Basic Training -- How You KNOW, Know (Part 4) -- 1 John 5:1-15

Father, we thank you so much for this morning already. We thank you for the ways that you've lifted our spirits and reminded us that you really are who you say you are, that we can magnify you and glorify you and sing with all of our hearts and pray and be reminded of your word and your promises. We need that. We especially need that now.

As we were called into worship and just talked about being tired and weary—this is a season of being tired and weary. We're all feeling it. And we need you. We need you to come in and give us strength. We're tired because of COVID. It keeps going on. It feels like the finish line keeps getting extended. We need you, Father, to intervene powerfully and make COVID go away.

As a result of all that, we experience a lot of conflict and disagreement about how to handle things and what decisions to make. We're tired of that. And, Lord, we ask, Father, that you would intervene, that you would show us how to love and have grace with one another.

As a result, many of us are just experiencing a deep sense of sadness, and we've had a lot of pain, and we're still experiencing that pain. We have loved ones who have been sick or who have died. We have people who haven't had jobs. We know that marriages have really been stressed, and this is a time where people have felt isolated and alone and depressed. And Father, we come before you, and sometimes we're at a place where we don't know if we can go the next day. We're even angry at you for allowing these things to happen, and we wonder why and we wonder when it's going to end.

And yet, Lord, you have made a way. And we don't want to be trite with that. We actually want to believe that to be true—that when Jesus came and He died for us and rose from the dead, He has victory, and therefore we have victory. And so we can live in such a way that even in the midst of brokenness and pain, we can have a joy that transcends our world. We can have a hope that totally overcomes hopelessness. We can know that we are safe and secure because of what Jesus has done, that we have a place that you're preparing for us, where everything is as it's supposed to be, where we will live with you for eternity, and nothing will be wrong. There will be no sadness, no death. Everything will be restored.

So I pray, Lord, that you would show us how to live in that way with a joy and a hope that the world will look at us and go, "What is that? Why are you so hopeful? Why are you so joyful in the midst of all this brokenness and pain?" And that we can answer that question with you, with Jesus. That He's our hope. He's our strength.

We pray now all these things, and we're reminded of what Jesus taught His disciples to pray and how You teach us to pray and how this Lord's Prayer reminds us of the gospel and all the things that allow us to have that hope. Hear us now as we pray.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Thanks, David. We're going to be in First John chapter five today. You can find that in your worship guide or up on the screen behind me. And before I take us there and we start reading, I just want to say a word personally of thanks to the congregation. Many of you know my wife lost her brother tragically a couple weeks ago, and the congregation has just been very kind to us. I just want to thank you for the notes and some meals and response. Sometimes being in ministry feels like a role, and I'm not sure that we're real people behind the role, and it's just been really great to be seen by this church during this time. So I just want to say thank you on behalf of my family.

We're going to turn to First John and read together from First John 5:1 through 15. And as our custom, we're going to read this aloud together. We hide God's word in our hearts. So if you'll find that, and let's read aloud. Three, two, one.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. — 1 John 5:1-6

For there are three that testify, the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; whoever does not believe God has made him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has born concerning his son. And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his son. Whoever has the son has life; whoever does not have the son does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him. — 1 John 5

This is the word of God. Thanks be to God.

Faith Deconstruction

In the last few years, I've heard a word applied in a way I've never heard before. That word is deconstruction. And I've heard that applied not just to building sites and road construction, but actually to faith.

Alisa Childers describes faith deconstruction this way: Deconstruction is the process of going through everything you've ever believed about God and Jesus, the Bible, Christianity, all the doctrines, all the history, everything you thought about it, and you're sort of rethinking everything. On a personal level, deconstruction is looking at your past. It's looking at the influences, church, the things you were taught, the leaders you were under, and trying to make sense of, is this true? Can I believe this still?

There have been a lot of famous deconstruction and deconversion stories in the media over the last several years. People like the comedians Rhett and Link, the singer Derek Webb, Science Mike, pastor Joshua Harris, Hillsong worship leader Marty Sampson. As I've listened to these stories, a lot of them have three of the same kind of characteristics in common.

First, the person has been through some kind of trauma in a faith community, some kind of trauma with regard to church. Maybe it was an abusive pastor, or maybe it was bad theology that was part of a church, maybe it was an oppressive family system that had lots of restrictions that were extra-biblical. Whatever it is, there's this trauma that's never been quite fully dealt with or named associated with that experience.

Second, there's a sense that doubts and questions were not allowed. Now, just to remind you biblically, doubts as we see in the Bible are welcomed. One of my favorite passages is John 20, right after the resurrection, when Jesus appears in the upper room to the disciples, and Thomas is not with them. When Jesus goes away and Thomas shows up, he says, wait, I missed it? I'm not going to believe unless I can put my fingers in the holes where the nails went. Jesus appears again to the disciples with Thomas present, and Jesus is so kind to Thomas. There's an invitation. He's like, Thomas, come here, put your hands in the holes where the nails went and believe. He doesn't rebuke him for unbelief.

Doubts are normal to Christianity. Pastor Tim Coward describes it this way: Just like germs produce some kind of strength in the human body, the body has to develop antibodies to recover. Doubts are that way for faith. A person who lived in a completely antiseptic environment is not entirely healthy. There's no resiliency. And so being a person who struggles with doubts is not a failure of faith—it's one of the ways that your faith grows. Being in a place where doubts are not okay, that's really dangerous. I hope that our church is a place over and over again where people are free to wrestle and ask their questions. That's really healthy.

The third thing I see in these deconstruction stories that lead to deconversion is there's an inherent loneliness to it. If you've been told it's not okay to have doubts and you've silently and by yourself alone struggled with lots of questions, that can lead you to a place of real isolation. What happens in a lot of the deconversion stories that come out of this is a person will withdraw from a faith community and then come out on social media and say, I'm no longer a Christian. They want people to celebrate that. And they're looking for affirmation of a community. Well, that makes sense because God has designed us for our faith to grow in a community, and this person has experienced a lot of isolation.

I'm naming these things because these are incredibly sad stories, many of them.

The doubt, deconstruction, deconversion process. But here's my contention for you this morning: I don't know if you need this passage today. I don't know what you're going through today. Maybe some of you are dealing very much head on with this. But regardless, you're going to need this passage one day. And so I want to encourage you to file this away. I want you to take notes, put this in the file drawer up here somewhere because whether you walk through a really hard period of questioning everything or you have just good friends that do so.

I think that one of the new mission fields for our church is ex-evangelicals. People who have been wounded in some way by the faith and are trying to figure out what to do with what they believe. And I think this is a tremendous need. I read recently that COVID has sped up the process of exodus from the church twenty years in America because a lot of people for eighteen months have been outside the church and they're like, "Don't really miss it. Didn't really mean much." And they're sort of like, "Don't know if I have anything left." So this is such an important thing for us.

This morning, John is sort of equipping us. Pastor John is equipping us with how we deal with sitting with others who have lots of questions, how we deal with people who have suffered under bad theology or bad churches, how we help walk with someone through sorrow and loss. And the good news that John gives us this morning is that there is something to say. There's something to say. We have something to say.

Pastor John knows that even people in the church are going to struggle. And that's why he says here in verse 13:

I write these things to you so you can believe. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence we have toward him.

He's writing to people who are like us, church people, and saying, "I want to help you." The main point of this whole passage points them back to the very epicenter of the gospel, which is Jesus Himself. So this morning, I'm going to look at this under three headings: Three testimonies, three tests, one goal.

Three Testimonies, Three Tests, One Goal

Let's look at this together. First, a testimony—the testimonies that overcome our doubts. This is verses six through twelve. John, in effect, is calling in witnesses. Think about a court case. He's calling in witnesses to help us. He says, "I have three witnesses for you this morning: the water, the blood, and the spirit."

