Christian, 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 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 councils on scripture and I'll mention the scripture so I'm praying

for Kristen and 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 up 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 924, immediately the father of the child who had this epileptic fit that that nobody

could heal and he said, do you want me to do anything here and the man said, if you can and

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