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"I believe; help my unbelief." I suspect that
every Christian prays this at one point or another during their lifetime. We
live in a fallen world where we are surrounded by brokenness all around us.
And, occasionally, that broken-ness doesn’t just surround us – it crashes into
our lives and leaves us reeling and our faith shaken.
This
is not a sin to feel this way. This does not make you a lesser quality Christian.
It does not relegate you to the church’s B-team. You should not feel ashamed
that you are letting Jesus down, or your church down, or have failed in your
Baptismal promises. This is an honest confession of both faith in Christ as
Lord and Savior while also acknowledging that our faith, this side of heaven,
is far from perfect and not like we wish it could be.
I
said it is not a sin to feel this way, but the devil loves to make us think it is. He seeks to condemn us or
make us feel condemned even where God does not. “If you are a ‘real’ Christian,”
he intones, “you wouldn’t have to add ‘help my unbelief.’ You would simply
believe – no ifs, ands, or buts." And he throws that in your face. He shines the
pedestals that we place below the heroes of faith in the Bible – Ruth, or
David, or Daniel, or Paul – so you can see your own failed reflection. Then he
points to those around you who don’t ever seem to struggle with their faith –
your wife, your husband, your dad, your grannie, the older couple across the
aisle, the young couple a few pews in front of you, your best friend. They all
seem to roll along as if nothing ever phases them. “But you” – and here, the
devil shakes his head – “you call yourself a Christian…tsk, tsk, tsk…” This leads
you into greater despair. You actually start to believe it. “You know, if I
were a better Christian…if I had more faith…then I wouldn’t be tempted this
way.”
The
Christian faith is grounded in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It acknowledges
we are sinners and Christ, to fulfill the Father’s will, became man so He could
live perfectly and fulfill the Law of God for us. He also had to be man so He
could die, the perfect sacrifice for sinners. The Christian faith trusts Christ’s
sacrifice was accepted as the full atonement for sinners because of the Easter resurrection,
demonstrating the Father’s wrath against sinners was satisfied. We believe this
to be true because the Scriptures testify to this. And, because you believe
this, you are saved by God’s grace: your sins are forgiven by Jesus and they
are no longer held against you. This is called saving faith. I think for most
of us, this is a constant.
But
faith also has an aspect of day-to-day living under the cross of Jesus. It’s
that sense of what we feel, what we
trust, where we set our affections. This idea of faith – that which is within
me, what I believe; that is, this is my faith -
is not wrong – it is what lets us say “I believe.” But that faith is constantly
in flux – strong, weak; full, small – and here is where we find ourselves struggling
in faith. This is where we are tested daily.
-
When a massive hurricane
slowly grinds its way across the water to the coast, threatening to destroy
your home and the earthly blessings that God has given you, it shakes your
faith.
-
When the doctor
tells you your son has a tumor on his hip and they’re not sure yet what kind of
tumor it is so, yes, we need to check for cancer, it stuns your faith into
silence.
-
When the bank
account is getting leaner and the stack of bills gets taller and the phone calls
get more persistent, the seeming lack of faith keeps you awake at night.
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When your
boyfriend or girlfriend texts you and says, “I’m just not into you that much,
anymore…can we just be friends?” faith is jarred.
-
When surgical
set-backs put your recovery on hold and your return to work in question, and you
don’t know how you’ll make ends meet without a paycheck, faith hangs on by the
merest of threads.
And
when life crashes in and when faith is shaken and rocked and stunned and
silenced, and we cannot see how this will end, we find ourselves standing
arm-in-arm with the father in this morning’s text: Lord, I believe; help my
unbelief.
Let’s
back up for a second. If you are being tempted to focus on the “help my
unbelief” part, remember this: those three words are a testimony of faith. Without
faith in Jesus, they could not be prayed, cried, or whispered. They are the words of the
faithful, baptized Child of God calling out to the Heavenly Father, through
faith in Jesus, to come to your aid in the midst of struggle and temptation. It’s
admission that you cannot do this yourself. You are confessing your weakness of
faith, yes, but it’s also trust in Jesus that He will rescue and save.
When
you do this, you are in good company. Look through the Scriptures and you see
hero after hero of faith whose faith was anything but perfect. We think of
Gideon as the brave man who led Israel against the Philistines, shattering jars
of clay and shouting “The sword of the Lord and the sword of Gideon!” but we
forget that he was so frightened that he hid in a olive press and had to be
shown, time and time again, that God was with him before he ever stepped onto
the battle field. How about John the Baptizer? Here was a man who called the
pharisees “Broods of vipers,” preached repentance, baptized countless
Israelites, and then stood against Herod and condemned his adulterous affair,
but when in prison, sent letters to Jesus saying, “Are you really the one, or
is there someone else?” Peter – now there’s
a candidate for faithfulness, right? We think of his Pentecost sermon or his
standing up against those who demanded that Gentiles first had to be bound
under the Law of Moses, true. But don’t forget his sinking into the depths of
the sea when he saw the wind, or his running away into the darkness when Jesus
was arrested, or his three-fold denial of Jesus when quizzed by a servant girl.
Isn’t
it funny – I called all of these so-called heroes of faith --- perhaps more
accurately called antiheroes of faith --- as “good company.” How can I call
these examples of lack of faith to be good?
Faith
is never the sum and substance of itself. Faith always has an object –
something it clings to. So, the
Christian faith is never about the strength of your faith, or the quantity of
it. Our Lord never measures our faith
with a level to make sure it’s true, or a ruler to make sure it will go the
distance, or a scale to see if it’s weighty enough, or a balance beam to see if
it’s as much as St. Paul. He never uses a grading system to determine if your
faith is pass or fail. He never compares
your faith to that of your spouse, or your parent, or your pastor. What a
disaster this would be! How unfortunate we would be if our "faithfulness" was
what saved! Could you imagine, having to hope Jesus would give a curve? But He
doesn’t…He never scores on a curve. Instead, Jesus scores faith with His cross.
His
cross is where true faith is measured and tested and found perfect. Not yours;
His. Out of His great faithfulness to the Father and the Father’s plan of
salvation, Christ died for you. Baptized
into Christ, clothed in Christ, you are wrapped in His faithfulness. God sees you as filled with the faith of Jesus, faith without failure or doubt. He sees your faithfulness through the lens of the cross. Your cross-marked faith is perfect in every way.
We
use the expression, “Give someone the benefit of the doubt…” The benefit of
doubt, in this case, is that it turns us from ourselves to Jesus, from our
weakness to His strength, from our doubts to His faithfulness, from our shortcoming
to His fulness.
The
next time life comes at you hard and you pray, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief,” do so with confidence,
not fear; hope, not shame. Romans 8:1
reminds us, “Now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
God does not look at you in disappointment. Rather He sees you in love, through
the cross of Jesus, and acts in His compassion for you. “Lord, I believe, help
my unbelief,” is a faith-filled call of hope to the one Whose faith is perfect
for me.
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