Help My Unbelief, a New Book by Barnabas Piper

Barnabas Piper's Help My Unbelief, an honest, self-revealing and engaging treatment of an important subject, was just released today, July 1. This winsome and well-reasoned book avoids clichés and easy, superficial answers. It will benefit many—including those who doubt, those who "sort of" believe, and those who believe, yet long to do so more completely.

Here’s more about the book:

God is infinite, beyond our understanding—yet He chooses to reveal Himself in ways that spark questions rather than settling them all.

Instead of making Himself smaller, God invites us into a larger faith. One that has room for questions, victories, failures, and mystery. Because belief in an infinite God by finite humans is an act of exploration … a process of learning—and then embracing—what we can’t learn but can trust.

Discover the God who not only desires our belief but actually welcomes our curiosity.

Barnabas writes, “What the Bible reveals of God is precisely what God wanted revealed of Himself, no more and no less. But it isn’t everything about Him. Scripture raises as many questions as it answers. …God did not want us to have easy instructions and simple answers. He didn’t want us to be able to understand Him so well that we could package Him, wrap Him up, and put a bow on Him.”

This is a great reminder that God has revealed just enough of Himself to give us reasons for faith, but not enough to make faith unnecessary.

In Eden, God could have explained more to Adam and Eve. Certainly He could have enlightened Abraham more. But if God made Himself so readily apparent in everyday life that we couldn’t doubt Him, it would change the nature of faith. We’d lack a vital element of character-building. God’s daily intervention and appearance would overpower us. We would have to believe in Him and thus faith would become impossible.

Paul Tournier said, “Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith.”

God must give us room, not crowd in on us and micromanage us. Distance is necessary for faith to develop. If we can’t help but be aware of Him, there wouldn’t be any spiritual growth.

God doesn’t force Himself on us. He invites us to take the initiative with Him: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8, ESV).

Frederick Buechner wrote, “Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.”

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