Let me start with the hardest one first: the water. Now this is confusing, because John says some weird things here like "Jesus came by water and the blood, not just by water only." What water is he referring to? Well, a little background: John was actually in this letter dealing with a heretic in the church, a man named Cerinthus. And Cerinthus was concerned to protect the divinity of Jesus. So he affirmed that Jesus is both God and man. At Jesus's baptism, says Cerinthus, you see God, the spirit come down. Jesus is fully God and fully man. But when he gets to the cross, that can't have been God dying. That must have just been a man dying. So at his baptism, Jesus was fully God, fully man, but the spirit of God must have left him right before the cross.

This is what John is saying: "No, no, no." He's saying both the water and the blood matter. Jesus was fully human, fully divine, both at His baptism and at His cross.

It's funny because I think a lot of people scratch our heads when we think about Jesus's baptism. Why was Jesus baptized? The baptism is super important in the life of Jesus. It's one of the only events that's recorded in all four gospels to make sure we see this. Let me refer to Matthew's gospel. Matthew records that Jesus comes to the Jordan River and there John the Baptist is baptizing—a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. And John the Baptist is really confused because here comes Jesus. John says famously, "There's this lamb of God who's going to take away the sins of the world. There is a sinless person who's going to take away the sins of the world."

So when Jesus comes up to him, John's like, "What are you doing here? You don't need to be baptized." This is what Matthew says:

John would have prevented him saying, "I need to be baptized by you and you come to me." Jesus answered him, "Let it be so for now, for it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."

What does that mean? Jesus wasn't baptized to be cleansed from his sins. He didn't have any. But he's baptized to be identified with us. He's baptized to be identified with sinners. This is to fulfill all righteousness. You, I, we have no righteousness to bring to the Lord.

If we come with our record, we're all found unrighteous. Jesus comes with His own righteousness and in being baptized, the righteous one, He identifies with those who are sinners. Now, this is really important. This is a testimony for you this morning. You're struggling with doubts, you're struggling with deconstruction. Why do you need to know this? Why would this be a good testimony to you? Because it means this: God always makes the first move with sinners. Jesus identified with you before you ever identified with Him. In a sense, this really isn't about you. Jesus said, "I've come to identify myself with you." The water of His baptism testifies to you: "I came for you before you even heard of me and knew my name."

The Danger of Deconstruction

One of the dangers of deconstruction is knowing when to stop. Next door to our house, there's been a house that they've been working on for probably eighteen months, maybe two years now. It's a house where first they started doing things that made sense. They came in and took out all the sheetrock—okay, they're redoing the wiring. Then they took out a big porch on the front that was falling down—that makes a lot of sense. Took out all the plumbing. Okay. Took out the heating system. Okay. They were doing all that. Then they took off the roof, and I was like—I mean, all that's left was a shell. It was just a brick structure with studs and floor joists.

There's a fine line, right, between deconstruction and demolition. And I'm like, are they just taking this thing all the way down? This is helpful for us. If you're in a process of doubting everything and wrestling with everything, when do you know to stop?

Here's what you find if you go through a process of deconstruction of the Christian faith and you actually are honest about it. When you strip away the studs and you strip away the sheetrock and the plumbing and the electrical and even the roof and you come down to the bare studs and the bare floor joists, what do you have in the Christian faith? You have Jesus Christ. He is the very center of the gospel and His baptism cries out for you, for me, for you.

The Testimony of the Blood

The second testimony that John calls in, the second witness, is the blood. And of course this refers to Jesus' death on the cross, His death for you, a sinner.

I love mystery novels. I read a lot of mysteries. I think mysteries are great because they wrap up at the end. You know, most of life doesn't neatly wrap up in the end, but I like mysteries because they do. And you know what happens in lots of mysteries? There'll be a crime scene. After the murder, they'll call in the forensic team. You know what the forensic team does? They come in with crime scene tape, plastic gloves, white jumpsuits, and they're going around with tweezers trying to find DNA samples, little fibers, blood spatters. They're trying to piece together what happened here, who was killed, and by whom, and why.

