What To Do When a Shipwreck Is Inevitable
Exclusive preview of the Bonus Content for the coming book “Reconstruct Your Faith” (available July 3, 2024)
This newsletter contains an exclusive excerpt from the bonus content for Reconstruct Your Faith: Ancient Ways to Make Your Relationship With God Whole Again (available everywhere July 3, 2024). To pre-order the book and receive the full bones content, click below:
I looked into the lines of the face of the young man sitting across the bistro table from me.
A 30-year-old man shouldn’t have lines in his face, I thought to myself.
While I leaned back, comfortably relaxed in a somewhat uncomfortable chair, he leaned precariously forward, shifting restlessly every few minutes. I had known him since High School, and this easygoing musician with an effortlessly congenial personality was now something far different than I had once known.
Life happens.
Except, the story of the years between—which he was now in the messy midst of unraveling over cooling coffee—wasn’t so much about “life” happening, but faith… or lack thereof.
He had once had one of the most vibrant and thriving faith journeys I had ever witnessed, but now he was struggling. Badly.
He leaned in, looked around worriedly—which in the Deep South means you are about to cuss or speak ill of religion—and whispered: “I fear I’m losing my faith. I have far more questions than answers…”
He leaned in even closer, now nearly inaudible: “I don’t hear God anymore, and I don’t feel him like I used to.”
He sighed deeply.
“Some days, I wonder if he even exists. I know he does, but I am beginning to worry about how long I can believe in him.”
I leaned back,
took a deep breath,
and looked up at the gathering storm clouds overhead.
Instead of doing the normal pastor-type thing and asking, Where have you seen God in the past? or When did you last feel God and what has changed?, I took a different approach.
I had sat where he was now sitting, and I knew those questions would no longer do him any good.
His faith was in crisis, a deep crisis. And while I wanted to assure him that this wouldn’t last long or that he would make it through and be okay on the other side, I couldn’t promise him that.
Those who walk the dark night of the soul can smell religious inauthenticity and false piety a mile away.
So I dropped the pious-pastor schtick, looked deep into his struggling eyes, and asked him the only question that I could of… and looking back, it may have been the one thing that saved his faith from shipwreck.
TO READ MORE, pre-order Reconstruct Your Faith: Ancient Ways to Make Your Relationship With God Whole Again and receive the exclusive bonus content, “What To Do When A Shipwreck Is Inevitable” (free until July 2, 2024).