Life has a way of testing what we actually believe. Maybe your dream job turned out to be a nightmare. Maybe your relationship fell apart and now your carefully planned future is a giant question mark. Maybe you’re just exhausted—physically, emotionally, spiritually—and wondering if faith is supposed to feel this hard. When life doesn’t go according to plan, belief can start to feel like something fragile, like something you have to grip tightly or risk losing altogether.
But real faith—the kind that lasts—isn’t about holding on for dear life or pretending everything is fine. It’s about learning how to stand firm even when the ground shifts underneath you.
Faith Was Never Meant to Be Easy
Somewhere along the way, a lot of us absorbed the idea that following Jesus meant life would be smooth sailing—like signing up for a premium membership where suffering gets filtered out of your experience. But faith was never about making life easier. It was about making sure you had something to hold onto when life got harder. Jesus didn’t promise comfort; he promised trouble (“In this world you will have trouble.” John 16:33). That’s not a worst-case scenario. That’s a guarantee.
Christine Caine puts it bluntly: “We have to be careful in this world that we don’t start to think that the only way I’m going to make it in life is if everything is perfect, if there are no challenges, if there’s no obstacles, if everybody likes me, if the world is just so, then I’m going to be able to do what God has called me to do.”
But faith that lasts isn’t built on things going our way. It’s built on trusting God even when they don’t. The goal isn’t to avoid hardship—it’s to build something strong enough to endure it. And that means making peace with the fact that faith isn’t the absence of struggle; it’s what carries you through it.
When Doubt Creeps In, Lean In
There’s a frustrating tendency in Christian circles to treat doubt like a spiritual failure. If you’re struggling, if you’re questioning, if you’re staring at the ceiling wondering if God is even listening, the advice is often some version of “Just have faith.” But faith isn’t about ignoring doubts—it’s about wrestling with them.
Scripture is full of people who didn’t have it all figured out—Job, David, Thomas, even Jesus himself crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Faith that lasts doesn’t come from blind certainty; it comes from walking through seasons of doubt and choosing to trust anyway. If you’re questioning, don’t run from it. Bring it into the light. Find people who can help you process, who will remind you of what’s true when you can’t see it for yourself. The worst thing you can do in a hard season is isolate yourself.
Spiritual Growth Isn’t Always Obvious
Faith that lasts isn’t built in dramatic, mountaintop moments. It’s built in the small, unglamorous decisions to keep showing up. It’s choosing to pray when you don’t feel like it. It’s reading Scripture when it feels dry. It’s getting up on a Sunday when your bed is more appealing than a pew. The work of faith isn’t always exciting but it’s necessary.
It’s easy to think that if you’re struggling, you’re failing. But growth doesn’t always look like breakthroughs. Sometimes it looks like perseverance. And sometimes the strongest faith is the one that’s still standing even when it feels shaky.
Prayer Isn’t a Transaction—It’s a Lifeline
A lot of us approach prayer like a vending machine: insert request, expect results. But prayer isn’t a formula to get what we want; it’s a way of staying connected to the One who holds it all together. When faith is hard, our prayers need to shift. Instead of just asking for change, ask for wisdom. Instead of demanding answers, ask for endurance. Instead of assuming God is distant, remind yourself that silence doesn’t mean absence.
The reality is, faith that lasts isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about holding onto the right questions. It’s about trusting that even when you don’t see it, God is still working. Even when you don’t feel it, he’s still present. And even when life doesn’t go the way you planned, he’s still worth trusting.
So when the season is hard, when the doubts are loud, when faith feels like work—don’t quit. Keep seeking. Keep showing up. Keep believing that this isn’t the end of the story. Because faith that lasts? It isn’t built in the easy seasons. It’s built right here, in the hard ones.