1. "The whole book of Ecclesiastes is a stubbed toe. It makes you stop, look up, stop whatever you were doing and ask, why does this hurt so much?"

2. "We can't find ultimate truth on our own because our truth seeking instruments are irreparably damaged. That something seems right and feels right does not make it right. You can't fully trust your own moral radar."

3. "Our natural internal sense of truth and error, of moral right and wrong, is like a fuel gauge on the dashboard of your car with its crucial sensor on the fritz. Sometimes it'll give you an accurate reading and tell you just how much gas is in the tank, but sometimes it'll say you're full when you're running on fumes."

4. "Human reason is like a tiny flashlight that is almost out of batteries. God's revelation is like stadium lighting that turns dark into day."

5. "If you build your confidence in God only on what your reason can prove, your faith will be like a brick building when an earthquake hits. The brick can't absorb all that shaking so it cracks and crumbles and collapses. What you need is the structural steel of trust in God's Word."

6. "Faith always involves trusting God farther than you can explain him."

7. "Every breath you breathe is a benefit of a lease from God. One day, that lease will expire. A car lease might have a fixed term and a fixed number of miles you know you can drive, but you have no idea how many breaths there are in your life lease."

8. "When the illusion that you're in control of your life is shattered, do not try to reassemble it. Don't rebuild what God destroyed. Instead, rest in God's sovereignty. It is freeing and comforting and strengthening to know that God is in control and you aren't."

9. "When suffering caused by sin tempts you to reject your faith, don't deconstruct your faith. Read Ecclesiastes instead."

10. "The limits God has imposed on your life are not a threat but a gift. Instead of being mad at God for what he hasn't given you, love what he has and love him more for it."

Observation Questions

1. In Ecclesiastes 7:23-24, what does the preacher say about his attempt to gain wisdom, and how does he describe "that which has been"?

2. According to Ecclesiastes 7:26-28, what did the preacher find that was "more bitter than death," and what did he say he "sought repeatedly but did not find"?

3. What does Ecclesiastes 7:29 say about how God originally made humanity and what people have done since?

4. In Ecclesiastes 8:8, what two things does the preacher say no person has power over, and what does he say about "discharge from war"?

5. According to Ecclesiastes 8:10-11, what did the preacher observe about the wicked, and what effect does delayed judgment have on people's hearts?

6. In Ecclesiastes 8:12-13, what contrasting outcomes does the preacher affirm for those who fear God versus the wicked, despite what appears to happen on earth?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does the preacher describe his search for wisdom as finding "Dame Folly" instead of "Lady Wisdom" (drawing on the personification of wisdom and folly from Proverbs 1-9), and what does this reveal about the limitations of human reason alone?

2. How does the statement in Ecclesiastes 7:29—that God made humanity upright but they have sought out many schemes—explain why people struggle to find ultimate truth and wisdom?

3. What is the significance of the preacher's declaration in Ecclesiastes 8:8 that no one has power over the day of death, and how does this expose the illusion of human control?

4. How do verses 12-13 in chapter 8 provide an answer to the apparent injustice described in verses 10-11 and 14, even though the preacher does not explain exactly when or how justice will come?

5. Why does the preacher commend joy (Ecclesiastes 8:15) immediately after discussing injustice and the limits of human wisdom, and what does this teach about living faithfully in a world full of unanswered questions?

Application Questions

1. When you face questions about God, suffering, or evil that you cannot answer, what specific practices help you trust God's revelation rather than relying solely on your own reasoning?

2. Identify one area of your life where you have been operating under the illusion of control. How might acknowledging God's sovereignty over that area change your attitude or actions this week?

3. Think of a situation where you have witnessed or experienced injustice that seemed to go unpunished. How can looking back to Christ's work on the cross and forward to His return help you process that injustice without losing faith?

4. The sermon emphasized that living well under authority contributes to lasting happiness. In what relationship (work, family, church) do you struggle to submit to authority, and what is one step you can take to grow in this area?

