Three Things to Remember When Unbelief Threatens

Raw emotion took me by surprise even though the words had been penned six months earlier—by me.

Lord, I am struggling with our relationship regarding praying for him. It hurts my heart to struggle like this. Why do I pray for him? It isn’t so much your silence, it’s the opposite. Harm. Why do I feel like a curse instead of a blessing to him in my prayers? Help me with my unbelief.

As I revisited the situation that preceded the writing of those words, they blurred on the page. I tried to stem my tears. My throat tightened, and my breathing quickened.

My son had embarked on a two-week trip, a seeking sojourn of sorts, to various national parks in the West. It had been a difficult year, and this trip was his way of closing that painful season and ushering in a new one. He anticipated the solace of silence as a time to reflect.

My prayers began at the first mention of the trip. Praying for it to be a great, restorative time. Praying for him to hear God speak in the silence. Praying for him to experience the kindness of strangers. Praying that, above all, in the beauty of God’s creation he would respond to God’s beckoning and rediscover his faith.

Then one week into it, all his camping gear was stolen from his campsite. He cut his trip short and returned home.

This was not what I’d prayed for. And if this had been the only time adversity struck during situations I’d been praying over, I would have been fine. But it wasn’t. It was the proverbial straw that threatened to break this momma’s confidence in praying for her son.

Have you ever lost confidence in prayer? Doubted that your prayers make a difference? Prayed fervently for God to act into a situation only for that situation to grow worse?

Prayer is one of the foundational tenets of faith, but I struggle to keep praying when it feels as though God isn’t listening, or doesn’t care, or worse, when my prayers seem to have a negative impact.

Am I the only one?

When doubt and unbelief threaten our faith, we can find encouragement in the biblical story of a father with a son in need of miraculous healing. This father, desperate for help,  brings his son to where he’s heard Jesus is. Jesus is not immediately available, and the disciples are unable to help. The father is frustrated and discouraged when Jesus returns. He speaks up:

“Teacher, I brought my son so you could heal him. He is possessed by an evil spirit that won’t let him talk. And whenever this spirit seizes him, it throws him violently to the ground. Then he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast out the evil spirit, but they couldn’t do it” (Mark 9:17–18 NLT).

You don’t need to be a parent to relate to this father. This is right where we find ourselves when we face circumstances that are out of our control to change or fix. Illness. Job loss. Relationship issues. Addictions. It could be anything. We understand this dad’s helplessness and frustration and his desire for Jesus to do something.

At first glance, this story might not seem to be about prayer. We know this desperate father, who believed Jesus could do something to help, spoke with Jesus face-to-face. He wasn’t praying. Was he?

People pray to God because on some level they believe he can affect the outcome. Is that so different from this father? Prayer is our conversation with God. We might not be face-to-face with Jesus in the flesh, but prayer is conversation all the same.

The father’s desperation resonates with me as I think about the prayers I’ve lifted up for my son. We can find three gems of encouragement in this story to keep believing and praying when believing and praying are hard.

Sometimes, even as we pray, the situation seems to get worse before it gets better.

Jesus invited the father to bring his son to him. I imagine this dad felt some relief, some assurance that his son would be healed. But that isn’t what immediately happened: “When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion” (Mark 9:20 NIV).

That’s not what this dad wanted for his son, no more than I wanted my son’s equipment to be stolen, cutting his trip short. When we enlist God to work on behalf of someone or something, our enemy springs into action. It can seem like our prayers put a big red bulls-eye on the very situation we’re asking God to cover with his protection. Satan wants nothing more than to erode our confidence in our prayers, sowing doubt and unbelief about God. In the immediacy of his seeming victory, our faith can falter.

Jesus may prioritize growing our faith before fixing our situation.

Jesus, fully aware of the boy’s situation, first engages the father in a conversation: “‘How long has this been happening?’” Jesus asks. He replies, ‘Since he was a little boy. The spirit often throws him into the fire or into water, trying to kill him. Have mercy on us and help us, if you can.’

“‘What do you mean, “If I can”?’ Jesus aska. ‘Anything is possible if a person believes’” (Mark 9:21–23 NLT).

Jesus immediately homes in on that “if.” The issue isn’t whether Jesus has the power to heal, but whether the father believes he can. If Jesus had healed the boy without engaging the father, this dad wouldn’t have had the opportunity to recognize and admit his unbelief. If God had answered my prayers for my son’s trip to be trouble-free, I wouldn’t have recognized how fragile my faith had become. If we miss out on the chance to hand our doubt over to Jesus, we miss his faith-growing anything is possible invitation to believe more fully.

Jesus doesn’t require perfect faith to answer our prayers.

I love the father’s exclamation in reply: “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24 NLT).

The father beautifully chooses to believe that Jesus can heal his son. Yet in the same breath he owns that his faith isn’t perfect. He admits that he struggles with unbelief and gives that struggle to Jesus. He asks for help from the only one who can grow his faith.

Amid the father’s imperfect faith, Jesus healed his son. Amid my imperfect faith, God showed up for my son.

God desires to draw you closer amid trials. Give him your doubt and ask him to help you overcome it.

He will.

Denise Roberts loves doing life with her husband, Blake, morning snuggles with her one-hundred-pound chocolate Lab, French fries, and Chick-fil-A lemonade. She’s an empty-nester mom who prays she didn’t mess up her kids too badly. Her greatest joy is writing about her experiences when Jesus steps on her toes, picks her up, and dusts her off so others can discover him at the intersection of faith and life for themselves. Connect with her at www.deniseroberts.org.

Photograph © Ruben Hutabarat, used with permission