What Israel’s story makes painfully obvious is that following the Lord is a lifelong lesson in “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Faith holds on to the truth of who Jesus is revealed to be, despite our sometimes incongruent experience with God.
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of A Reasoned Defense of the Faith by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-3.

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As God is prone to do, He sometimes shows us who He is through people whom we would never think of as teachers, much less imitators of God.
One of the sad truths I realized about myself long ago is that I do nothing from completely spic-and-span motives. I mean nothing. When I hear someone say that they’re “utterly sincere” or they’re doing something “from pure motives,” I smell a lie.
King has some kind of belief in God, but was probably under no inner compulsion to do anything we would term evangelism.
O little flock, fear not the foe, for at your head is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for you.
From creator to priest, our God now moves, from forming animals to slaying them, all so that His Adam and His Eve might remain truly His.
That all being said, come to think of it, I’ve never gone 24 seconds without sinning.
“You shall have no other gods,” God says, and we, spurred on by the prohibition, roll up our sleeves and get to work fashioning gods like there’s no tomorrow.
As I floated in the Gulf of Mexico, I spoke these truths, but it was not the waters or the heavens that needed to hear them.
Whatever numbers you want to plug in, ours must be greater than zero. We’re in a partnership with God, after all. We both do our part. We’ve got to meet the Lord halfway. If only he does all the giving, and we do all the receiving, the relationship is doomed to fail.
Who are we, really, but a bag of blood and bones, in which are mixed in bittersweet memories and the shards of shattered dreams and broken hearts?
Because I do care now, and will care even after I’m with the Lord, here are some things I hope and pray are not said at my funeral. I care about those who will be there, about what they will hear.
You think the sower sowed his seed in you because he saw such good soil, such a good, generous, noble person.