10 Comments
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Travis Blake's avatar

If you haven’t written about it before, I’d love to read about your experience with The Count of Monte Cristo.

Debbie Owen's avatar

Excellent piece; thank you for sharing your experience so openly. Now I'm confronted with a quandary: do I share this with some atheists I know or keep it from them? 😉 As I was reading it I was a little worried for a while, but then you brought in grace at the end. Thank God for grace! We all need it, every day.

Gary Samaniego's avatar

Thank you for sharing honestly.

Robert Italia's avatar

Yeah, building a stairway to Heaven isn't easy, it's a lifelong and laborious project.

Robert Mathieu's avatar

I appreciate your honesty here. I think more people need to say that when you begin to follow Jesus your life is about to get "infinitely more complicated." Easy-believism does a lot of damage. Thanks for writing.

Bob Nelson's avatar

This was so good. My 6th brutally honest point would be the question that always seems to pop up after falling back to an old idol, "When am I gonna get it right?"

Trip Kimball's avatar

As a pastor, I appreciate this piece a lot & hope it will be included in your upcoming book. I’ve taught, preached & written a lot on this very issue of the genuine, ongoing struggle of walking the way of the cross. An excellent, short but powerful book that I reread every so often (cuz it’s so convicting 😆) is “The Calvary Road” by Roy Hession.

Jackson Houser's avatar

Like a small farmer, then: the work is never really done; and there is always some project that should be pursued, if time and tools and supplies were sufficient.

Kevin E Martin's avatar

You mentioned CS Lewis in the excellent piece. One way you mirrored his conversation was that it started for him by an acceptance of Theism. He said in his book Surprised by Joy all the rest flowed logically from that moment.