Doubts

 Last night a friend asked me if I had ever felt I lost my faith, and if so, what helped. I hope this response is helpful to you also.         

My experience is a bit different than most who say they doubted their faith. I don't think I ever completely lost hope in Christ, but I have seriously lost hope in what I was taught was the Christian life, and went through a dark season when the Lord taught me to lose faith in myself and to put it in Christ alone. Self, sin, and perception drove me to despair, but confidence in Christ brought joy, hope, and peace. What helped was learning to look to Christ rather than to myself for assurance.

A constant diet of the Gospel, the work of Christ *outside of me, for me, has been most helpful, assuring, and life-giving. We cannot lose something that has been permanently given to us freely, and all the promises of God are in Christ, yes, and amen. When we are faithless, He is faithful!

We can rest right here:

"How are you righteous before God?"

"Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. In spite of the fact that my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have not kept any one of them, and that I am still ever prone to all that is evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of my own, out of pure grace, grants me the benefits of the perfect expiation of Christ, imputing to me his righteousness and holiness as if I had never committed a single sin or had ever been sinful, having fulfilled myself all the obedience which Christ has carried out for me, if only I accept such favor with a trusting heart." ~HC60