Now imagine this scene. This is what the gospel presents to us about the blood of Jesus. The forensic team showed up at the crime scene, and what they find is your DNA is all over this crime scene. It looks like you're the killer. Everything points to you. There's blood everywhere—a lot of the victim's, but some of the one who did it. And all of it points to you.

Then the next day, you give your life to the risen Lord Jesus. And the forensic team shows up at the same scene of crime. What happens? It's not your DNA anymore. They're looking at the samples and it all points back to Jesus Christ. He's the one who did it. He's the guilty one. He's the one to arrest and punish because His blood has been spilt for you. The DNA is completely switched. What's running through your veins is His blood. This is what the blood testifies to us. He's guilty. You're pronounced acquitted.

The Testimony of the Spirit

Third, the testimony of the Spirit. This is the inward testimony of the Spirit of God that we are children. The Spirit is the third witness, and this Spirit operates in two ways. First, the Bible tells us the Spirit is like the down payment of what God is going to do in a full way in the future in your life.

I got to go with one of my sons this summer—one of the highlights of my life—going ring shopping with my son Ray to ask this girl to marry him. We go ring shopping to look for a diamond. Different from in my day, he's got Pinterest so he can figure out what she really likes. He gets the ring made and presents it to her and she says yes. But that's not the main event, is it? The ring's great, but it's a promise. It's his intention saying, "I will marry you."

The Spirit is given to you as a down payment. The first deposit, the first installment of what is the fullness which is to come. This is what the Bible says to us about the Spirit. But the Spirit works in another way because the Spirit is not just some inanimate object. The Spirit is a living being, the third member of the Trinity, not in on the hand, but in the heart.

The Spirit, the Bible tells us, over and over testifies. The Spirit speaks. The Spirit says to you. We read this in 1 John 3. When our hearts condemn us—whenever you're full of doubts, you're full of self-condemnation for all you've done—the Spirit, we have one that's greater than our hearts. I mean, this is so encouraging. In our confessional documents, we call this the inward testimony of the Spirit. Do Presbyterians believe in the Holy Spirit? You bet we do. And He is the one who testifies inside of us: Yes, it's true. The Bible is true. Jesus is true. It's really true. Better news than anything you could believe. We couldn't have made this stuff up. The Spirit is the one who speaks to that.

So again, this is what John is saying to those who are going through a process of doubt and deconstruction, asking is this true, and can I really believe this again today? He's saying, look, I'm calling in all the witnesses. The water testifies. He identified with you. The blood testifies. He shed His blood for you. The Spirit testifies that He's a down payment in your life and speaks a better word even of your doubts and self-condemnation.

Three Tests of Faith

He goes on from those three testimonies to three tests. This is in verses one through five. He gives us these kind of personal evaluations to know: Is this really real for me? Have I owned this? Is this real in my life? And there are three tests here, very simple: doctrine, obedience, and love. Do you believe? Are you willing to submit? And do you love?

The Doctrine Test

Look at the doctrine test first. This is in verse one:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. — 1 John 5:1

If you've ever walked through a season of real doubt and questioning things, one of the hard parts of that is that everything feels equally important, and everything feels equally confusing and up in the air. It's hard to evaluate what's really most important and what's a lesser thing. So it's really important for us to understand that there are things that are essential to the Christian faith. There are things that are secondary to the Christian faith, and there are things that are tertiary.

I want you to picture a bull's eye. There's a center point to the bull's eye. There's a ring around that and a ring around that—concentric circles. When you're doing archery, what do you want to hit? The bull's eye, right? The bull's eye is the most important.

The bull's eye here is 1 John 5:1. What does it mean to be a Christian? Everyone who believes Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. This is what's in the center. When someone comes into our church who wants to join our church, we ask them only two theological questions. Are you a sinner and do you trust in Jesus for your salvation, His death and resurrection? We don't ask them, hey, what do you think about the end times? That's not primary. What's essential to believe in the Christian faith is: Are you a sinner? Did Jesus die on the cross and rise again for your salvation? That's what's essential. It's really important that we're very clear on that's the center point. That's the bare bones minimum of what it means to be a Christian.

