Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

by Barnabas Piper

Our salvation is on the cross. No matter how broken we may be, no matter how much we might struggle and fail to see and to know the truth (every truth) clearly, we can rest in the One who sees all and knows all. When we cannot see, we are still seen.

the One on the cross does not lose sight of us.

Feel how you may, struggle how you may, once bought, once loved with His blood, you cannot slip from His hands.

Do not worry about your own weaknesses. Stop fearing your own sickly reflection and your distressingly philosophical navel. Ignore your empty emotional hands. Those are your qualifications for His grace. His hands are full. And you are in them. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. And so it will be until the graves are emptied.

meant. I thought I believed, but I didn’t even know what belief was.

questions, if asked well, are building blocks for stronger faith rather than stepping-stones away from it.

pray you will see the frailty of your belief and the strength of what you believe in. And I pray that belief will be more than an assertion; may it be a living thing in your soul that shapes and drives you in all you do.

Christians who don’t know the tension of “I believe; help my unbelief” might not be Christians at all, or at the least they might be very infantile ones.

All viewpoints and beliefs have presuppositions.

short, it is representative of the real world and God’s relationship with it, not a book to simplify the world so we can understand it all. And it is just the way God wanted it.

Children are perpetual questioners, but they’re also perpetual believers. They ask, then eagerly await an answer. They mull over the answer, then fire another question if it doesn’t make sense to them.

Every question is asked to learn, out of a desire to understand, from a stance of trust.

From a stance of trust children question

Questions indicate belief only if you actually want an answer. Someone who asks without wanting to learn is not truly asking, but is challenging. Challenging is not believing,

Researchers might have theories, but their questions are to test those theories by finding out the real answers. Prosecutors have answers they want to hear. An unexpected answer is not acceptable. They know what they want and need to hear, and their questions are designed to lead to those responses. God is infinite. While the finite human mind can

Good point

Belief is not a black-and-white endeavor built on simple truths. It is the exploration of a great mystery girded by great truths.

Thats good

To ask well6 we must ask with a willingness to receive an answer.

Good

Good asking is honest asking.

!

To ask well is to examine as far as we can.

But asking well also means knowing when to lay our questions down.

we must know when to shelve them. Maybe a time comes

“Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts.”

Good quote- good example of moving toward God

intellectual understanding of who God is; it is about the willingness to follow what God commands. Often the intellectual obstacle to belief is a convenient excuse for rebellion.

belief itself. I presuppose that it is real and attainable. I presuppose that it is valuable and worthy of pursuit.

Yes

Presuppositions are beliefs that are held foundationally under other beliefs. Sometimes they are subtle and we don’t even recognize their presence.

Good point

Mental assent is not belief. It is part of belief, but not the whole of it.

obedience, and repentance was mental assent, but it did not transform me.

Not The sme

But, as I did, many harbor hidden sins rather than being shaped by their belief, letting it fill all the voids and vacancies of life.

Frightenly true

Transformed is the word I used just a few sentences ago to describe what I needed to move me from in the neighborhood of Christlike to actually following Christ with all my life.

Belief that collects knowledge and acknowledges something to be true but doesn’t transform one’s actions is the mere mental-assent part.

What we know about God is not the same thing as believing in Him and having that transforming faith. In fact, it can even be a deterrent because mental assent so easily substitutes for real life change.

had fooled myself into thinking I was living by faith in God, when instead I was living a life shaped by knowledge of Him. And those are very different things.

It may mean they believe God exists in some form. It may mean they acknowledge God’s moral standard as a general guideline. Or it may mean they believe fully in God’s word and God’s way and look to Him as the object of their faith.

We can believe in God in the other two senses with no faith whatsoever,

Faith isn’t the ability to believe long and far into the misty future. It’s simply taking God at His word and taking the next step.4 —Joni Eareckson Tada

It is more like the sun. Some days it will shine brightly and shed God’s light on and through all of your life. Other times it will be obscured by clouds of distraction, by our delusions of belief (mental assent), by fear or doubt,

leads to hollow belief in God. Relational knowledge of God leads to transformational, living belief.

knowledge. Do so to know Him.

this list could go on and

Good list of questions

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.1 —Harry Emerson Fosdick

Everything good in the world, whether moral or beautiful or skillful or enjoyable, is a reflection of God.

One person’s experience often has little bearing on another’s.

We often read the Bible like a textbook, looking for the basic information. Others read it like a Chicken Soup for the Soul sort of inspirational boost (they must skip pretty much the whole Old Testament). Many others read through it as a storybook of disparate tales offering morals and lessons like Aesop’s fables do. But if we are in relationship with God, we begin to see it is a revelation. It is a window into who God is, one that He gave us to share exactly what we need to know of Him.

He simply told me to start reading the Gospels and get to know Jesus. Look for who the real Jesus is.

Before relationship with God, the Bible’s declarations of God are statements to be weighed and tested. Once in relationship with Him, they are promises that can be trusted.

People get to know of my wife because I speak of her, describe what makes her tick, and explain her character. But people begin to understand her when they see her relate to me and to our daughters. Just

And there is much we cannot know. By “cannot,” I don’t mean we are prohibited from knowing it but that we are incapable of knowing it.

we think so highly of ourselves as if to say “Well, I don’t get it, so it can’t be good” whenever He does something we can’t fathom.

Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.3 —Oswald Chambers

Somehow evil is evil even when it fits into the perfect plan of an all-powerful, all-good God. It is a mystery. Just not the nice, neat, fun kind.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” While this is true, equally as true is the ease with which we forget God exists.