I nearly lost my faith on these forums. It's because of one reason. Debate. Debate typically revolves around controversy. And if you take any science, any philosophy, and history and you talk only about the controversies of it, and not the meat of it. You become a poor student of the actual subject. I stopped debating about a few months ago. After being banned for being rude. I noticed it was taking a heavy tole on me. Then I realized it was because of the controversy. So I typically don't debate unless it can remain very very polite. As soon as people toes are stepped on I am out. Which makes most of my debates very short. But in doing this I have also protected myself. I like twitter alot. I see honest christians trying to live out the life, encouraging one another posting bible verses and praying for one another. I hadn't seen that here. It exists but not in the debate sections and theology sections. Those to me are the cemetaries of the forum. If you want the real stuff, go to christian advice area's and prayer threads. But yeah twitter has a huge christian influence. As long as you block the political, and the skeptics and just follow the honest ones. Twitter usually keeps your feed real clean. For new Christians I typically don't even recommend they come here at all. I had gone to Bible college and I almost lost my faith, I was in ministry and taught evangelism and wrote a book on evangelism, and had an apologetics website, called "BibleAnswer.org" That was ten years ago. But I was focussing on evangelism and apologetics and not on Jesus. See again, when you focus on peripherials and not the meat of the message, you really only see the side issues, the implications of the subject and not the real application. As soon as I rededicated my life, financially we started recovering, my blood pressure went down, my allergies got better, my mental health was healed. And I overcame about four addictions in the last five years. I have more joy and meaning than I have had in my entire life. It's about knowing Jesus himself, not debating apologetics. I love this illustration.... "there was a new home being built and the electricians were behind schedule. The owner went on sunday and monday and there was no electricity. The owner called the foreman of the electrical company and said.... there is no power on in the house. Tuesday the owner got there again and there was a note on the door, it said "power on- ted" Ted was the foreman. And when he got in the door he switched the light on and there was power. See the message was validated by the power. We could do all sorts of explaining and defending the post it note on the door, the message. But the best explanation of the power of the gospel is to let people see the power it has. That is the confirmation of the message. I once had a thread were I had ten atheists explain they had left the faith. I asked them... "When you believed in Christ the first time, did you repent of sin?" Not one of them said yes. There may in fact be one that has done so, and later became apostate. But none of them in that thread said "yes I repented of known sin when I became a christian." The Bible talks about the parable of the sower. Sometimes a real seed falls and shallow soil and because it is not rooted the sun becomes a hardship on it, it dries and withers. Other seeds satan or the birds of the air pluck up. Other seeds are planted in rocky soil, no foundation. So there are many reasons why people leave the faith. But if you find Christ, you repent of sin. you allow your faith to change your life. you pray, and read the Bible regularly, and become accountable at a local fellowship. There is really no way to lose faith. As long as you want it, you got it. But sin likes to decieve us. It's funny how the sin that kept us bound, we think is freeing us when we do it when it actually owns us and enslaves us.