Searching for Enough: The High-Wire Walk Between Doubt and Faith

by Tyler Staton

Boredom is a sentiment of disconnectedness . . .To be bored, therefore, does not mean that we have nothing to do, but that we question the value of the things we are so busy doing. The great paradox of our time is that many of us are busy and bored at the same time . . . In short, while our lives are full, we feel unfulfilled.

Spiritual breakthrough often starts with saying what you think and feel but are convinced you aren’t “allowed” to say.

When sin took that defining power from God, it didn’t hand it over to me. It handed it to some other outside source—someone or something outside of me.

Who or what defines you to yourself? That’s where the power in your life lies. That’s your new king and the one you worship.

Sin has never been about moral guidelines, because the issue is not that you’re too thirsty; the issue is that you’re drinking from the wrong well.

Our “broken cisterns” are filled with saltwater—soothing to the surface of our dry tongues but, at a deeper, truer level, killing us with every sip.

the need for forgiveness, the need for remembrance, and the need to know their life had meaning.

The story was far, far off course, so the director inserted himself into the story to recover the plot. By his life, we find a way to live.

I understood their reasoning, but I was sorry that church did not strike these wounded souls as a place they could bring the dark fruits of their equally dark nights.1

In Aramaic, Abba was the most intimate term one could possibly call a father. The closest thing we have in English is a toddler using the name “Dada,” but that doesn’t quite do it because Abba wasn’t a cheesy name you used as a kid and then grew out of with age. It wasn’t a name you’d be embarrassed to be caught saying to your father as a twentysomething. It was a term of endearment from a son to a father that was lost in translation because it was so rarely used, or maybe so rarely needed. The Greeks didn’t have a term like Abba because no one would address their father with that much intimacy.

Jesus spoke to Yahweh with such familiarity we can’t even translate it.

What is God like? If you’ve never thought long and hard about that question, you should. Because whether you realize it or not, you will always live in response to your answer to that question.

“I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us.”7