I doubt it (is that ok?)
I am reading You Lost Me by David Kinnaman. This book is a report on research into the "dropout problem" among young adults in Christian churches in America and some prescriptive thoughts for reaching these dropouts and reorienting our churches around the gospel. It is a challenging read for a church leader and long-time follower of Jesus like myself. One of the later chapters has especially spurred my thoughts recently. The chapter is simply titled "Doubt." Doubt is an interesting phenomenon in the life of a follower of Jesus or even in the life of someone who is considering following Jesus. We spend a great deal of time as preachers and teachers encouraging people to trust God and "exercise" their faith. All of this encouragement can, and should, be used to deal with our doubts. It is my experience, however, that we almost never address doubt directly and I spend a lot of time preaching and teaching. By contrast, I've said and heard s...