Faith does not always grow through easy answers. Sometimes it deepens when we slow down, ask honest questions, and listen carefully—to Scripture, to evidence, to conscience, and to one another.
These reflection guides are designed to help individuals and small groups explore questions of faith, science, history, spiritual meaning, and public life. Each guide offers background, questions for reflection or discussion, and practical ways to carry what you are learning into daily life.
You do not need to agree with every idea presented here. The purpose is not to replace one rigid set of beliefs with another, but to create a thoughtful space where inherited beliefs can be examined with honesty, compassion, humility, and hope.
Use these guides privately, with family or friends, or as part of a discussion group. Bring your questions, your experience, and your willingness to listen. The journey begins not with certainty, but with the courage to seek a more truthful and compassionate way to live.
This reminds me of Peter Scazzero’s idea of “the wall” in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.
There are seasons in our spiritual lives when we become uncomfortable with the space around us. Things don’t feel joyful. We may not feel confident that we’re moving in the right direction. We pray, we seek, we do what we believe God is asking of us—and yet, there seems to be very little fruit.
That can feel like a wall.
But perhaps the wall isn’t always something we are meant to climb over quickly. Sometimes it is an invitation to journey inward.
We see something similar in the wilderness. God’s people were moving according to His plan, yet the journey was difficult, uncertain, and seemingly unproductive at times. The absence of immediate comfort did not mean the absence of God.
Sometimes God is doing His deepest work in us when we cannot yet see what He is doing through us.
That is why I appreciate the emphasis here on honest questions. Questioning does not necessarily mean abandoning faith. Sometimes it means being willing to examine our assumptions, our motives, our fears, and even our own will.
The wall can become a place of surrender.
We begin asking not simply, “Why don’t I feel better?” or “Why isn’t this working?” but, “What is God trying to show me in this season? What is He asking me to let go of? Where is my will getting in the way of His?”
Maybe the journey through the wall is less about finding immediate answers and more about becoming the person who is able to receive what God is preparing to give.
Sometimes faith grows not when we feel God’s presence most strongly, but when we continue seeking Him when we don’t.
Thank you Jarod for your thoughts.