Journal entry: “Today I realized something really important. I do not want to serve God, I want Him to serve me. Somehow that makes a big difference. …One of my biggest problems with faith is that I find it so hard to believe certain things that are the very premise of Christianity, such as the immaculate conception and the resurrection of Christ. Wow- 2 biggies. My scientific mind wants a scientific explanation for these things, which is impossible. I cannot have both the explanation and Christianity at the same time. If I believe in one, then I cannot believe in the other. So here I am, a pitiful creature, begging for some help from God with my hopeless obsession and yet I don’t even believe the most primary of His miracles. If I have no faith in those, how can I possibly have faith that He can accomplish the miraculous in me? Ah…you see, that is the only conclusion that I can come to. He can’t. I have stalemated Him with my disbelief. How can I conquer this? It isn’t as easy as just telling myself that I have to accept the beauty and the truth of God’s miracles. Or is it? …I have learned things that haunt me with their persistent reminders of physiological necessity. Like how could there ever be a conception without both egg and sperm? And if God wanted Mary’s child to be the Messiah, the Christ, why couldn’t He have just put that in Jesus’s heart after he’d been normally conceived by 2 human parents? And when a body has ceased to function for 3 days, how could it have started working again? A brain would be mush by that time!
“I can see for myself how futile all these questions are. I am trying so hard to make human sense of non-human phenomenon. If I believe that God exists, then I have to believe that there are no scientific explanations for His existence, and I also have to believe that He created science, and that He created human beings to study and comprehend science. But I also then have to believe that the boundaries of science as we know them do not hold God in abeyance, since science is His creation. The final question that I have to ask myself to set this whole chain of ideas in motion is simple: Do I believe that God exists? The answer, as much as I’ve tried to ignore and avoid it, is YES, I do believe that God exists.”
Things were coming to a head, but I wasn’t quite ready to make it official yet. Just one week later I was writing questions like:
What’s all this talk about “fear” of the Lord?
What does it mean to be lost?
What does the Bible say about me, the uncertain, searching, possible Christian?
Christ died for my sins – I suppose that’s a good reason to love Him, so why does it stick in my throat?
I wondered why it was taking me so long to come to faith in Christ and derived comfort from some insight found in a fortune cookie: He who is most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in the performance of it. I really wasn’t sure yet about being identified as a Christian. It came with some bad PR in my book. I was concerned about becoming judgmental and self-righteous and did not want to make the same mistake as those who called themselves Christians but also dared to call themselves the Moral Majority (ha ha – I was pretty hard on that group!). But then I had to admit that I couldn’t stand in judgment of the Moral Majority either or I’d be a hypocrite. I wrote, “It is certainly true that Jesus’ most difficult command is that we love our enemies as we love ourselves. In theory it is glorious. In practice it is a herculean task.”
Take heart, we are nearing the end of my long journey. Unbelief had a few dying gasps left, but dying, it was. And resurrection was following close behind.
He who is most slow in the deleting of a blog post is most faithful in the performance of it.
My Story Part 1
My Story Part 2
My Story Part 3
My Story Part 4
My Story Part 5
My Story Part 6
My Story Part 7
My Story Part 8
My Story Part 9
My Story Part 11
Lynniebeemuseoday 
Faith is a struggle, doubts are always rearing their ugly head. I think the verse is use more than any is, “Lord, I believe, help though my unbelief” Mark 9:24.
You are such a deep thinker Lynn, I imagine that made it all the harder for you.
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I love that verse, Barb! I certainly made things more difficult for myself, but the Lord was patient and kind. ❤️
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Thank you for expressing what I STILL struggle to believe. Another truth that encourages me is that Jesus chose me, I did not choose him.
Why He did is a greater mystery.
I love you, Lynn. Apparently, He does too!🙂
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❤️ I’m so glad that my story speaks to your heart in some way. It’s been a boost to my faith to re-tell it.
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Hi Lynnie!
The account of your Faith journey is wonderfully articulate and searingly honest..! I could particularly relate to your admission of wanting God to serve you instead of you serving God… All who have seriously wrestled with the questions you presented have trod that path of not understanding the role we play in our relationship with God – but you articulated it beautifully!
P.S love the Groovee photo!
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Thanks for your sweet and encouraging feedback on my story. That photo cracks me up. I was going to a Halloween party and was too cheap to buy anything to wear as a costume so I just rummaged around and put that “groovee” outfit on. Pretty lame.
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