Some Faith Quotes

I'm in the middle of reading Philip Yancey's Reaching for the Invisible God, and these are some quotes he uses that struck me. I find myself here with these questioning saints- I trust God, but I live with doubt. This world is sin-sick, and heavy with suffering. At times I want to believe that no God would allow us to sink so low in the mire of our own sin, but since God believes it is more important for us to have free will than for us to have freedom from pain and suffering, I will choose to believe He knows what He's doing. Christian faith means conforming to God's will whatever comes.

"Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty." Flannery O'Connor

We will always, with Pascal, see "too much to deny and too little to be sure..."

"It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt." Fyodor Dostoevski

"I have served in the ministry thirty years, almost thirty-one. I have come to understand that there are two kinds of faith. One says if and the other says though. One says: "If everything goes well, if my life is prosperous, if I'm happy, if no one I love dies, if I'm successful, then I will believe in God and say my prayers and go to the church and give what I can afford." The other says though: "Though the cause of evil prosper, though I sweat in Gethsemane, though I must drink my cup at Calvary- nevertheless, precisely then, I will trust the Lord who made me." So Job cries: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him." George Everett Ross