5. Ecclesiastes commends simple joys like eating, drinking, and work as gifts from God. What ordinary blessing in your life have you been taking for granted, and how can you cultivate gratitude for it this week?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Proverbs 1:20-33 — This passage personifies wisdom calling out in the streets, providing the background for understanding the "two women" imagery the sermon draws from Ecclesiastes.

2. Proverbs 9:1-18 — Here Lady Wisdom and Dame Folly are directly contrasted, showing the life-and-death stakes of which path a person follows.

3. Romans 1:18-25 — Paul explains how humanity suppressed the truth and exchanged it for lies, reinforcing the sermon's point about sin corrupting our ability to find truth.

4. John 10:14-18 — Jesus declares His authority to lay down His life and take it up again, demonstrating His unique power over death that the sermon highlights as the answer to human helplessness.

5. Revelation 20:11-15 — This passage describes the final judgment when God will bring every deed into account, fulfilling the promise of ultimate justice that Ecclesiastes anticipates.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Question of What You Believe In and How Faith Handles Contradiction

II. Your Faith Will Be Shaken When You Find No Answers (Ecclesiastes 7:23-29)

III. Your Faith Will Be Shaken When You Have No Control (Ecclesiastes 8:1-9)

IV. Your Faith Will Be Shaken When You See No Justice (Ecclesiastes 8:10-17)

V. Faith Is a Struggle Against the Appearance of Things

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Detailed Sermon Outline

What do you believe in?

Has that faith ever been shaken?

If you're not a Christian, we're very glad you're here, you're welcome here and at any of our public gatherings. My question for you would be, what do you believe in? I'm sure you would say you have faith in something or maybe many things: science, the power of love, democracy, the basic goodness of people, Whatever you believe in most deeply, at one time or another you've probably experienced or learned something that called that faith into question.

How does your faith cope with whatever seems to contradict or undermine it?

If you are a Christian, has your faith in Christ ever been shaken?

What causes a crisis of faith?

One cause of a crisis of faith is not getting answers to your questions. If God is good and if he's the all-powerful creator of all things, then why does he permit evil in the world? Why is there so much of it? Why is there so much pain and suffering, especially of the kind that we inflict on each other?

When it feels like your faith is all seeking and no finding, you get frustrated, you get fed up, you get sick of asking questions that seem to have no good answer.

A crisis of faith can also set in when you don't get the results that you thought were guaranteed. I've devoted my life to God, I've kept his commandments, I've read the Bible and prayed every day, So why isn't my life going any better?

Doesn't God promise that those who seek him lack no good thing? Why does my life feel so empty? It feels like whatever I reach out to try to grab hold of just recedes when I try to lay my hands on it.

A third cause of a crisis of faith is injustice, whether seeing injustice or suffering injustice. It could be you're observing or experiencing injustice that's worse than anything you've ever encountered before. And it seems like the perpetrators get off scot free. They just keep doing it and they just keep getting away with it. If God is in charge up there, then why are things so messed up down here?

If God is the supreme ruler and governor of this universe, it can seem like he's doing a pretty poor job managing things. So why not set up a recall election and get him out of office?

No answers, no control, no justice. Those are three very common causes of a crisis of faith. And our passage for this morning addresses each of them in turn. This morning we continue our series in Ecclesiastes, looking at chapter 7, verse 23, to chapter 8, verse 17. If you have a Bible, please turn there.

This passage drops us right back into the author's quest for truth and meaning. Calling himself the preacher, the author tests how far human reason and observation can take him. And in his observation of everything under the sun, he turns up all sorts of contradictions. He runs into all sorts of hard realities that seem to call God's goodness and sovereignty into question. In this passage, as we'll see, the questions are loud and clear, but the answers are harder to find.

This text tests and tries our faith.

It teaches that your faith will be shaken.

Specifically, your faith will be shaken when, number one, you find no answers. Your faith will be shaken when you find no answers. The author pulls us into this trial of faith in chapter seven, verses 23 to 29. Look with me at those verses.

