Hey, World
Welcome to Faith That Holds: An Introduction from Lois
Have you ever been asked why you believe what you believe — and found yourself with nothing to say that was genuinely yours?
I have. More than fifty years ago, in a college dorm room, someone asked me that question. I had attended church my whole life. I had been on mission trips. I had led discussions about faith. I opened my mouth to answer — and realized I had nothing to offer that actually belonged to me. What I had was my family’s faith, worn like a coat I had been handed at birth and never thought to examine.
That moment of honest silence changed everything.
It sent me on a journey I am still on — fifty years of walking with God through joy, loss, and hard prayers. Faith is not something you inherit. It is something you come to own, one honest question at a time.
Why does this blog exists
I spent more than forty years in classrooms — teaching nursing students, leading Sunday School classes, and speaking on Christian living to anyone willing to sit down and learn. And in all of that time, the thing I kept seeing broke my heart a little.
People would stand at an altar, mean every word they said, and go home unchanged. Not because the gospel was not true. Because no one had given them the basic information that a relationship with God actually requires. They did not know who God is. They did not understand what salvation meant for their daily life. They believed that saying the right words made them a Christian. And without a foundation under that belief, the words eventually faded and the life stayed the same.
I began teaching new believers classes as my answer to that gap. This blog grows out of that same work.
Who this is for
This blog is for you if you are brand new to faith and trying to figure out what comes next. No one expects you to have it all figured out. You are in exactly the right place.
It is for you if you have been in church for years and a quiet voice keeps asking whether what you believe has ever truly moved from your head to your heart. That question deserves an honest answer, and this is a safe place to look for one.
It is for you if you are not sure what you believe yet — curious about faith but cautious about commitment. You are welcome here. Faith does not ask for certainty before it lets you in. It asks only for honesty.
What you will find here
Every post points toward one thing. There is one way to a life that holds — in the middle of grief, uncertainty, unanswered prayer, and everything else this world delivers. I write about that way every week.
Some posts will tell stories. Some will dig into Scripture and ask what it actually says rather than what we have always assumed. Some will give you something practical to do before the week is out. All of them will be honest.
One more thing
Two weeks before my husband died, he accepted Christ.
I had prayed for that for years — through a difficult marriage, through seasons of wondering whether the prayer was reaching anyone. I do not have a clean explanation for why it took as long as it did. What I have is the knowledge that God was faithful. That the prayer was heard. That His timing, even when it is not our timing, is not a failure of His love.
That is the faith this blog is about. Not the faith that gets everything it asks for on its preferred schedule. The faith that holds when it does not.
I am glad you are here. Let us begin.
— Lois