If you were ever a freshman in college, you may remember how cool you felt if an upperclassman showed some interest in you. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.вЂќ Genesis 3:6

Used here with permission.вЂњWhen the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. Be encouraged.ДЄ version of this article originally appeared at. If that is all the faith you can muster right now, let it be so. Either way, this might be a good time to breathe, to look around and to find joy in what is beside and around you as you travel. You may have indeed lost the faith you had or you may have just lost your way a bit. God is big enough to handle your doubts, and He knows exactly what youвЂ™re going through and why belief is such a struggle right now. It may clear the road to God that has been cluttered by sadness, disappointment, doubt and yes, even religion.ДonвЂ™t give up. You will find that this contentment is the straighter pathway back to what youвЂ™ve lost. To simply live and to find gratitude in the living is itself a spiritual pursuit it is a holy thing. Maybe thatвЂ™s all the faith you are able to have right now, and thatвЂ™s OK. When you do accept these great, pure, measurable gifts and cherishing them, youвЂ™re recognizing the giver. Maybe the best thing you can do right now is simply to experience all of the things you can know, and receive them with gratitude. Maybe today itвЂ™s just about whatвЂ™s right in front of you, about what you can see and hear and touch and smell and taste. But it might not-after all, God is not only found in вЂњspiritual things.вЂќ It might be prayer or Bible study or church attendance. It may be a very different experience in the future. I canвЂ™t even promise that youвЂ™ll ever find your way back, at least not to what you used to call belief. If youвЂ™re in that place right now, I wonвЂ™t pretend thereвЂ™s any easy way out or a simple path back to faith. They are grieving deeply, feeling helpless to get back what theyвЂ™ve lost, and angry at themselves for not being faithful enough to conjure up belief that used to come as a simple given. Many people come to me in that barren spiritual dryness and they almost always carry the crushing guilt of failure.

In fact, they often are as devout and engaged as ever, only these pursuits no longer yield the clarity and confidence and comfort they once did. They havenвЂ™t refrained from those disciplines. It often isnвЂ™t a matter of just being more determined or more вЂњreligious.вЂќ Most of the time, people have reached these desperate moments despite continually reading the Bible and praying and volunteering and attending church services and trying to believe. Loss Is More than Failing to TryД«ut what do you do when, with all the sleepless wrestling and the furrowed-browed prayers and the ceaseless questions and the best-intended efforts, even that seems out of reach? What happens when the very reality of God (or of a God who is good) seems too much for you to claim ownership of? How do you keep going while in the middle of a full-blown spiritual collapse? Even if on some days, those are all that remains of our fragile faith narrative, they can be enough. We can endure such things, experience these crises, and still hold a steady confidence in the belief that God is and that God is good. ItвЂ™s one thing to question the institutional Church or to poke holes in the religious systems weвЂ™ve put in place or even to critique the Bible and how we interpret it. After all, this is terrifying stuff to endure. They are once-religious people who, for any number of reasons, are now finding the very ground of faith eroding beneath their feet-and they are panicking. I hear words like these every single day from people from every corner of the planet, from every strand of the Christian tradition, from every conceivable segment of society. вЂњI just donвЂ™t know if I believe anymore вЂ¦ and I donвЂ™t know what to do about it.вЂќ

Faith evans you abandoned me