Perhaps one of the most uncomfortable occasions in a Christian’s life is to come to the conclusion that your faith is much smaller than it should be. Usually this moment occurs when there is a challenge that looms so large that it opens a door of doubt in your heart and, once Doubt enters, he brings with him his sorry sidekicks, Fear and Anxiety. These three make themselves at home in the den of your heart and Faith retires to the back bedroom for the night. My personal experience suggests that this often occurs in the realm of “I know God can…but I’m not sure He will.” You are not the first to struggle with this and we even have an example in scripture of this type of conflict of heart:
“If You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” – Mark 9:22-24 {ESV}
This panicked papa from Mark 9 cries out in two desperations; desperation #1 is seen as his son is demonically afflicted and the disciples of Christ were unable to expel the hellish interloper out from the boy. Because of this failure on the part of the primary followers of Christ, the anguished man was losing hope that his beloved son might ever recover. He speaks to Jesus with open, honest words that were seasoned with doubt when he questioned Him as to whether or not He was able to do what the disciples could not. Jesus gently places the onus back on the man and addresses his level of faith (and ours also), when He asks, “IF I can do anything?! IF? Anything is possible if you can trust Me!” {my paraphrase}. The father of the boy, realizing that his own faith was not sufficient for the crisis, cries out in desperate moment #2 and confesses that he has faith…but likely not enough. He humbly asked for divine assistance from the Son of God when he pleads, “Help my unbelief!”
…and you should do the same thing today. Ask for help with your faith-struggle.
We should boldly ask God to empower our belief to match the level of our need. I strongly believe that He will honor that request. Your faith is not limited to your feelings of confidence but it is not entirely absent of those feelings either. The spiritual assurance that your Heavenly Father is involved in your situation and that He will bring eventual resolution to your current challenges is much more an issue of your Spirit-controlled mind than it is your wavering emotions. Over the last few years I personally have been forced to combat my own doubts and fears like never before in my Christian journey. For a decade and a half, I rarely doubted God or feared life. Now God continues to saddle me with weights I’ve not previously carried and, in doing so, proves His faithfulness to supply all that is needed to endure and eventually overcome. He helps my unbelief to metamorphasize into confidence. I’m no longer operating in the quantity or quality of faith that defined me in the past – He has grown me through forcing me to increase in my desperate dependence upon Him alone. God is changing us and He is answering all those prayers which we have forgotten we prayed. We asked for strength so He sends heavy burdens to build our spiritual muscles. We asked for faithfulness so He ordains seasons of struggle that threaten to never end. We asked for joy and peace so God removes our self-interests which provide a counterfeit joy and peace. We asked to know Him more deeply so He entrusts to us a cross to bear just as He did His only Son. We prefer a holy zap from on high to give us strength, faithfulness, joy, peace and experience. God chooses a different route for us.
Christian friend, you DO believe. Don’t let your enemy tell you otherwise. The presence of doubt is not necessarily evidence of an eviction of true faith. The reason you sense the weight in your life is because God is graciously replacing your unbelief with further belief. It often feels like you are dying but, in actuality, you are being made more alive to the greatness of Christ in you, the hope of glory. What is dying is that part of you (and me too) that gravitates toward placing trust and confidence in things that never should be the objects of our assurance. As we cooperate with this unavoidable process from God, we gain experience which diminishes the remaining unbelief in us. I promise you, in Glory there will be nobody who ever has to again declare, “Help my unbelief!” Until then…
“Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:2-5