Help My Unbelief Quotes

“I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.1”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“trust in God stems from understanding His character, not His reasons.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Christians who don't know the tension of "I believe; help my unbelief" might not be Christians at all, or at the least they might be very infantile ones. Our faith is one of brutal tensions. Not everyone can express this, but every Christian knows it. We feel it in our guts. We feel as if we're going to bust in half as we're pulled in two directions at once. To not recognize the significance of these words indicates a simplistic, thoughtless belief. It isn't a mark of maturity but rather of not being mature enough to know our own weakness and need. Tension is our state of being for all of this life, and to live as a believer is to live in it.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.1 —Søren Kierkegaard”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“You know what the book of Job doesn’t do? It doesn’t explain anything. But even without explanations or rationales it does answer our questions. God is God. We are not. Be silent.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why doubt is not the enemy of faith

“Requests can stem only from belief, even if it is just the tiniest inkling of belief.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Questions are the conversational currency of a child. Every question is asked to learn, out of a desire to understand, from a stance of trust. Children ask not to challenge but in order to believe. That's a big part of what "faith like a child" means.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“If we could store God in a box, what about Him would be worthy of worship?”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“God is infinite. While the finite human mind can understand aspects of His character, even those cannot be understood in full. His bigness is too big, His goodness too good, His wrath too terrible, His grace too profound, His knowledge too deep. Because of this, God is inherently mysterious to us. We simply cannot fathom the fullness, or even a portion of the fullness, of who He is or what He does.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Our king came and ushered in His kingdom but then left with a promise of His return. So we wait.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.[32] —Paul Tillich”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why doubt is not the enemy of faith

“It's cheaper to drive on long trips with two children than it is to fly, so that's how my family usually travels. Inevitably, about an hour into an eight-hour drive, one of our daughters asks, "Are we there yet?" It's as if kids don't notice that we're driving freeway speeds with no sign of stopping. Christians live "Are we there yet?" lives. In its entirety, life is a state of traveling toward a destination. We are pursuing holiness and growth. We are seeking to become more like Christ, to live lives that reflect and honor God. But we live in a fallen state marked by sin. It often feels as if we are spinning our wheels rather than making progress, the same way children feel in the backseat.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“We are always becoming—becoming something better or something worse. We never arrive this side of heaven.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“To live by faith is to rest in the object of our faith, the God of the Bible, and to come to terms with all of our “I don’t knows.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Hebrews tells us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”13 We hope; we don’t see.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Our salvation is on the cross. No matter how broken we may be, no matter how much we might struggle and fail to see and to know the truth (every truth) clearly, we can rest in the One who sees all and knows all.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Relational knowledge of God leads to transformational, living belief.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Book knowledge of God, if left at that, leads to hollow belief in God.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“There is an inherent promise of peace in living the life you ought, in living as you were created to be, in honoring what is good.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.10 —C. S. Lewis”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith