Struggling to find faith

[ldonjohn]

dms, if the men/people you read and watch their teachings do not point you to God's Word then forsake them. They are not leading you to find the truth.
I struggled with much of the same doubting & uncertainty that you are dealing with today, and mostly because I was listening to teachers and preachers, but I never opened a bible and actually read it.
One day I prayed to the God who I wasn't sure existed asking him to show me how to believe, then I opened a boble to the Gospel of John and began to read in chapter 1 verse 1. By the time I reached the end of chapter 6 I had found my answers and became a true believer.

Your answer in there; search for it as though nothing else in your life matters except to find the meaning of believing the truth about God & His way of redeeming us back to himself.

Regards,
John

 

[drich0150]

Hi,

I am really struggling to find faith. I am not sure what the real root of the problem is. I have posted in this forum however there have been times in my life I thought I was a christian. I have been through many theologies and philosophies and not sure what I really believe. I have had an understanding of christian things to some extent from a young age - but not sure if I have ever really had faith. I have spoken to counsellors and one many years ago said my problem was hypocrisy - i didn't accept that at the time. Its hard for me to see what the problem is. I think I maybe substitute my theological understandings for faith.

Please pray for me.

Thanks

faith is not something we are required to manufacture. faith is more like the smallest of seeds. if we can take this smallest of seeds and give it to god, IE what luke 11 shares with us about A.S.K.-ing God will show up in the way of the Holy Spirit. No need for faith larger than a mustard seed and God will make a mountain of doubt go away.

 

[Mvidi Zanzu]

Edit: Delete

 

[Sunee1]

Hi,

I am really struggling to find faith. I am not sure what the real root of the problem is. I have posted in this forum however there have been times in my life I thought I was a christian. I have been through many theologies and philosophies and not sure what I really believe. I have had an understanding of christian things to some extent from a young age - but not sure if I have ever really had faith. I have spoken to counsellors and one many years ago said my problem was hypocrisy - i didn't accept that at the time. Its hard for me to see what the problem is. I think I maybe substitute my theological understandings for faith.

Please pray for me.

Thanks

 

[Sunee1]

Praying for you! Pllease pray to God for help.

 

[dms1972]

What I struggle with is the sort of teaching that suggests some kind of faith that never falters, or that one never has a bad day/ week / month etc. I was very strong in my faith earlier in life or so I thought and I took stands on some issues and was left alone and sensed a slackness or lack of seriousness in some of those who professed to be christians. Its very difficult people judge me before hearing my thoughts on things. I have therefore sometimes had to be quite firm and call them out on it. But I experienced an onslaught for a while and changed my thinking on some issues. Most of the time I felt I had to stand alone, with false accusations sometimes leveled at me, I thought I was developing a paranoid disorder at times. I'd do things perhaps a little differently now, but it still remains that on some issues eg. homosexuality - some will tolerate nothing but affirmation of the lifestyle - thus robbing the idea of tolerance of any real meaning. I thought many matters through prayerfully - but you have to have taken a stand and maintained it sometimes to know the degree of opposition there can be in some settings - it left me almost a nervous wreck. I have since read of other mature christians experiencing severe doubts when the decisively took a stand on some issue. It is not possible sometimes without others to stand with you.

 

[Sunee1]

I will keep uou in my prayers. Tthere is an organization that helps peoople with hurts, hangups & habits. It is Jesus based. It is called Celebrate Recovery. You can check it out on you ~tube. In the meantime , keep your faith & ask God for HIS understanding & HIS help.

 

[dms1972]

I have felt you pain. But take it from someone who searched high and low for truth for 21 years and faith is not the answer anyways! Knowing is. The Bible challenges us to "Make full proof of our ministry" and having faith or merely believing in something isn't going to cut it. Half of what is being professed as the truth in Christian circles today can not and will never be proving which is why when the truth does come out "Christians will be hated by all nations on account of Jesus". Notice revelation says "Blessed is he who dies in the name of the Lord from NOW ON" this implies those who dies in the name of the Lord prior to that where not blessed. It is more imperative than ever that we stop blinding follow each other off a cliff and figure out what is really going in the Bible.

