Kristen, a podcast listener, writes in with a question, "Pastor John, I'm ashamed to say that my Bible reading is often hijacked by a sense of doubt. It sometimes even feels more like a spiritual battle than an intellectual battle, and it scares me because it attacks my faith at the foundations, the truth of the Bible.

Do you have any advice for attacking a spirit of doubt and cynicism when I'm reading the Bible?" You know, Tony, I pray, I stop and I pray over every one of these questions as I try to answer them so that in the hundreds of things you could say, "The Lord will help me choose the things that might be most helpful." This one felt like I needed to pray more, because when she conceded that it's a spiritual battle and not just an intellectual one, I felt that's really true.

And not just for her, but for all of us. The intellectual things that rise up that make the Bible seem problematic are often covering a satanic attack. The devil really hates the Bible. He hates truth. He's a deceiver from the beginning, and he can make things look merely intellectual when in fact some pretty heavy heavy spiritual stuff is going on.

So I'll just tell Kristen now what my—the answer is yes, I do have some advice, and I based every one of these six counsels on Scripture, and I'll mention the Scripture. So I'm praying for Kristen and lots of people who, when they read the Bible, find stumbling blocks that get in the way of their enjoyment and their belief, and one of these maybe, if not all of them, might prove from the Lord for her.

Number one, pray that God would help you, that he would fight your doubts and cynicism with you and for you. In other words, cry out to God, "Fight for me. Help me defeat these obstacles." And we all know where that's coming from. Mark 9 24, immediately the father of the child who had this epileptic fit that nobody could heal, and he said, "Do you want me to do anything here?" And the man said, "If you can." And she said, "What is 'if' stuff?" And then the man cried out, "I believe.

Help my unbelief." And that's a strange way to say it. Help your unbelief do what? Like, die, that's what. So, which means that Kristen and I need to preface our Bible reading every day with prayer, "God, help me with my unbelief." That is, kill it, destroy it, get at whatever's causing it.

So, prayer. Number two, seek in all your reading and praying in the Bible, not just to know truth, but to see the glory of Christ. There is a spiritual light shining from Christ that is self-authenticating if you saw it. And I'm thinking here now of the doubting Thomas. I'm glad he exists and is in the Bible for Kristen and me.

Then Jesus said to Thomas, remember, Thomas said, "I'm not going to believe unless I have my finger in his side." And so, Jesus showing up, and he says, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God." In other words, he did not touch him.

He saw him. Something happened when he saw him. He thought that he would need to do more. He would need more evidence for a ghost, you know, "He's going to be a ghost. I'm going to be tricked." And when Jesus showed up, he didn't need any more. He didn't.

He didn't have to push it to the limit of his evidential demands. And Jesus said, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed." And I think that means not seeing the way you've seen, but believed by the seeing that comes through the Word.

And so, I'm saying to Kristen that when she reads, "Ask the Lord for this," this kind of, not physical, but a spiritual discernment, a spiritual sight of Christ that is different than a kind of argument from evidences drawn with inferences. So number three, "Think much about the patience and mercy of God to doubters." Peter said, "Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water." He's going to walk on water.

And Jesus said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, walked on the water, and came to Jesus, and then it says—this is Matthew 14, 30—but when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" And Jesus did not say, "Tough, man!

I don't want—what a jerk! I just told you you could do this, and you were doing it!" No, no, that is not what Jesus said or did. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying, "Oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt?" So meditate on the kindness and the patience of Jesus to doubters.

So Peter's doubting, and Jesus reaches out his hand. So maybe that's what Kirsten would feel as she reads this. "He is reaching out his hand to me in my doubt." Number four, seek out people of strong faith to read outside the Bible and to be around in person and make them your heroes.

So Hebrews 13, 7, "Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the Word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life. Imitate their faith." Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so he explicitly wants us to look to people who are ahead of us in this battle of faith, and take heart from looking at the outcome of their faith.

And here's another one in Hebrews. Hebrews seems to be really big on this communal nature of fighting the fight of faith. So Hebrews 3, 12, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving," you could say, "doubting heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." In other words, we need to be in groups where people fight with us and help us and direct us to things that will give strength to our faith rather than weaken them.

Number five, remember that the body has many members, and some are scholars, who have thought long and hard about things that puzzle you and have solved many of them. So 1 Corinthians 12, 21, "The head cannot say to the feet, 'I have no need of you,' and vice versa." And it may be that sometimes those of us who are doing footwork at any given time might need to remember, "Here, there's some heads, and don't let this conflict with Jesus as they head." That's what he says here in 1 Corinthians 12, 21.

Some are heads and some are feet, and the feet should never say, "I don't need you, head," when the head has spent 10 years solving the problem you're just stumbling over. No, no, no. The point of the body of Christ is there's an answer to our problems. God is a God of coherence; He's not a God of contradiction.

There are answers to the issues in the Bible and the issues of culture, and people have gone before us, and there's a wealth of wisdom in books, and we should befriend those people. And finally, number six, don't stop reading your Bible because of these doubts and because of a spirit of cynicism.

This is one of Satan's main aims in your doubt and your cynicism, is to get you to stop reading when, in fact, the Bible says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." And one last text, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, or stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither, and in all that he does he prospers." So the seasons come, the dry desert winds blow, and those whose roots are not planted by the streams wither by cynicism and doubt.

But the person whose roots have gone down meditating day and night on the word of God are like a tree that have roots way down by the water so that they're not killed by the droughts of doubt. Amen. Thank you, Pastor John and Kristen. Thank you for stepping out and sending in the humbling question.

And if you're looking for more concrete application for overcoming other reasons why the Bible is hard for you to read, see the episode titled "Six Tips If You Find the Bible Hard to Read." That's episode number 438 in the podcast archive, available in the apps or in our landing page at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

Well, tomorrow we're going to talk about paying it forward, the act of repaying a kindness by showing kindness to someone other than the person who is kind to you. You've probably heard of this. Say you're in a drive-thru line at McDonald's and the car ahead of you pays for your meal and then drives off.

That's what it means to pay it forward. A listener wants to know how paying it forward fits with what Pastor John has written in his book "Future Grace." Is paying it forward a Christian concept? That's the question on the table tomorrow with John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

We'll see you then. you Any questions?