You Can Trust a God with Scars: Faith (and Doubt) for the Searching Soul

How do you balance the tension between doubt and faith?

Can you really trust God, considering the suffering, injustice, and hypocrisy you see in the news (and in your own life)? Can the Christian faith resolve your deepest longings? You are not alone if you feel spiritually adrift and directionless. Questions about God, faith, life, and the disillusionment toward church and religious leaders are widespread.

You Can Trust a God with Scars invites you to experience the broader Christian story. In these pages, the yearning and questions of your own story become grounded with a God who does not avoid pain but enters into it, bearing wounds of His own. In this timely book, Rev. Dr. Jared Ayers offers a guided tour of the Christian Story for you who may be unfamiliar, skeptical, hurting, and disillusioned, lingering in the borderlands between faith and doubt. With a fascinating mix of theology, art, Scripture, music, and literature, he invites you into a conversation about a Christianity that embraces doubt, mystery, and a God who understands suffering intimately.

Whether you are a Christian seeking to draw closer to Jesus amidst pain, have been hurt by the church, or are an agnostic or atheist, in You Can Trust a God With Scars, you will find:

• A series of conversations about Christian faith that are honest, hospitable, and intellectually compelling
• A meaningful framework to help you work through your beliefs
• Questions at the end of each chapter to guide reflection or discussion

Here is a safe, compassionate space to reawaken hope and find meaning in the Christian story, despite living in a fractured world.

Rev. Dr. Jared Ayers is a pastor, speaker, professor, and writer. He is a graduate of Western Theological Seminary and the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination. A pastor for more than two decades, he currently serves as Senior Minister at First Presbyterian Church in North Palm Beach, FL., and as adjunct faculty at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Jared is married to his wife Monica, and they've been graced with two sons and a daughter.