A Guest Substack by Niki Hardy

When I finally met Jesus over a pasta dinner in a Victorian church minutes from Buckingham Palace, my life trajectory changed instantly. Goodbye corporate London with its company cars and international travel. Hello missionary work, ministry, and church planting.

“I once was lost but now I’m found” became my testimony, my anthem.

No one could accuse me of not being all-in for God.

Fast forward thirty years, and grief, loss, cancer, and the endless heartbreaking news cycles–not to mention a global pandemic, church hurt, and racial and political division–had knocked everything I held true. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the truth of those familiar words faded until eventually, the opposite felt truer.

“I once was found, but now I'm lost”.

Was my faith dying from a thousand paper cuts or simply shifting and changing? Was I deconstructing? I didn’t know, but with more questions than answers, more disappointment, confusion, and disillusionment than ever it didn’t feel good.

Maybe you’re there too—holding unanswered questions, feeling the sadness, apathy, frustration, or anger and resentment of it all. Maybe you’re wondering if you’re a believer, a doubter, a doubting-believer, believing-doubter, or something else entirely. Your faith and relationship with God are precious (you wouldn’t be reading this if they weren’t), yet the confidence you once had has faded, maybe jaded over time or laid bare from one of life’s devastating blows.

Most of us have absorbed the same old message: faith is good, doubt is bad.

Faith, the lifeblood of our relationship with God, must be protected from the cancer of doubt before it metastasizes and becomes terminal. But in the very moments where my faith seemed to be dying, I began to discover that yes, my questions do hold power. But not to destroy my faith—to strengthen it.

My doubts were far from being my faith’s biggest weakness, its kryptonite. Instead, they were its greatest strength, its superpower.

When we RSVP to Jesus's invitation to come to him, weary and burdened by all we’re holding, he promises to walk with us, talk with us, and give us rest. Not shame us or turn us away.

It turns out God's not as phased by our doubts as we worry he is or even as concerned by them as we are. He loves us–every part of us–including our most honest questions.

We don’t need perfect faith, simply one that keeps seeking, keeps asking, “Help my unbelief.”

What if we took Jesus at his word and came to him for a daringly honest and wonderfully imperfect heart-to-heart about it all? What if we embraced the very things we fear are tearing our faith apart, bringing them in honest conversation to the one we're secretly worried might not be good after all?

If we do, we’ll discover what we've been looking for all along. Not certainty but relationship. Not answers, but the assurance we’re loved. Not intellectual satisfaction, but intimate connection, rest, and intimacy.

Questions, doubts, confusion, and disappointment with everything “GodFaithChurch” are still a big part of my life, faith, and relationship with God. It’s just that now I chat with God about it all. I can’t recommend it enough!

Niki Hardy is the author of God, Can We Chat? A Daringly Honest Guide To Growing Closer to God, One Doubt at a Time, the Audi Award-nominated Breathe Again, and One-Minute Prayers for Women with Cancer. Niki lives in North Carolina with her husband and ridiculous Doodle, Charlie, who is the main reason their three grown kids come home.

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