We don’t know how, when, or even if our difficulties will end. And this uncertainty tests our hearts. Some people have said to me that the main narrative of my imprisonment was trusting God. I’m not sure about that. Often when we talk about trust, we link it to an outcome. But I couldn’t find any verse that said, “Andrew will get out of prison.”

During difficult times, a real danger for the Christian is to become offended at God. I struggled with this. In fact, I came close to losing my friendship with God. My imprisonment, the isolation, the loneliness, the fear that I would never be with my family again — all these were difficult, but I understood intellectually that this was persecution. I didn’t like it, but I understood it to some degree.
What I could not understand was that during my imprisonment, I had no sense of God’s presence. Instead of a supernatural sense of strength and joy as I expected, I lacked any sense of strength — and I had no joy. Instead, I was breaking down emotionally and physically. I was going into spiritual crisis.

For years, I had drawn close to God, especially focusing on His kind, gentle Father’s heart. But now I couldn’t discern my kind and gentle Father in any way. Now — at the most desperate time in my life — He had removed any sense of His presence.

Objectively, I can say God did not abandon me, but it felt and looked like He had. It was agony to my soul. I can see now that I had grace, but mostly it was an unfelt grace. My heart was deeply wounded, leading to doubts, anger, and accusation. I questioned God’s existence. Then I questioned His character. I knew He loved the whole world. But did He really love me?
Was He really faithful? Was He completely good and truthful? I wasn’t so sure anymore. The offense in my heart was strangling my relationship with God.
This is what Jesus warned about when He said that “the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12). Many will turn away because they become offended at God. When something bad happens, many people become angry at God. They blame Him. “God, if You’re all-powerful and loving, why don’t You intervene? How can You let this happen?”
In the years ahead, I think we will see what happens when a nation’s leaders turn their backs on God. Believers are not under judgment, but we are embedded in a nation that is entering a period of judgment. Believers will be offended because of the intensity of their persecution and suffering. They will ask, “God, how could You let this happen to me? I’ve been an obedient son.” That’s what I said in prison.
But God intervened. At a very low point, I visualized a valley of testing — like the valley of dry bones from the Book of Ezekiel — filled with the skeletons of believers who had failed. God drove this scene into my heart. I realized I was very close to losing my friendship with God. So I made a decision. I could not do much to fight for my freedom, but I could fight for my relationship with God. I made a decision with my will — not with my emotions — and said:
“God, whatever You do or don’t do, I will follow You. If You do not let me sense Your presence, I will still follow You. If You don’t speak to me, I will still follow You. If You don’t show me Your gentleness or kindness, I will still follow You. If You leave me in prison, I will still follow You.”
Setting aside my demands and conditions for God, I determined to turn my eyes toward God. I couldn’t turn my eyes very far, but turning them even one degree toward Him rather than one degree away made all the difference in the world.
And He started to rebuild me.
I had to make this decision again and again. Every time I was in a pit, at every setback, I chose to turn toward God rather than away from Him.
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The book’s weight rests on the rational and liturgical moves a pastor should make in commending the Christian faith: for example, sound arguments for the existence of God, solid historical evidence for the resurrection, apologetic training, and a winsome Easter service. These are nonnegotiables, of course. But in my experience, unbelievers are more often won over by a Christian’s good character than by her good arguments.

“Why should I trust a man who lived 2,000 years ago, hung out with social outcasts, and got himself killed?”
“Even if there is a God, I’d be only 40 percent sure he’d communicate with us.”
“Isn’t the resurrection of Jesus just an inspiring concept?”
“What do Christians have against the LGBT+ community?”
As a pastor in one of America’s most educated and least religious states, I often hear these questions. In many cases, the inquirer is a sincere agnostic who wants to know whether the Christian faith is intellectually plausible, ethically just, and morally compassionate. But in many other cases, the questions come from church members.
These people are committed to following Jesus, but they feel the pressure of navigating their faith in an increasingly post-Christian culture. They regularly ask me about issues such as the reliability of Scripture, the problem of evil, and the relationship between Christianity and science.
As a pastor, I want answers too. When I was a young graduate student, my doubts about Christianity prompted me to investigate the rational basis for my faith and eventually to discover it was deeper, richer, and more beautiful than I could’ve imagined. So, like all Christians, I long to commend Christ in all his fullness and splendor to everyone I can.
This is why I find Dayton Hartman and Michael McEwen’s book, The Pastor as Apologist: Restoring Apologetics to the Local Church, so relevant. Their central aim is “to recover an ecclesial approach [to] apologetics where apologetic engagement and Christian philosophy is intertwined with the ministry of the local church and not completely detached from it” (26). This book equips pastors to weave apologetics into their preaching and even into the administration of church programs.
Reclaim Apologetics for the Church
The local church is seldom considered the center of apologetic work. For most, the word “apologist” conjures up a picture of a high-profile Christian intellectual with several academic degrees, a broad reach, and a packed speaking schedule. That’s an image far different from a local pastor in his weekly work of shepherding the flock.
Hartman and McEwen, both pastors, want to shift apologetics back to the local church, and that’s a good thing. After all, the bulk of the work of commending the faith is not done by high-profile speakers but by little-known pastors. The authors write, “There is no spiritual gifting defined as ‘Christian Thinker.’
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The complete God-head is engaged with us as we humbly submit ourselves to our Father, who desires to make us more and more beautiful for His glory and our good. We are never alone in this process. Self-examination is a lifelong process.  If you’re anything like me, I would love to not struggle with sin.  I would love to be able to say to it, “one and done!” and move on. But that’s not the nature of sin so it is not the nature of our sanctification.  There will be some sins that God will graciously root out and we will find victory over them.  But there will be some that will plague us until we go home to be with the Lord. 