Yes and I have read about this too, faith has been shunted out of the realm of knowledge over the centuries, but faith is a way of knowing. But faith isn't the sort of esoteric knowledge that the gnostics and neo-gnostics seek. You see there is a difference between the Faith and faith. The Faith is what we have in the Bible, and if you look at Luke's introduction and Paul's talking about Jesus' Resurrection he is not talking about something subjective, but something that people witnessed. Bultmann has done a lot of damage, but I don't read him anymore - and Brunner also by their suggestions that the supernatural in scripture must now be re-interpreted along existential lines. Yet the significance of Jesus' miracle of calming the storm etc, is that Jesus also calms the storms of life, or he enables us to walk in the midst of the storms. I think we simply don't know the precise manner in which He walked on the waves. Every work of art on it is misleading to some extent.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Hi,

I am really struggling to find faith. I am not sure what the real root of the problem is. I have posted in this forum however there have been times in my life I thought I was a christian. I have been through many theologies and philosophies and not sure what I really believe. I have had an understanding of christian things to some extent from a young age - but not sure if I have ever really had faith. I have spoken to counsellors and one many years ago said my problem was hypocrisy - i didn't accept that at the time. Its hard for me to see what the problem is. I think I maybe substitute my theological understandings for faith.

Please pray for me.

Thanks

At one point during the ministry of Paul he came across the Bereans. They heard his preaching, and to make sure that what he was telling them was the truth, they searched the Scriptures daily "to see if these things were so".

If faith comes by hearing or reading the Word of God, then reading the Bible, especially the New Testament is the key. But then, when you read the New Testament and it doesn't make sense to you, it might mean that the Holy Spirit is not enlightening you. What you need to do in this case is to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to show you the true message of the Gospel of Christ as outlined in the New Testament.

Might I suggest the ministry of Alistair Begg? You can find his messages on Youtube. He gives the message of the Gospel in a very clear way and this will open up the way for the Holy Spirit to really enlighten you with the true Gospel of Christ and put you on a good foundation in Christ.

 

[Eftsoon]

Does it not depend on what I am denying - whether that be the true God, or whether it be the God of the theology of the Church I grew up in, or whether it be my own idea of God?

You aren't coming into relationship with God. He is always mediated through one theological lens or another.It sounds like you've encountered many - too many, and they are all in conflict. Without personal encounter, you simply have speculations heaped upon speculations.

Ultimately, it sounds like you have reduced God to the size of theology. I think alongside and partially because of that, you are experiencing a generalised spiritual dryness.

You're in my prayers. Theology has to be lived. It's often harmful if taken as a full revelation.

One way you may be able to encounter God is through working with the poor and disadvantaged. ''Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" Matthew 25.

 

[dms1972]

You aren't coming into relationship with God. He is always mediated through one theological lens or another.It sounds like you've encountered many - too many, and they are all in conflict. Without personal encounter, you simply have speculations heaped upon speculations.

Ultimately, it sounds like you have reduced God to the size of theology. I think alongside and partially because of that, you are experiencing a generalised spiritual dryness.

You're in my prayers. Theology has to be lived. It's often harmful if taken as a full revelation.

One way you may be able to encounter God is through working with the poor and disadvantaged. ''Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" Matthew 25.

I agree, and I have become more aware of the need to not try and relate to God through my head. CS Lewis wrote in one of his essays that here, in the long run, it is prayer, repentance, sacrament and adoration that is our sole avenue to the Real.

I did have a more real personal relationship with God in the past, I just seem to have got muddled.

I find some of the puritan writers such as Sibbes (The bruised reed) more helpful because they are pastoral theologians, not academic theologians.

 

[Eftsoon]

I agree, and I have become more aware of the need to not try and relate to God through my head. CS Lewis wrote in one of his essays that here, in the long run, it is prayer, repentance, sacrament and adoration that is our sole avenue to the Real.

I did have a more real personal relationship with God in the past, I just seem to have got muddled.

I find some of the puritan writers such as Sibbes (The bruised reed) more helpful because they are pastoral theologians, not academic theologians.

I hadn't heard of Sibbes before. There's a connectioM with George Herbert which is interesting. I recommended charity quite deliberately. You're intellect is engaged but your emotions aren't. Charity is a way to encounter God in a vividly emotional way. I had suggested art, but that's pretty hit and miss. You have to have the right sort of disposition for that to work out. If you have a creative bent, it'll work out just fine though.

Seriously, find a refugee center and go and really throw yourself into that for an hour a week. Do something which puts you into direct confrontation and communion with the disadvantaged.