All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, 'I will be wise, but it was far from me. That which has been is far off and deep, very deep. Who can find it out? I turned my heart to know, and to search out and to seek wisdom in the scheme of things.

And to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. Behold, this is what I found, says the preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things. Which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found.

One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.

In verse 23, he says, All this I have tested by wisdom. What's he referring to? He's talking about his whole quest for wisdom that's really taken up the whole first half of the book. Back in January, in the first sermon in this series, I offered three angles on the book as a whole and it's helpful to revisit them at this kind of midpoint in the book. So first, Ecclesiastes is a question.

The book has far more questions than answers. It's a challenge, it's a provocation. The whole book of Ecclesiastes is a stubbed toe. It makes you stop, look up, stop whatever you were doing and ask, why does this hurt so much?

Second, Ecclesiastes is a journey. The author walks us through his own painful quest for wisdom, step by hard-earned step. We have to journey with him through it.

The full picture comes only at the end. And third, Ecclesiastes is a little bit like a standup comic. A standup comic deliberately exaggerates. They squint so that only a little bit of the picture comes through, but by focusing on that one teeny little point, they give you a view of the whole. They come at the truth from a sort of side angle so they can sneak up on it and surprise you.

It's a little bit like what Ecclesiastes is doing. And here in this paragraph, verses 23 to 29, It's especially important to keep the journey in mind. Here the author pauses along the trail, takes a seat, and he looks back over the whole ground he has covered so far. What does he conclude? Verse 23, I said, 'I will be wise,' but it was far from me.

Verse 24, that which has been is far off and deep, very deep. Who can find it out? Verse 27, Behold, this is what I found, says the preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things, which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. He's saying he devoted his whole life to seeking wisdom, but he didn't find it. He put his whole soul into the task of finding the big picture, and it escaped him.

He looked harder than anybody ever did for the scheme, the plan, the key that would make sense out of all of life's bizarre shapes. But he came back empty.

Why did he fail? Verse 27 gives us a clue. While adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things, Here the author is reminding us of how he sought for this big picture truth. You'll remember that throughout most of the book's first half, the preacher sought wisdom by simply observing and analyzing life under the sun. He looks at everything he can, he experiences everything he can, and he thinks it through as far as human reason will take him.

What he comes back with at the end of the book is Every time is a mist, a shadow, a cloud, a soap bubble, something about to disappear, prone to vanish. And as soon as you lay a finger on it, it pops.

So the author here is criticizing himself. He's telling us why he didn't succeed. So it's only when we understand this big picture and how it relates to the whole book so far that we can make sense out of his two statements about two women in two verses, verses 26 and 28. In verse 25 the author tells us that he saw two things, both wisdom and folly. Folly.

I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom in the scheme of things and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. So what did he find? We already know he didn't find wisdom.

Now look again at verse 26. And I find something more bitter than death. The woman whose heart is snares and nets and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. Is the author a misogynist?

Is he talking about sexual sin? I think the answer to both those questions is no. The crucial background here is that the first nine chapters of Proverbs portray wisdom and folly as two women. Each holds out her respective charms and benefits. Each calls out for people to come and join her.

But the two have radically different characters and consequences. Remember, the author has just told us he sought both wisdom and folly. Verse 27 tells us he didn't find wisdom, So verse 26 tells us what he did find, namely, Dame Folly. Just like Proverbs does, he is personifying folly as a woman. This woman, the way of folly, is a pit of destruction.

The preacher is saying, I fell into that pit by searching for wisdom with only his reason to light the way. He only found wisdom's opposite. Which brings us to verse 28. One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found. The point of the first half of the verse is simply to say, if there's a needle somewhere in this haystack, I of all people would be the one to find it.

The point is not about the presence or quality of available men as opposed to a woman. The point is simply the diligence and dedication of the one doing the seeking. And so who's the woman he didn't find? It's Lady Wisdom. The point is not that there was no righteous or virtuous woman to be found.

There's no adjectives qualifying these men or women he found or didn't find. His point is simply that he didn't find the woman he knew was out there. He didn't find the woman he knew he was supposed to be looking for. He found the wrong one instead. So the preacher is saying that if you go looking for answers to ultimate questions with only your reason to guide you, you will tie yourself in knots.

So verse 29 at the end of this section applies to the preacher as much as to anybody else. See, this alone I found that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. The preacher didn't find the answers he was looking for, but he did find that all people are sinners, himself included.

People are not basically good. Behind the problem with our minds is the problem with our hearts. The ultimate reason we don't find the truth is that our hearts are magnetized by sin. We're drawn irresistibly to what demeans others and damages ourselves. We seek what we want and we want all the wrong things.

We can't find ultimate truth on our own because our truth seeking instruments are irreparably damaged.

That something seems right and feels right does not make it right. You can't fully trust your own moral radar. Our natural internal sense of truth and error, of moral right and wrong, is like a fuel gauge on the dashboard of your car with its crucial sensor on the fritz. Sometimes it'll give you an accurate reading and tell you just how much gas is in the tank, but sometimes it'll say you're full when you're running on fumes.

Consider again verse 29. See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. If you're not a Christian, you may not believe the first half of that verse, but my guess is you would say the second half is self-evidently true.

What schemes that people pursue are most evidently wrongheaded to you? What do you think the people who pursue those schemes are looking for?

What do they desire? What do they want? And why do people so often seem to want the wrong things?

Brothers and sisters, members of CHBC, God has answers that your reason will never and can never discover. God has answers that even if your reason could discover them, it will never fully understand.

Human reason is like a tiny flashlight that is almost out of batteries. God's revelation is like stadium lighting that turns dark into day.

Your faith will be shaken when you don't find the answers you're looking for. If you build your confidence in God only on what your reason can prove, your faith will be like a brick building when an earthquake hits. The brick can't absorb all that shaking so it cracks and crumbles and collapses. What you need is the structural steel of trust in God's Word. Structural steel is different.

Ductile, it's pliable, it can bend without breaking. That's what faith in God's word gives you. You can absorb the shocks of questions you don't have answers to. Faith always involves trusting God farther than you can explain him.

When your reason finds no answers, rely on God's revelation.

Point two, you have no control. Your faith will be shaken when you have no control. The preacher prods us with all sorts of limits to the control we have over our own lives in chapter 8 Verses 1 to 9, look first at verses 1 to 5. Who is like the wise? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? A man's wisdom makes his face shine, and the hardness of his face is changed.

I say, keep the king's command.

Because of God's oath to him. Be not hasty to go from his presence.

Do not take your stand in an evil cause, for he does whatever he pleases. For the word of the king is supreme, and who may say to him, 'What are you doing? Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing.

And the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way.

The basic thrust of these verses is to remind you that your ability to bend an authority to your will has strict limits. If you're a minister to a king, the king's word is law. If he doesn't approve your latest proposal, It will do you no good to become the patron saint of lost causes.

If your boss has already nixed your latest great idea, then continuing to hammer on it is a great way to get yourself fired. Pick your battles.

The broader point here is that there is a way to live under authority that benefits both ruler and ruled. Verse five, the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way.

What makes a student a delight to teach?

What makes a player a joy to coach?

What makes an employee A pleasure to supervise. Living well under authority is a widely neglected, underrated ingredient in true and lasting happiness. That's exactly the basis on which the author of Hebrews appeals to the whole church to follow their leaders. In Hebrews 13:17 he says, Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

The preacher continues in verses 6 and 7 on this theme of limits. For there is a time and a way for everything, although man's trouble lies heavy on him, for he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be? In verse six, the author seems to be referring indirectly to final judgment. There is a time for everything, meaning a time when God will call everything to account. However arbitrary or unjust a ruler's whims may be now, God will one day settle the score.

However little control you may have about what someone in authority decides to do, no authority is above or beyond God's control. And yet, verse seven reminds us of another limit on our control. We can't control the future. We can't predict it and we can't determine it. From our limited vantage point, so much of the future is uncertain.

