Get a sheet of paper before you read any further. The question here is how to build convictions that hold when the truth is unpopular, without hardening into stubbornness, and the work begins with an honest look at the questions you have left unanswered. The material comes from a conversation Lisa Fields had with Bishop Gary Hall, who pastors the West Jacksonville Church of God in Christ and the Harambe Church. His diagnosis is that people who give way under pressure usually have enough information. What they lack is the desire to settle the hard question. Durable conviction starts with caring enough to find out, and it stays honest by staying teachable.
You can work through this alone over a week, or with a group across two meetings. Every personal question is optional. In a group, nobody should be pressed to name a specific issue or private doubt. Describing a pattern in general terms is enough.
Start with an inventory
Take ten minutes. Write down three faith questions that matter to you but that you have not settled. They can be doctrinal, moral or practical. Next to each one, write a single word for where it sits: studying, stuck or shelved. Keep the sheet. You will return to it.
Bishop Hall offers two words that help sort the list. The first: “ignorance in my way of thinking is not knowing.” He treats this gently, describing people who are confused because they lack teaching: “Sometimes they have the want to, but not the how to.” The second word is indifference, which he describes as when you “don’t know and don’t care that you don’t know.” Ignorance, in his view, yields to help. Indifference is harder to overcome.
Look again at your three questions. A stuck question may be ignorance: you want an answer and don’t know how to reach one. A shelved question may be indifference. It may also be fear of what the answer would require, or plain exhaustion. Use Hall’s categories as a tool for noticing, and ask one honest question: which of these have I stopped caring about, and why?
Read one church that could not see itself
Hall points to the lukewarm church when he says “we must get off the fence.” Read the passage slowly, with the verse that follows it.
“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:” (Revelation 3:15-17)
Before interpreting anything, observe:
- Who receives this letter: outsiders or a congregation? (See Revelation 3:14.)
- What does the church say about itself, and what does it not know about itself?
- Does the passage describe the church as troubled or as comfortable?
Christians read the hot and cold imagery in more than one way. Many take it as the difference between devotion and rejection. Others argue that both hot and cold water were useful in that region, so the rebuke targets uselessness. Either way, the letter describes a church unaware of its own condition. From the inside, indifference feels like having need of nothing. That is why the inventory came first. You detect a lukewarm state more easily by noticing what you have stopped asking about than by asking whether you are lukewarm.
Read one young man who decided early
Hall’s example of someone who stood is Daniel. “Daniel was only 16 years old, but he took a stand,” Hall says, and he concludes that “because he was willing to stand for God, God stood for him.” The book of Daniel does not state Daniel’s age, so treat the number as Hall’s estimate. The text does present Daniel as one of the young captives brought into the Babylonian court.
Read Daniel 1:3-16 in one sitting, then focus here:
“But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.” (Daniel 1:8)
A few verses later Daniel proposes a test: “Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, and water to drink” (Daniel 1:12). Pulse means vegetables or seeds.
Make two columns. In the first, list what Daniel accepted in Babylon: the training, the language, the new name, the service. In the second, list what he refused. The second column is short. Daniel knew exactly where his line was, and he settled it in his heart before he spoke to anyone. Hall’s phrase is that “he had boundaries.” Notice the manner too. Daniel made a request and offered a test. This is narrative, so it describes what Daniel did rather than prescribing a diet for every believer, but it models conviction decided in advance and expressed with restraint.
Hall frames the church’s version as a choice: “are we going to be a subculture or are we going to be a counterculture.” A subculture adjusts its convictions, as he puts it, “just because something is trending.” A counterculture shares much with its neighbors and still has places where it will not move, even, in Hall’s words, “even if we have to stand alone.”
Now test Hall’s line that God stood for Daniel. Two chapters later, Daniel’s companions face the furnace and answer the king this way:
“If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” (Daniel 3:17-18)
Underline But if not. Their stand did not depend on knowing how things would turn out. Ask yourself: would my convictions hold if standing cost me something and no rescue came? Faithful people in Scripture and history have stood and suffered for it. A conviction that lasts has to be anchored somewhere other than the expected outcome.
