Faith to Believe Again
“Life has been good to me!”
I cannot lie. Scrolling through my social media newsfeed, this particular status was a punch in the gut to read. Not because I wasn’t genuinely happy for the individual—because I most certainly was. But because for some time, I had been struggling in believing God with things concerning my own life. Now don’t get me wrong. I know that God never promised that life would be good to the Christian believer but if I’m honest, it was disheartening to see this status at a time where my belief in what God was doing was shaky.
I can say that almost nothing is more paralyzing to our Christian faith walk than unbelief. After all, we are only saved through our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that, but it takes faith to believe and it takes believing to continue in faith. Belief is the catalyst that propels us to continue on in God’s will despite our current experiences. The foundation of our faith is built off of belief. For a Christian, believing is what we ultimately do. Therefore, it has taken guts for me to even admit to myself that I had become paralyzed by unbelief.
Somewhere down the line, I subconsciously stopped believing that God would do an amazing thing with and in my life. And the thing is, I didn’t wake up one morning and no longer believed. No, that was not the case at all. If I can pinpoint it, this started as a subtle feeling of doubt that gradually intensified into a full-blown struggle as the days, weeks, months, and even years passed by with no evidential change.
In the Christian community, actually admitting that God has disappointed you or admitting that now you feel so discouraged that it’s hard to believe in what God is or is not doing, has the stigma of being so unspiritual. But I’m settling into the acceptance that sometimes, falling prey to unbelief as a Christian is nothing to be ashamed about. Especially when we’ve been believing, praying, and hoping for the move of God in our life for an extended period of time. We are human with real human emotions. And the word of God says,
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” – Proverbs 13:12 (NIV)
More often than not, paralysis of unbelief is a direct result of deferred hope. Deferred hope takes on many forms but the misery deriving from it seems to be one in the same. Deferred hope could look like: endless unanswered prayers for the salvation of a loved one resulting in discouragement, a prolonged battle with an illness yielding constant disappointment, or the experience of continuous setbacks and stagnation of a dream that ensues disillusionment. In either case—and many more not mentioned—after quite some time, belief can begin to falter. Before you know it, you’re stuck in the realm of unbelief; where you are no longer praying about it and no longer pushing forward in hopes of things ever happening.
It’s very easy to give in to our emotions and pacify them by surrendering our belief of God working on our behalf. It’s easy to conclude that God can’t do that for me. Emotionally, no longer believing is a safe place to be because then we are not subject to the agonizing feelings of disappointment or discouragement. Even as this is so, God beckons us to believe—believe in who He is and His ability amidst the discouragement and disappointment.
A thing I’ve learned is, there is absolutely nothing wrong with respectfully unveiling our disappointment or discouragement to God. There is absolutely nothing wrong with voicing our concerns and asking the Father for strength to believe. Matter of fact, asking the Father for strength to believe is an act of faith.
In Mark 9:24, a desperate father cried out to Jesus saying, “I do believe, help my unbelief”. When reading Mark 9:14-27, contextually, we can see that this statement was said in faith. This father had watched his son suffer for years. He brought his son to Jesus’ disciples in high hopes that perhaps they could change his son’s situation. But when they could not, his familiar overwhelming sense of despair set in. And now being face to face with Jesus, he needed help in that moment to overcome his unbelief.
This father was essentially saying, “I’ve been discouraged for quite some time and as of right now, I’ve been terribly disappointed by your disciples—men that are connected to you and who I thought could answer my desperate cry. Jesus, I’m coming to you with imperfect faith. But with the amount of faith I possess at this time, please give me the strength to believe that you can do this for me.”
I’m sure many of us can empathize with this father because many of us have been where he’s been mentally, emotionally, and spiritually when it comes to struggling to believe. But one of the things that stick out to me in this man’s encounter with Jesus, is when Jesus asks the boy’s father, how long his son had been suffering (Mark 9:21). I believe Jesus’ question wasn’t to gather information but rather it was to prove the point that just because a person is stuck in a situation for a period of time, doesn’t mean God is no longer willing or able to bring them out of it.
As you read on in Mark 9, Jesus honored that father’s request.
Hope differed made the father’s heart sick by spiritually depleting him. But the most beautiful part in all of this is, before the father’s longing of his son’s healing was fulfilled, there was a spiritual revitalization that took place. The greatest healing the father received that day was not the healing of his son but the spiritual healing of his own unbelief.
Weak faith is still faith. Have just enough faith to respectfully consult with God, the one who you feel has allowed your painful emotions. Draw near to Him in those times and not away. For one, God already knows how we feel and genuinely expressing it in a respectful way gives Him the chance to meet us where we are—in those vulnerable areas. Being truthful with God about how we feel forces us to step outside of our own will power to believe and exposes our need for the Savior’s sustaining grace to believe. And along with His sustaining grace comes peace and strength that enables us to press toward believing and hoping again. But, that process all starts with having just enough faith to run toward our Savior and not away from Him.
Things may not happen the way we may expect them to happen or when we may expect them to happen. And the hard reality is, things may never happen at all. But the vital thing is, that we believe in God and His ability to cause everything to work out for our good and His glory.
So don’t stop believing! And if like me, you’ve found yourself stuck in unbelief; continue to have enough faith to draw near to God, hope again, and then believe again.
I have faith to believe again. My hope is that one day, I’ll look back and not say “life” has been good to me because honestly speaking, parts of life has been hell. But rather instead I’ll say, “through it all, ‘God’ has been good to me”.
