in Western Europe- in technology, in the sciences, in philosophy. Chesterton, on...

We might say that convictions are firmly held moral or religious beliefs that guide our beliefs, actions, or choices.

The hymnwriter and theologian F. W. Faber writes with beautiful prose the challenges that each one of us faces when it comes to living a life faithfully according to the truth that is within us: M...

Preaching Commentary Death Is Common to All Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude of Denmark implores her son Hamlet to move past mourning his deceased father, Thou know’st ‘tis common,—all that live must...

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

To hold to a doctrine or an opinion with the intellect alone is not to believe it. A man’s real belief is that which he lives by.

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...

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation...

We are what we believe we are.

A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.

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

It is always crucial to remember that our beliefs are formed not only through reason and argument but also through social conditioning.

Core beliefs can be hard to change because they’ve generally been with us for a long time, and we assume that they’re true. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to changing our core beliefs is that they are s...

Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God,...

One needs to be right before getting righteous.

Reality is what doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.

To tell someone what you believe may be to answer the wrong question—better to say, instead, what the church believes, better to use the language the church has bequeathed to us to shape our experienc...

He who believes his doctrine to be perfectly right and true has only to lift his hands and touch his ears and discover they are the long furry ears of a donkey.

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

’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

“I know” seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression, “I thought I knew.”

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'...

Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes.

There may have been a time when people found it easy to believe anything. But we are finding it vastly easier to disbelieve anything. Both processes save the human mind from the disgusting duty of dis...

“I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.”