Prayer requests

Faith & Science Conversation
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Hi. I wanted to add this topic for anyone who has prayer requests. I have a prayer request. I have been having major doubts, and I’m backsliding to the point where I don’t know if I’m saved. I also don’t have many people to answer my questions, and I’m having trouble finding answers. My family is also unbelievers. Because of this, I am having trouble mentally. Can you guys pray for me and my family?

Blessings,
Rohan

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Absolutely!
I really want to encourage you that God welcomes questions and doubts. It’s not the pushing of ourselves to faith that saves us.

Greg Boyd, after running through lots of doubt, with many houses of cards falling down, wrote a book that helped me a lot–“Benefit of the Doubt.” In it, he points out that God is the one who gave us our brains. He encourages us in our questioning! Some of the time, we will never get a full answer (at least, this side of Heaven).

I also like Austin Fischer’s comment,

“People don’t abandon faith because they have doubts. People abandon faith because they think they’re not allowed to have doubts.”

My parents showed me a side of God that I didn’t always see in my fundamentalist churches–that God loves questioning. I think they’re the reason I stayed in the faith, in spite of my doubts. I’m not nearly as good as they are, but I want to encourage you that “as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him; for He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”

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Of course you’re saved. Don’t let other people create doubt in you.

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Yes!
I am praying for you and your family.
Some people “claim a life verse.” I am not one of them, but if I were it would be Mark 9:24–

Immediately the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe; Help my unbelief!”

Jesus answers his prayer.
Even when we have doubts of all kinds.

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It is when we are in the process of being saved (Christ working on and in us) that we become most painfully aware of the many ways we are still falling short, holding on to old sins, or running away from him.

If you have complete confidence that you have it all together (and your ‘salvation’ was already all done with nothing more change to be worked in you) - that would be the time to really be worried!

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I appreciate your presence on this forum, and your thoughts. I also want to add that probably every one of us here struggles with doubt…I know I do. And we are not alone…Mother Teresa wrote

In one undated letter, Mother Teresa writes, my God, I have no faith. I dare not utter the words and thoughts that crowd my heart, afraid to uncover them because of the blasphemy. If there be God, please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great, nothing touches my soul.
Mother Theresa's Doubts : NPR.

CS Lewis wrote, on losing his wife,

When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.
(From “A Grief Observed”).Quote by C.S. Lewis: “When you are happy, so happy you have no sense ...”

And Jesus cried on the cross, “My God, why have You forsaken me?”

Will be praying for you, as I ask for prayer similarly for myself and my own loved ones.

Thanks.

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I’ll pray for you

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You move me to tears Rohan. And I prayed immediately I read this. You’re doing great. You really are. All will be well. You will find answers, satisfaction, contentment. They will come upon you. Especially, above all, when you find ways to be kind. To be a good son, grandson. Friend. Neighbour. Student. Meaning comes from those things. Kindness, duty, hard work is the opposite of backsliding. It’s all about enlightened self interest. Take a full interest in your grandparents’ (my age) and parents’ childhoods. You’ll regret it if you don’t. Ask them. Listen to them. Active listening.

And take up a tough, hard sport.

That’s all part of my prayer for you.

Amen.

Martin

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