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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Who wants to be Ezekiel?” Any volunteers? Being a prophet of the LORD most high does not always come with a great job description!
No good will come to the cause of the Gospel by followers of Jesus being regarded as crazy dissidents who will not cooperate with the most basic social mechanisms.
Sunday after Sunday, God’s people appear to have it all together… which makes you wonder why Jesus even continues to come. After all, everything is great among God’s people here.
Our Lord's love for us is so great that He not only sent His Son to redeem us from sin, death, and hell, but He sends His holy angels to protect us no matter which direction our lives go.
In both Psalms, we hear the Messiah becoming sin for us, and thus he pleads on our behalf before the Father
Prayer dares to call the impossible into reality. It trusts the One who can do all things to do impossible things. It rests its hope on God’s power and not man’s agency.
Jeremiah is saying, “LORD I am doing my job, why are You NOT doing Yours?”
Any note on its own can be perfectly fine. But bring it together with others and they will strike a chord or a discord – harmony or disharmony. It is the same with us.
Peter stands again this week as a model Christian. He is not the type of model to emulate, however.
The unbeliever will search for relief from temptations in worldly prescriptions and pleasures. The believer searches for answers in the promises of the One who can bring true lasting peace in mind, body, and soul.
Even as children of God, we have down days. That’s just a fact of being sinful and living in an evil world.
God does not take us out of a world of evils of various kinds, but He does stand beside us and accompany us, as a shepherd accompanies his sheep, through valleys of shadows of all kinds.