Help My Unbelief

Matt. 13:58 (NKJV)  Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.

Unbelief is something I think most Christians struggle with.  We sometimes find ourselves praying as did the father of a demon possessed child in Mark 9:23-24 (NASB)  And Jesus said to him, “‘If You can!’ All things are possible to him who believes.”  Immediately the boy’s father cried out and began saying, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

A fairly famous charismatic pastor once said he had never seen a person’s arm or leg grow back when he prayed for healing.  He said he believed it was because of his own unbelief.  Because he had never seen God do this, he doubted God would heal in this way.  Was his unbelief itself preventing the healing:

Matt. 13:58 (ESV)  And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.

I think our unbelief can stand in the way of God working in us and in others.  So, we might be a little better able to understand this if we look at the Greek word used in both Mark 9:24 and Matt. 13:58. It is apistia.  Pistia is the Greek word for faith or trust.  As in this case, adding an “a” before many words in Greek makes that word the negative version: “no faith,” or “no trust.”  Unbelief is a soft version of what apistia means.  Either we have no faith or trust that God will do something, or we have no faith or trust in God at all.  That’s what this means.

The King James Version adds another even stronger Greek word into the mix: apeitheia.  This means “disobedience” and is translated as such in modern translations:

Rom. 11:30 (KJV)  For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief. 

Interesting “not believed” in this verse is the apistia we saw earlier.  As with apistia, apeitheia means even more than just disobedience.  It means not to allow yourself to even believe or be persuaded. It is we who are limiting our belief.

What the Bible is telling us is we are not just neutral in our unbelief.  We are rejecting what we think God has promised or even what He can do. 

When my children were young and couldn’t swim, I would have them stand on the side of the swimming pool and jump into my arms.  I was trying to teach them not to be afraid of the water.  At first they would hesitate, but with some coaxing, they would finally have enough faith in me that they would jump, and I would catch them.  That hesitation they felt wasn’t the sort of unbelief the passages above are talking about.  The passages are talking about rejection of the belief I would catch them, that they were so unsure I would not catch them they would refuse to jump.

Is that who we are?  Are we standing on the edge of the pool listening to God’s coaxing us to have faith, yet we refuse to jump? 

Why Is this important?

I think the answer to that question is at times a shameful “Yes.”    “Unbelief” doesn’t appear very often in the New Testament: only ten times in the English Standard Version. “Little faith” appears six times, and each time it is Jesus accusing His disciples of having little faith once saying if we only had faith the size of a grain of mustard seed we could move mountains(Matt. 17:20).  We’re in good company with men God used to change the world.

How do we grow in our faith and trust in God, though?  How can God help our unbelief?  I think reflection on the things God has done that we have both experienced and witnessed helps, but God’s Word tells us of the great things God can and will do if we just fight off the temptation of unbelief.

I’m sure we have all been through tough times and seen God pull us out.  We’ve all seen God’s mighty hand at work in our lives and in the lives of others.  We’ve all read of the tremendous miracles of God recorded in the Bible.  So what keeps us from believing then doing? Unbelief. 

Let’s pray as the father of the demon possessed child did, that God would help our unbelief.  We do need our faith and trust in God to grow.  Let not God be limited by our hesitation to believe He will act.