Casting Out Doubt: “Lord, I Believe… Help My Unbelief!”
Plenty of people who truly love the Lord struggle with doubt and the spirit of fear at times. Plenty of people who believe that God can work miracles wrestle with thoughts of doubt when they don’t see the answers they were hoping for. Plenty of truly godly people have those moments when they cry out, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”
Life can be desperate, confusing and terrifying at times and everyone experiences seasons when it seems that the miracle just isn’t coming no matter how hard they pray, fast, cry out to the Lord and stand on His promises.
These are normal, human responses to the desperation of your need, but God has empowered you to have an unnatural, supernatural response to what you’re walking through. Doubt is like spiritual cancer, an invasive tool of the enemy to keep you afraid that God won’t or can’t or doesn’t hear you and it will choke out your faith.
God Already Knows You’re Struggling with Unbelief
In Mark 9, a desperate father brought his son to Jesus, after he had tried everything else. The son was tormented with a demonic spirit of suicide and the boy had seizures, was unable to speak and continued to try and kill himself over and over. The father had spent years trying to help his child, to save him, and nothing worked.
The father had already brought his son to the Temple, and to the disciples, but no one was able to help. To Jesus, the man said, “If You can do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.” (Mk. 9:22) Have you ever prayed that prayer?
“If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes,” Jesus answered. The father was a man of faith, that’s why he was at the Temple, but he’d seen it all and done it all and nothing was working and every, single day he was afraid his son would die.
He’d done everything he knew to do, everything he’d been told was “the way”, so when Jesus said, “all things are possible to him who believes” – the man immediately had to face the truth within himself: He’d come to Jesus for his need, and, while he believed Jesus could, he didn’t really trust Jesus would meet that need.
“Doubt is like spiritual cancer, an invasive tool of the enemy to keep you afraid that God won’t or can’t or doesn’t hear you and it will choke out your faith.”
~Alicia Purdy
He was exhausted. Overwhelmed. Afraid. Doubtful. After years of agony, the father brought those feelings to Jesus and immediately the father of the child let out a loud, agonizing scream and then cried, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!” Have you cried those words?
Believe That God Can Help Your Unbelief
How can you cast out doubt when, in reality, your desperate need isn’t being met and time is running out? Everyone has experienced the conflict of faith and fear and compels you to cry out to the good God you believe in: “Help my unbelief!”
There are a few things you must invest the time into building up within yourself if you’re going to make it to the other side of your dark valley with your faith stronger than when you went in.
1) God is good. (Psalm 145:9)
2) God has a plan for your future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
3) He will bring to completion the things that pertain to your life. (Psalm 138:8)
4) He has given you all things that pertain to life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)
5) NO weapon formed against you can prosper. (Isaiah 54:7)
These are spiritual, foundational principles upon which you can stand to fight doubt and build your faith because you have the weapons you need to get victory over “vain imaginings and evil forebodings”!
Yes, the son received a miracle healing an was set free from what tormented him, but the father was healed and set free from what tormented him too. When he acknowledged his unbelief, Jesus could address it.
So many times the disappointments and experiences we have in life leave us vulnerable to be led into the snare of doubt and unbelief, and we become so focused on our need that we don’t realize that we are also contending with enemies within. But when we ask the Lord for help with our unbelief, and admit to Jesus that we’re struggling, He can take that weakness and perfect and strengthen it. (2 Cor. 12:9)
The father’s unbelief wasn’t why his miracle didn’t come, but the enemy will try to torment you with that thought. Here is a fact of faith: “What if some did not believe? Would their unbelief nullify the faithfulness of God? No! Let God be true, and every man a liar.” (Rom. 3:3-4)
HELP MY UNBELIEF! Unbelief will eventually cause you to walk away from your faith in the Lord if you don’t acknowledge and address it (Hebrews 3:12), yet when you need a miracle, Jesus is the only one who can do it!
Thought for today: The True Miracle is God Working Within You
The father of the tormented son faced a crisis we all face- the desperate need for a touch from the Lord for ourselves or someone we love. The father didn’t receive a miracle because he had more faith than you. The fact is the answers to prayer can happen in an instant or over time. Sometimes the miracle is only seen from the other side of eternity.
These are the realities of life in a fallen world that we all contend with. But part of the miracle God wants to work in your situation is that you can be set free from doubt and fear when you bring them to Jesus Christ.
When you build your life around the supernatural power of praise, the Word and prayer, you are constructing and reinforcing a spiritual wall of protection against those demonic attacks. That doesn’t mean the enemy will stop trying to attack. You’ll have to wage war against him for as long as you remain on earth. But it means that he cannot defeat you.
The “shield of faith” the Lord has given you is effective for protection, but a shield can also be used a weapon. The longer you remain in the presence of God, which is invited close through worship, (Psalm 22:3, Psalm 91:1) the more protected you will be from the doubt and unbelief that will try to take you down, and the stronger you will be for the next battle!
Strengthen Your Belief in the God Who is Able: “When the Righteous Cry Out, the Lord Responds in Two Ways”
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