Madness I tell you, madness!

It is so hard to love somebody who's so unwilling to be loved!

Unnamed friend, we'll call him Joe, is struggling with faith in God, yet is unwilling to be pulled out of it. Believes in Jesus, believes he was who he said he was and died for the reasons he said he did, but refuses to pray because he won't believe what he's praying. His background in science tells him that God doesn't exist, and it sounds to me as if instead of looking for reasons to hold onto what faith he has left, he is looking for reasons not to.

Where does one go in a situation like this? I can't give up, but I don't know where to go. Try standing on a chair and pulling somebody up from the ground onto the chair without their help. It's nearly impossible! And yet so much of me wants to keep trying and keep trying and keep trying... I just don't know how to do it. I know that now is the time to just pray about it, pray that Joe would open his heart a little bit, pray that Joe would WANT to find faith again, pray that the Lord would work in Joe in a way that can't be ignored.

How can you be a light to someone who covers his eyes?