The second ring around that—moving out in the bull's eye—is what all Orthodox Christians believe: Is the Bible God's word? Yes. Is Jesus coming again? Yes. Is there a Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Yes. These are the things we confess Sundays in the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. Jesus born of a virgin. That is not essential to believe that to be a Christian. Bare bones, you have to believe you're a sinner and Jesus died for you. But these in the second ring—this is what all Orthodox Christians agree on.

And then there's another ring outside of that, and this is what intramural debates Christians have. Modes of baptism, end times, understanding the spiritual gifts. Now here's what's hard: a lot of times when people are walking through doubts, they analyze the Christian faith by what's in the third ring.

They're analyzing the reality of what's in the bull's eye on the basis of what's in the third ring. They're saying the tertiary stuff—that's what people get worked up over, isn't it? I mean, let's talk about sexual ethics. There's a lot of stuff that's in that tertiary ring that's like 1% of Christian theology that we have trouble agreeing on and really understanding. How is the church supposed to be ordered? All those kind of things. But 99% falls within those first two rings.

What happens in doubt, in a period of doubting, is we mix up what's the ring, what's the priority. And really what helps another person is coming alongside them and helping them to put the planets back in order again. Hey, here's what's really central. Remember that.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. — 1 John 5:1

You know, if you want to help someone, you point them back to like, what is the foundation? You clear away all the stuff in the house, you get back to the studs—it's right in the bull's eye. Jesus died for you, a sinner. That's the doctrine test.

The Obedience Test

The second test, the obedience test, goes like this.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. — 1 John 5:2-3

This is a sign of genuine faith—that you want to obey Jesus. You'll submit yourself to Him. This passage always reminds me of Mumford and Sons, the song "Sign No More." We're listening to this recently. They sing, "Love, it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you. It will set you free. Be more like the man you were made to be."

Obeying Jesus is not burdensome because it's making you more the person you were made to be. That's really what's set up.

But the doctrine test cuts two different directions, and I want you to hear both of these. First, the doctrine test cuts this way: we have to make sure that what we think we're supposed to be obeying is actually from God's word itself and not from a lot of human traditions, not things that have been added on. That's really, really important. That's one aspect of many people who are deconstructing their faith today. They realize all this other baggage was added on to Christianity that actually is not scriptural. New forms of moralism, rules that aren't biblical.

I know a number of you have emailed or texted me that you're listening to the Who Killed Mars Hill podcast. One of the challenges and one of the problems of that church was that the pastor said things about sexual ethic in marriage that were man-made rules with the same intensity that he said Jesus has been resurrected from the dead. That caused a lot of damage because those aren't supposed to be said with the same intensity and fervor. They need to be analyzed in light of God's word.

So look, we have to ask: the obedience test—do I really want to obey what the real Jesus really says in His word? That's really what matters. But it also cuts another way because we have to make sure we're not going through doubts or deconstruction simply because we don't want to submit to God. This takes real courage and real honesty. Let me just be really frank about that because there's a type of deconstruction that goes this way: "Well, I'm having trouble with doubts because I actually want to be in charge of my own life. I don't want to do what God says. I want to be king, and I want to be able to call my own shots for my life."

And the reality of that is that's not the real God. If you say, "Serve God, God always accepts me no matter what I do"—well, God always accepts us with an agenda. That's called sanctification. And He calls us to submit ourselves to Him.

So the real Jesus—you know you're serving the real Jesus when the real Jesus contradicts you sometimes, calls you to love people you don't want to love, forgive people you don't want to forgive. It calls you to submit your sexuality to Him, to obey Him, to obey civil authorities whom you may not even respect. But you're saying, "Okay, the obedience test is: I want to obey the real Jesus. I want to do what He says." I mean, I don't love it all the time, but that's part of my heart growing in conformity to Jesus.

The Love Test

The third test here is the love test.

Everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of God. — 1 John 5:1

This has to do with your affections for God and His people. And this is really hard: do you love God and His people? I mean, the first part's easier than the second part, isn't it? Can we tell the truth in church? Sometimes the family of God is hard to love, right? We're like, "Yikes, really Jesus? This is your family?" These are awkward, difficult people.

You know, there's that bumper sticker that I see around Raleigh: "Lord save us from your followers." Yikes.

There's no biblical category of loving God without also loving His people. And this is why to separate yourself from the fellowship of his church, and especially running to a social media fellowship, is actually a false reality. People on social media—that's not your friends. That's an applause group. That's not people who are really with you. To love God is also to love his people, even as difficult as it is.

I just want you to hear the good news that John is giving to us as wrestlers and doubters and people who are struggling. Listen to verse four:

This is the victory that's overcome the world, even our faith. — 1 John 5:4

I know you may feel this morning defeated, discouraged, beat up. You may feel like you don't have much faith left. But be of good courage. If you can just go through these simple tests—the doctrine: Do I believe Jesus died for me and rose again? Do I want my best days to submit myself to Him? Do I want to try to love Him and His people? This is the faith that overcomes.

See, John keeps saying:

Whoever has the Son has life. — 1 John 5:12

Be encouraged. This is the kind of words you can take to someone who's working through lots of hardship. Ask them the nitty gritty: What do you think you're actually obeying? What kind of rules are those? What doctrines do you really think are essential here? Are those tertiary? No, primary. Let me focus you on this one goal.

The Purpose: Relationship, Not Doctrine

The purpose of John's little letter is here in verse 13:

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. — 1 John 5:13

Then he goes on to show us how this is manifest in verses fourteen and fifteen, and he does so in prayer. Now I think that's really curious because the whole point John is showing us—it's not about an ism, it's about a relationship.

I remember several years ago, one of our sons came home from college and he had really discovered his faith as his own. He came home and said something like this: "I didn't know. Y'all didn't tell me that this whole Christianity thing was about a relationship with God."

I was like, what? Are you serious? I mean, I've been preaching for a long time and I think I say that sometimes. But who cares? I was like, hallelujah, Super Bowl victory. You get it. This whole thing, this whole Christian thing isn't about believing a set of beliefs. It's about a living, vital relationship with God. It's about a God you talk to. A living, vibrant, vital relationship with Him.

Isn't that the point? Isn't that what we want for our kids? Those of you who have kids, you better say yeah. That's what we want for them. See, John is interested in the same thing for us—not that we just believe and subscribe to some doctrine, but that we would have confidence before him. We have confidence to talk to him, to have engaged conversation with him, to make a request known to him, to engage him.

When you pray to him, when you share your heart with him, that's a real relationship. And if you're walking with a friend through doubts and deconstruction, here's a great goal: Get them back on speaking terms with Jesus. This is a real God. This isn't a philosophy. This is a real God, and I'm trying to walk with you to help you engage him again.

A Boomerang Story

Let me close today. You know, I think we hear lots of discouraging church stories on social media right now about faith. Lots of deconstruction stories, lots of deconversion stories. So I'm going to tell you a boomerang story—so he left and came back.

This is by a woman named Andrea Dilly, and I hope you'll bear with it. It's a little long, but the ending is solid gold, so hang in. This is what she writes:

"During my junior year in college, I took a butter knife out of my mom's kitchen and scraped off the fish decal off the back bumper of the Plymouth hatchback I'd inherited from my brother. Stripping off that sticker foreshadowed the day a few years later that I would walk out of church.

The reasons for my discontent were complicated. By most standards, I had a healthy childhood. I grew up the daughter of Quaker missionaries in a rural Kenyan community that laid the foundation for my faith. I spent the rest of my childhood in the Pacific Northwest, raised in a stable Presbyterian church that gave me hymns and mission trips and potluck dinners. I was surrounded by smart, conscientious Christians, the kind of people who like to read nineteenth century Russian novels and take meatloaf to firefighters when much of Eastern Washington State went up in flames in 1991.

