God does want to reason with you, but not if you are listening to the devil impregnate you with doubt, fear and hopelessness.

Sorry, this sounds way too rah-rah for me. Doubt, fear and hopelessness are often experiences through which God strips away our legalism, performance orientation, shallowness and attempts to manipulate Him into doing our will by getting all our ducks in a row. When we fall down, when we come to the end of our own strength and are desperately hungry for His mercy, that is when our faith is at its most real. Pain has shredded all the extraneous bits and false fronts we love to erect over our faith lest it be seen as lesser than someone else's.

I humbly submit if your faith hasn't gone through periods of doubt, if you've never been angry at God or disappointed in Him, even tempted to walk away from faith, then your faith hasn't been tested and is still immature. It's still valid, it just isn't very deep.

When we doubt His goodness, when we fear that this is all a con job, and feel hopelessly trapped in whatever mire we're stuck in, that's when we come to an end of our own strength and resolve, which is entirely a good thing. This is when we give up. Once we give up, then there's room for God to operate freely because our interfering hands have been knocked away.

The Christian life is joy, but a close second is pain. As your faith progresses, the easy victories, the sureties, easy answers, the slam-dunks fade away. When I look at the lives of people close to God (certainly closer than I am) I see pain in large measure. Business losses and bankruptcies, addiction, family strife, stress and disappointment at work, betrayal or attacks by fellow believers, financial woes, health crises, emotional and psychological issues. Often God intervenes dramatically, but that seems the exception, not the rule.

So what keeps us going? Why pursue the Christian faith? Because underneath all that crap, true joy is found. Look at Paul's life. As he matured in his faith, he endured greater and greater suffering and persecution. Are we any different?

Where does this pain come from? We live in a fallen world, our own humanity gives us pain where the world and heaven collide in us.

The kingdom of darkness uses doubt, fear and hopelessness to eradicate a believer's faith, yet God--being greater--uses the tools of the enemy to accomplish His own goals.

But it's a painful, drawn-out process that is absolutely unromantic. No one will envy you in this situation. Most believers won't understand what's happening and will accuse you of insufficient faith or of harboring unconfessed sin, or some other bonehead bit of legalism and performance.

These situations can last years, decades, an entire life. This is something that's not popular from the pulpit so you won't much hear it, yet so many believers go through this "dark night of the soul." This is when your pain forces you to cast aside your pride and cry out to God in despair and desperation, knowing He's the only one who can redeem you from this suffering.

Ken, thank you so much for speaking out. I find what you perceive and have experienced close to my own experiences.

I didn't want so much "rah rah" as to rally the troops in Christ's Army.

Would it be all right if I add this?

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake" (Matthew 5:11).

Expect misunderstanding. Expect persecution. Expect ridicule. Expect mistreatment. Expect suffering. Expect rejection. Then, you won't be surprised when it comes.

The joy of the Lord is my strength.