But there is one certainty, verses eight and nine. No man has power to retain the Spirit or power over the day of death. There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it. All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun: when man had power over man to his hurt.

Verse 8 is saying that no one is the proprietor of their own life breath.

Every breath you breathe is a benefit of a lease from God.

One day, that lease will expire. A car lease might have a fixed term and a fixed number of miles you know you can drive, but you have no idea how many breaths there are in your life lease. One day, God will call the term of that lease.

You have no idea when it will be, and there will be nothing you can do to extend it.

Verse 9 might simply be saying that once you are enlisted in a military force and called into battle, there's nothing you can do to obtain release.

But it also might be a metaphor for death. When you're called to fight that final battle, you can't send someone else in as a substitute to take your place. And however much gain wickedness might seem to bring now, if you devote yourself to it, it will leave you hanging when it matters most.

So when you put all these verses together, we see that however little control you might have over someone in authority, you have even less control over your own life. You have very little control over the future and however little control you have over the future, you have no control whatsoever over the very fact that you are alive and continue to be alive. You do not give yourself life and you don't decide when your life ends. No man has power to retain the spirit or power over the day of death. Death is the rock that shatters all our illusions of control.

But as final as death is, as unnerving as death is, death is still not our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is that by nature we are not only mortal but spiritually dead. As we've seen again and again from Ephesians chapter two as Mark's been preaching. Our biggest problem is that we are just as unable to fulfill God's will as we are unable to escape from death. Our biggest problem therefore is that God is just and we are not and he is our judge.

God will one day hold us all accountable. Judgment will follow death as surely as morning follows night. And we're totally helpless to deliver ourselves from the consequences of our own sin. Verse 29, God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.

None of us has power to escape death or to escape from the consequences of our own sin. But there is one man who had power to retain the spirit and power over his own day of death. In John 10, verses 17 to 18, Jesus says, for this reason, the father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.

This charge I have received from my Father. On the cross, Jesus paid for the debt of the sins of all those who had ever turned from sin and trusted in him. And when it came to die, His life wasn't taken from him, but he gave it freely. He breathed his last, gave up his spirit, and bowed his head. Jesus laid down his life.

He had power over the day and hour and moment of his own death. And he further demonstrated that power over death by rising from the dead on the third day. Now he calls all people everywhere to turn from sin and trust in him. Turn and trust in Christ today. He's the only one who can deliver you from physical death and spiritual death and eternal death.

When everything in your life is going well, control, or rather the illusion of control, is a constant temptation. You think, Your success is entirely explained by your hard work. And you think your happiness is a byproduct of your virtue.

But then trials come along and pull the rug out from underneath all of that.

You live as if you're in control until you discover with a shock But you aren't. And that shock can zap away your faith.

Kids in the congregation, what's one thing in the last year that you've learned you're not in control of?

When the illusion that you're in control of your life is shattered, do not, do not, Do not try to reassemble it. Don't rebuild what God destroyed.

Instead, rest in God's sovereignty. It is freeing and comforting and strengthening to know that God is in control and you aren't.

When your strength and skill Give you no control. Rest in God's sovereignty.

Point three, you see no justice. Your faith will be shaken when you see no justice. We see this in verses 10 to 17.

Look first to verses 10 and 11. Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.

To do evil.

Verses 10 and 11 paint a picture for us of people getting away with bad stuff. That the preacher saw the wicked buried probably means he observed the procession and the gathering of people around the graveside. In other words, people showed up in force to honor those who deserved no honor. And in verse 11, the point is that when injustice isn't punished here and now, people decide they can get away with it, and they go even further. People conclude that because sin isn't being punished now, it never will be.

Verse 14 says very similarly, There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked; and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. Of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity.

Not everyone gets what they deserve. Not everybody gets what's coming to them.