When I started in my skeptic phase, my Christian community gave me space to struggle. They listened to my doubts about faith. They took my questions seriously."

And yet when I turned 23, I left the church. Listening to a sermon at my older brother's church one Sunday, I stood up, leaned over to my father and said, this is garbage. Made my way to the end of the pew and marched out of the sanctuary. The sermon didn't sit right with me. The pastor was preaching about Psalm 91 saying in so many words that a person just needed to pray a prayer and have faith in order to be protected from suffering.

More than just that sermon, I was just sick of church. I was sick too of all the spiritual questions plaguing me. Why did the church seem so culturally insulated and dysfunctional? Why does God seem distant and uninvolved? And most of all, why does God allow suffering? These questions didn't come out of nowhere. I'd spent time in high school volunteering in refugee camps in Kenya and in college working with families on welfare in Central Washington State. I saw hungry babies. I walked into homes that were piled with garbage and dirty laundry. I saw things that I couldn't make sense of as a Christian.

Walking out of church that Sunday was a way of saying, I'm done. For two years, skipped church. My Bible gathered dust on the shelf, the local bars became my temples. I indulged in the cliche rebellions of a Christian girl, smoking cigarettes and drinking hard alcohol. I got involved with men twice my age without thinking about it. I wanted a break from being good.

And then strangely, I woke up one morning at age 25, climbed into my car and drove downtown to attend a 10AM church service. I won't wait to hear the whole story of how I came back to church, but if I had follow the standard testimonial narrative for Christians, the script of my life went like this: Grow up in a Christian church, go off to college and go away from said church, be exposed to the enticements of a secular life, try drugs and cigarettes and Pearl Jam, leave the church because of aforementioned enticements, experience epiphany, realize vapidness of secular enticements, return to church with a penitent heart, reestablish faith, and discover good living.

In reality, though, I left church more because of my own internal discontent than the lure of a so-called secular life. When I came back, I still carried that same discontent. I was confused and still bothered by questions and doubts. I stayed in the back row and I didn't sing and I didn't pray. I really wasn't sure I wanted to be there. Yet I sat there Sunday after Sunday listening to the pastor and the organ pipes and trying to figure out what was going on in my heart, my dark conflicted heart.

Doubt Belongs in Church

Although I never experienced the dramatic reconversion moment, I did come to peace with two slowly growing realizations. This is what I want you to hear. First, my doubt belonged in church. People who know my story ask what I would have changed about my spiritual journey. Nothing. I had to leave the church to find the church. And when I came back, the return wasn't clean, wasn't conclusive.

Since then, I've come to believe that my doubts belong inside the space of the sanctuary. My questions belong on the altar as my offering to God. With all its faults, I still associate the Church with its pursuit of truth and justice, with community and shared humanity. It's a place to ask the unanswerable questions and a place to be on sojourn. No other institution has given me what the church has, a space to search for God.

Second, my doubt is actually part of my faith. In Mark 9:24, a man says to Jesus:

I believe, help my unbelief. — Mark 9:24

The Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor called this the foundational prayer of faith. I pray that prayer often and believe that God honors my honesty. I also believe that God honors my longing. The writer and theologian Frederick Buechner says, faith is homesickness. CS Lewis called it a longing for a far off country. I feel that sense of unshakable yearning comes from the deepest part of my heart, a spiritual desire that strangely, mysteriously connected to my doubt.

May God make this community a safe place for such stragglers, safe place for doubts, and a place where we can bring those to the Lord.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. Thank you that the apostle John, all those years ago wrote this section of scripture reminding us of what's real and true. And as much as we experience a shaking, we thank you that you are foundational and you're strong and that you're the real and living God who draws near to sinners. And you always initiate with us and your yes is stronger than our no and you are so kind and gentle with us.

We pray father for our church to be a place where it's safe for people to ask questions and deal with their doubts and that we would know how to reach the mission field, those who are abandoning what they thought was the faith. We pray that they would find Jesus. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.