This summer, a group of ladies and I are studying the book of Hosea.  It is a prophetic book written by Hosea, who lived during the ancient reigns of the Kings of Judah right before the nation of Israel went into exile.  Hosea illustrates with vivid and shocking word pictures the depths of Israel’s unfaithfulness towards the Lord which justifiably stirred His righteous jealousy and anger.  Yet, its prophetic word points to Israel’s future reconciliation and redemption in the coming Messiah (Hos 3:5).
Hosea was written with a purpose: to shock the sensibilities and expose the ugliness in Israel so that they comprehend the reason for their exile, see their error in technicolor, confess it, repent, and return to the Lord.  It was an opportunity for self-examination at its most intense.
One way we may try to make this book relevant to our modern lives is to use this text to guide our own self-examination; to see where we have rejected our Lord and “sought other lovers.”  The study asked us, “How are you like Gomer?” which, on its surface, is meant as an effort to awaken ourselves out of our slumber in an illegitimate bed.  Yet, I have an uneasiness in this comparison; not because I’m uncomfortable with the idea that Gomer’s explicit sins are representative of Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Lord God (as awkward as they are to study).  And it’s not because I am unwilling to admit my own sin and rebellion towards the Lord.  I’m uncomfortable with identifying with Gomer because Gomer represents an unrepentant people who are living in open rebellion to God. As a Christian, I am not a Gomer.
Why is this important distinction?  It is important because as we go to the Lord for Him to examine us by His truth, we need to go to Him by faith in the assurance that our relationship to Him and His love for us is based upon the finished work of Christ on our behalf.  Our unfaithfulness — past, present, and future — has been completely forgiven and is not counted against us.  EVER.  If we are in Christ, our identity is in Him and not in our sin.  We are Gomers no more.  We are beloved daughters, with new hearts inclined away from our sin and towards the love of our heavenly Father, and because of our union to Christ, we have everything we need for life and godliness to live a life that is worthy of this calling.  Our identity – who we really are, how we see ourselves and how we interact in this life – affects our self-examination.  How then, knowing that our position as daughters cannot be shaken, do we approach this important discipline in our sanctification? 
The Posture of Self-Examination
When we consider the Christian practice of on-going self-examination, we are typically speaking of God’s sanctifying work within us to renew us or to restore us to what God intends for us as His people.  As created beings made in the image of God, we are to live our lives as changed people who have received love, grace and mercy instead of the wrath we deserve.  Christian self-examination is a way in which we learn to live out renewed lives evident of the change God has begun in us.  The self-examination that renews and restores is not about “how do I make myself right with God again and again” but “how do I live a life as His redeemed daughter?”
Our posture before the Lord as He examines us is always from a secure, loving covenant relationship with God because Jesus has made it so.  Because we are His daughters, we are always “right” with God.  Our relationship is secure.  Because of that specific truth, self-examination is a discipline grounded in love – His love for us that is not dependent on our own perfection but Christ’s, and our love for Him as the One who died for us.  Sanctifying self-examination has love, not shame or insecurity at its core.  John tells us, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (1 John 4:18).  In Christ, we are beloved, forgiven daughters and Gomers no more.
The Practice of Self-Examination
Christian self-examination is really better defined as “God-examination” – when God examines us, not we ourselves.  King David says it this way: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; see if there is any wicked way in me” (Psalm 139:12-13).  God is the One who has all authority, wisdom, and power to examine us rightly, justly, and equitably.  If left to ourselves, our examination would be shallow, incomplete and often in error – we don’t even know our own hearts (Jer. 17:9) so how can we judge it accurately? And when I judge myself, can I restore myself to God?  No.  Only God can do all these things. As Christians, this has two major implications.
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