The test that keeps conviction from turning into stubbornness
Any call to take a stand can harden into a refusal to learn. Hall sees the danger. His closing word was meekness: “that is to be teachable, be learners.” He warns that “some people hold to something so hard to even God can’t get them to change their mind.” And he places every believer under one measure: “Christ is the standard,” and “we’re all under construction.”
The verse Hall opened the conversation with holds both halves together:
“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” (1 Peter 3:15)
Readiness and meekness sit in one sentence. Apply three questions to any conviction you hold firmly.
- Can I give the reason? Name the passage or argument the conclusion rests on.
- What would correct me? Describe the kind of scriptural evidence that would change your mind. If the honest answer is “nothing could,” that is the warning sign Hall describes.
- Have I welcomed the question? Hall says “it’s not wrong to ask questions,” and he describes the right kind as “Healthy questions, wholesome questions, legitimate questions, but they must have answers and they do have answers.”
Hall’s line about truth explains why this test serves conviction: “You don’t have to like the truth, but you can’t change the truth.” He adds that “just because you repeat a lie often enough does not make it the truth,” which applies to what your own circle repeats as much as to anyone else’s.
Examination still has costs. Honest study can unsettle a belief for a season before it settles again, and some convictions give way under social pressure even when the study was done well. Those need time and trusted people walking with you, as well as private reading.
The practice: one shelved question, studied in order
Hall’s remedy for indifference is study in a particular order. He says “you have to start with the scripture and then ask the Holy Spirit to help us in that understanding of scripture,” and only then move to what others have written. His warning: “don’t become commentary cripple.” Other writers are worth reading, but you should “be aware that you’re reading what others have researched and what they’ve determined.” He grounds this in a familiar verse: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
Choose one shelved or stuck question from your inventory. Give it four sessions of about twenty minutes this week.
- Find the text. Locate two or three passages that actually address the question, using cross-references rather than a commentary. Read the full chapter around each.
- Read before you conclude. For each passage, write one sentence on what the author was saying to the original audience. Note the genre, and whether the passage describes or commands. Ask God for understanding at the start and end, in whatever words are honest for you.
- Let Scripture check Scripture. Put the passages side by side. Where do they agree? Where does one qualify another? Write what they say together and where you remain unsure.
- Consult others, then compare. Read one or two careful writers, ideally ones who disagree. Note where they confirm or challenge your reading, and which argument moved you if your mind changed.
Finish with two sentences. One begins, On this question, I now hold… The other begins, What would change my mind is… The first is conviction. The second is meekness. Hall’s goal is to “stand with the truth whether we like it, whether we agree with it, whether we thought differently about it.” If your question turns out to be one where faithful Christians have long disagreed, that is a real finding. Conviction includes knowing which questions you hold firmly and which with an open hand.
For groups
If you are leading, do the inventory and the Scripture readings in the first meeting and assign the four sessions for the week between. In the second meeting, ask people to describe what the practice was like rather than announce conclusions. That keeps attention on the habit of study and avoids debating contested issues in a room where some may not feel safe disagreeing. Keep generalizations about other churches and traditions out of the conversation.
Questions for discussion or reflection
- What made it easier or harder to tell ignorance from indifference in your inventory? Were any questions shelved for reasons Hall’s two words do not cover?
- The Laodicean church thought it had need of nothing. What would it take for a comfortable person or congregation to notice something is wrong?
- Daniel’s list of refusals was much shorter than his list of things he accepted. What happens to a believer who refuses everything, or one who refuses nothing?
- Daniel’s companions said “But if not.” How would your convictions change if you expected no rescue for standing on them?
- When you asked What would correct me? about a firm belief, what did you find? Is it well grounded, or simply well guarded?
- Hall puts Scripture first, then prayer for understanding, then other writers. Which step do you most often skip, and what does skipping it produce?
- What specific pressure do you expect to face on the question you studied: a relationship, a workplace, a feed, a family table? Which part of this week’s practice would help you meet it, and which part would not be enough on its own?
Return to the sheet
At the end of the week, look again at the word beside the question you studied. Would you still use it? Then look at the two you did not study. You do not have to start on them now. You can decide, deliberately rather than by default, whether each will stay on the shelf. That open-eyed decision is where Hall’s counterculture begins, and his own summary fits it: “So let’s be lovers of the truth.”