Dr Paul Allen

“Some have made shipwreck of their faith,” the apostle Paul reports in his first letter to Timothy. In fact, the language of leaving is all over 1–2 Timothy: they were wandering away from the faith, departing from the faith, swerving from the faith, being disqualified from the faith (1 Timothy 1:19; 4:1; 5:12; 6:10, 20–21; 2 Timothy 3:8).  There seemed to be something of a small exodus already happening in the first century, perhaps not unlike the wave of deconversions, we’re seeing online today. We shouldn’t be surprised; Jesus told us it would be so: “As for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature” (Luke 8:14). Those same thorns are still sharp and threatening to faith in our day. In fact, with the ways we use technology, we’re now breeding thorns in our pockets, drawing them even closer than before. This context gives the charge in 1 Timothy 6:1...

Why do people stop believing? Paul Chamberlain:   But your question, why do they leave? There are a number of patterns you begin to see. Some of them are just maybe old-fashioned ones: personal disappointment with Christians, the church, God Himself. Some people tell these stories, they're fairly deep. Maybe they've had a personal failure, in some cases coupled with the difficulty of finding acceptance later, and they feel like they're being now treated differently. People now doubt them, treat them like maybe some damaged goods, and this is all part of a complex, and it's just been sending them in a bit of a different direction. In some cases, I know there's simply what I would have to call unrealistic expectations from God, from the Christian faith. Maybe the teaching they received was not properly balanced. As one man said who had been a pastor, now he said, "I stopped believing in God altogether, because I ran out of excuses for God." As a pa...

“For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” ( Hebrews 12:3 ) The Christian life and ministry can grow wearisome and hard at times, but with Christ Himself as our example, the Lord admonishes us not to faint but always to press on. www.hopecollege.com If our prayers seem to go unanswered, He reminds us that “men ought always to pray, and not to faint” ( Luke 18:1 ). When we grow tired and are tempted to quit, the Scriptures assure us that “in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” ( Galatians 6:9 ). When God has entrusted us with a certain ministry, we need to learn to say, as with Paul, “Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not” ( 2 Corinthians 4:1 ). As we see God’s mercy -drops of blessing begin to fall, we then can say, as he did, “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” ( 2 Corinthians 4:16...