Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments It is a privilege for me to team up with Zondervan again. I am always impressed by how earnestly the team at Zondervan works to craft every book with the reader in mind. The effort required makes me a more disciplined writer by the time each manuscript is complete. My thanks to them for all their help, in particular to John Sloan and Dirk Buursma. I am again thankful to Wolgemuth and Associates, especially to Andrew, as he has been a great guide at every stage. As always, my research assistant Danielle DuRant did all the digging for source notes and references and provided valuable interaction as the book progressed. Any reader of my books knows there is the ever present and labor-intensive effort of my wife, Margie. She is the final editor. Her best writing hours are late at night; my best hours are early in the morning. Now with a completed manuscript we can breathe a sigh of relief and synchronize our lives again. That I warmly welcome with gratitude!
There are a few more whom I shall leave unnamed but for whom I am immensely grateful. They are the ones who candidly and courteously shared with me why they had struggled with their faith and why, for some of them, the belief had failed them.
I earnestly pray that as they read this, God will rekindle that flickering light and bring new life where there seems none. My hope is that I will see them all in the presence of the Lord, when he shall wipe away every tear, answer every question, and fill every void. The God I believe in is more than able to do this.
This book is a feeble step to point to a solid Rock. That Rock is Jesus. My total gratitude goes to him for enabling me to write.