{"id":31517,"date":"2022-09-10T15:33:29","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/hope-for-the-wanderers-and-doubters-in-your-church\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T15:33:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:33:29","slug":"hope-for-the-wanderers-and-doubters-in-your-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/hope-for-the-wanderers-and-doubters-in-your-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope for the Wanderers and Doubters in Your Church"},"content":{"rendered":"
Photo by Kyle Mills on Unsplash <\/p>\n

By Robin Dance<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes when our faith goes sideways, we need God to show up. We need Him to come to us, even if we\u2019re not necessarily looking for Him.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, He\u2019s more than willing. After all, He did this very thing in the incarnation\u2014when He left heaven, became a human, and came to our broken world in a way no one expected, as a king born in poverty. Everything about His coming was a miracle.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we receive an assurance from God\u2014a lifeline, a Godwink, or even a flat-out miracle\u2014that indicates He sees us, knows us, loves us, and notices and cares about our broken places and emptiness.<\/p>\n

Sometimes He’s generous to give us something we need whether or not we asked, even if we aren\u2019t convinced the \u201cI Am\u201d even is<\/em>. When we are struggling or even walking away, God can show up in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n

When I was drowning, when I entertained the idea of letting go of my faith, God held onto me. He<\/em> reached for me<\/em>, not the other way around. In fact, looking back over my life, I see God did this on more than one occasion, in big ways and small.<\/p>\n

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His faithfulness showed up again and again, sometimes in ways I couldn\u2019t necessarily see until later.<\/p>\n

When my wilderness was new and disorienting, God threw me a lifeline in a Sunday-morning sermon, showing up despite my wrestle with belief.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know or care if that sermon meant a thing to anyone else in the room, it was me and God and God and me that morning, and the hope it offered would become a thread tethering my faith for years as it drifted.<\/p>\n

That morning my pastor explained that if you were struggling with unbelief, it didn\u2019t mean you weren\u2019t saved. God wasn\u2019t caught off guard by our questions, and He wasn\u2019t offended by our doubt.<\/p>\n

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See also  8 Ways to Persevere in Ministry<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But the kicker, the inspired message that gave me the hope I’d cling to in my spiritual desert, was my pastor\u2019s suggestion that God could actually be using my doubt and questions as the means to woo me back to His side. Rather than heaping guilt or condemnation on my already sagging shoulders, he lifted my chin as if to say, \u201cEverything\u2019s going to be all right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than viewing my questions as a sinister divide between God and myself, I began seeing them as a bridge. Question by question, slat by slat, my doubts were bringing me closer to truth, not driving me away. Wandering doesn\u2019t always mean you\u2019re walking away from God; sometimes you\u2019re just taking the long way home.<\/p>\n

Reframing my questions in a positive light, as both a vehicle for God\u2019s grace and a means for me to seek Him was a game changer. It didn\u2019t immediately quell my doubts\u2014again, this was early in my wandering\u2014but it extended the freedom for me to be honest, wrestle, and find a way back to Truth.<\/p>\n

ROBIN DANCE (@robindance)<\/strong> is a writer, speaker, and contributor to the (in)courage community and The Art of Simple. She currently lives in Macon, Georgia, and online at robindance.me. <\/em>Excerpted with permission from For All Who Wander by Robin Dance. Copyright 2020, B&H Publishing Group.<\/p>\n

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Dig Deeper at Lifeway.com<\/div>\n
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For All Who Wander: Why Knowing God Is Better than Knowing It All<\/h2>\n

Robin Dance<\/p>\n

FIND OUT MORE <\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What Do Pastors Believe About the End Times? What Do Pastors Believe About the Book of Revelation? 3 Ways to Reach Non-Religious People in Your Community <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Kyle Mills on Unsplash By Robin Dance Sometimes when our faith goes sideways, we need God to show up. We need Him to come to us, even if we\u2019re not necessarily looking for Him. Remarkably, He\u2019s more than willing. After all, He did this very thing in the incarnation\u2014when He left heaven, became … Continue reading “Hope for the Wanderers and Doubters in Your Church”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}