Lord, Help My Unbelief!

 August 7, 2024

Wednesday

Some circumstances are desperate. The burden is not only great but it seems to continue forever without any end in sight. Hope bleeds out of us like a punctured tire. We can't move nor no what to do. Very few people are good atheists at this point. They pray just like everyone else does. They beg God like everyone else does. They bargain with God just like everyone else does.

The question is: Do you honestly believe God will answer you? If not, there is no real reason to pray. If so, you know that the answer will involve faith. Faith involves waiting for God to act. Faith proves that you believe that God will answer.

So, you say: I want to believe. That is the same thing that the man said whose son could not be healed by Jesus' disciples. Jesus asked the man if he believed. Belief appears to be necessary to perform the miracle.

Mark 9:24 (NASB 2020) ²⁴ Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief!”

Now think about this for just a moment. Maybe your first prayer shouldn't be to have your burden removed. Maybe you should be praying that your unbelief is removed. Unbelief is a barrier to faith. While it does not prevent God from acting, it does hinder Him from acting. God will not act with someone who will not realize who is acting. In other words, if you are planning to explain away what God has done, God will be reluctant to act.

When Jesus was asked why His disciples could not heal the young man He answered:

Mark 9:29 (NASB 2020) ²⁹ And He said to them, “This kind cannot come out by anything except prayer.”

That father of the ill son said a prayer: Help my unbelief! When you find yourself in a situation that cannot be solved except for the Lord's intervention, you pray, "Help my unbelief!" before and after you make your request to God. If you don't plan to give Him all the glory afterwards, you didn't mean anything by praying that God would help your unbelief. You never believed it.

It isn't just atheists who would need to pray this prayer. Each of us find himself in desperate times eventually. There is no way we can solve the problem. So we go to the Lord. Can He solve it? We ask ourselves this question. We know we want to believe He can and will but there is nagging doubt. We eventually cry out, "Lord, help my unbelief." This may just be the most powerful prayer you have ever made.