Some people get exactly the opposite. There is no guaranteed link between righteousness and prosperity. If you are ever tempted to believe that there is, Ecclesiastes 8:14 is all the proof text you need to destroy that illusion.

Especially today, the prevalence of injustice is a common reason people give for either rejecting or abandoning the Christian faith. But Ecclesiastes got here long before any of us. The moral objection to God's government of the universe is nothing new because there is nothing new under the sun. When suffering caused by sin tempts you to reject your faith, don't deconstruct your faith. Read Ecclesiastes instead.

One problem with treating injustice as an objection to Christianity is a wrong expectation. Wrong expectations account for so much trouble in all kinds of relationships. Wait, I thought you were going to get the bread at the store. There goes tomorrow's breakfast. Here, a wrong expectation can imperil your relationship with God.

Ecclesiastes 7:20 tells us there is no one on earth who is so righteous that they never sin. And as we've seen, Ecclesiastes 7:29 says that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. So why would you expect justice to prevail perfectly here and now? Whatever gave you the idea that it would?

But another problem with this objection is that its view simply isn't long enough in either direction. It doesn't take the whole story into account. Look at verses 12 and 13.

Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God. Right here the preacher doesn't tell us how or when this will happen, but he does later. If we skip ahead to the very end of his journey, Ecclesiastes 12:14, the very last sentence in The book we read, God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Brothers and sisters, when injustice seems to prevail, remember that God has already brought about His saving justice on the cross. And when Christ returns, He will bring about a universal justice. When injustice seems to prevail, look back to the cross and forward to Christ's return. Every gathering of our church is a rehearsal of the last day.

Every gathering of our church is a preview in anticipation of that day. It's a reminder of how the story will end.

On the last day, all of God's people will be gathered as one assembly around his throne, praising him. So that's what we do every week. This is why we sing so many hymns about heaven and Christ's return and the final judgment. Jerusalem, my happy home, where shall I be? And we're about to sing, It is well.

How can it be well with your soul when everywhere you look, the wicked get what the righteous deserve and the righteous get what the wicked deserve?

And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll, the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, even so, it is well with my soul.

In verses 15 to 17, the author rounds out this challenging chapter. By returning to two of his favorite themes: the joy of contentment and the limits of wisdom. Look at verses 15 to 17.

And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun. When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep, then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out. The limits God has imposed on your life are not a threat but a gift.

Instead of being mad at God for what he hasn't given you, love what he has and love him more for it. Instead of rejecting what God has revealed because you can't find all the answers, recognize that part of what it means for God to be God is that we will never know all there is to know about him. As Augustine said, if you have been able to comprehend him as you think, by so thinking you have deceived yourself. This then is not God if you have comprehended it. But if it is God, you have not comprehended it.

When you see no justice done by people, look back to God's work on the cross and look forward to Christ's return.

The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck, who wrote at the turn of the 20th century, offered a profound insight about the relationship of faith and doubt. In the context, he's writing on the doctrine of Scripture and the total trustworthiness of Scripture. And he's asking the question of whether the difficulties we run into in Scripture, the questions we can't answer, the apparent contradictions, whether those things should keep us from trusting and confessing that Scripture is totally true. Bavinck writes, A Christian believes not because everything in life reveals the love of God, but rather despite everything that raises doubt. In Scripture too, there is much that raises doubt.

All believers know from experience that this is true. Here on earth, no one ever rises above that battle. Throughout the whole domain of faith, there remain crosses that have to be overcome. There is no faith without struggle. To believe is to struggle.

To struggle against the appearance of things.

How is your faith being shaken?

Today. And where should you turn for strength and support?

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise youe for the light from youm Word that banishes the darkness of our ignorance and uncertainty and doubt. Father, we pray that we would struggle in faith. We pray that we would struggle through faith. We pray that yout would grant us to hold fast to youo, you, goodness, you, character, you, grace, the sure salvation youn've accomplished on the cross, and the completion of that salvation that will come when Christ returns. We pray that we would be able to say, Because of all this, it is well with my soul.

We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.