{"id":9811,"date":"2015-03-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites-stage.familylife.com\/flministries\/?p=9811"},"modified":"2015-03-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T00:00:00","slug":"my-struggle-with-unbelief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/articles\/topics\/faith\/essentials-faith\/becoming-a-christian\/my-struggle-with-unbelief\/","title":{"rendered":"My Struggle With Unbelief"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Have you ever noticed how creative some businesses are at communicating their service or product through a catchy name or slogan?<\/p>\n

How about the slogan of Johnson’s Flower and Garden Center in Washington D.C.\u2014”Our Business is Blooming!” Our garbage company has one of my favorites\u2014”We guarantee satisfaction or double your garbage back!”<\/p>\n

American Way<\/em> magazine once had a story on others who get their message across in their name\u2014like a car rental agency in New York named “Chariots for Hire;” there’s the “Auto Orphanage” in Sacramento; “Franks for the Memory” a hot dog stand on the West Coast; “The Recovery Room” a Salt Lake City upholstery shop; and “Shampooches”\u2014you guessed it\u2014a dog wash (self service) in where else but California!<\/p>\n

Beauty shops seem to be the innovative leaders in this new trend: “The Clip Joint,” “Hair Port,” “Hair It Is,” “The Mane Event,” “The Great Hair After,” “The Gang’s All Hair,” “Take It From the Top,” and my favorite: “We Curl Up and Dye!”<\/p>\n

Sometimes the message in these names and slogans can really cause us to stop and think\u2014like the antique store named “The Den of Antiquity” \u2026 in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

But one grabbed my attention the other day\u2014a Christian optometrist who called his practice, “Seeing is Believing.” Perhaps I like it because I’m from the “Show Me State” of Missouri. But when I saw that name, my mind raced back eighteen years to when I graduated from junior college.<\/p>\n

The doubting Thomas<\/h2>\n

I was a normal 20-year-old in the midst of the tumultuous days of the late 60’s. I had no purpose. My life was filled to the brim with compromise, mediocrity, doubt, perplexing questions I couldn’t answer, and frequent despair.<\/p>\n

Everything that I had touched for the past year had turned to gold\u2014grades, girls, and college athletics. You would have thought I had everything, but I had lost my faith. I guess you would have called me a “backsliding Christian.” I felt I had to see it to believe it. You might even say I was a “20th Century Doubting Thomas.”<\/p>\n

Precariously balanced with one foot on the banana peel of doubt and the other foot in the world, I began to honestly seek what God had to say about life and my life.<\/p>\n

Throughout my quest one question haunted me: “Must I really have to see<\/em> it to believe it?”<\/p>\n

My slippery spiritual descent was halted in the fall of 1968 through a number of people whom God brought across my path. Through those people, God loved me out of my spiraling unbelief.<\/p>\n

One of those people was an evangelist named Tom Skinner. He helped stop my spiritual decline and nudged me upwards toward a true faith in God. May I share with you a quote he gave me?<\/p>\n

I spent a long time trying to come to grips with my doubts, when suddenly I realized I had better come to grips with what I believe. I have since moved from the agony of questions that I cannot answer, to the reality of answers that I cannot escape . . . and it’s a great relief.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You see, my life was riddled with questions that I couldn’t answer, like:<\/p>\n