How Jesus Helps My Unbelief

One day and one doubt at a time

I was brushing my teeth when the thought came to me. I like to listen to the Bible when I’m getting ready in the morning, and in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I listened to the Gospel of Mark. I realize that book choice might be a weird one for Advent since Mark doesn’t even cover the time leading up to and including Jesus’ birth, but Mark’s Gospel is my favorite. I love that Mark starts in the middle of the action, with urgency, when Jesus is already an adult and beginning his ministry. This urgency seems to drive the entire structure of Mark’s Gospel, and I love it because we see quickly and repeatedly how active Jesus is. He is healing here, traveling there and healing again, touching the untouchable ones, casting out demons from the ones everyone else gave up on, and bringing the dead to life¹. It’s easy to speed past the last part of that sentence, so let me say it again: Jesus brought the dead back to life!

If I’m honest, I have felt a bit like I need to be brought back to life. My spirit has been heavy, weighed down by depression that has returned after a long hiatus, and it has left me sad and discouraged and so very defeated. I must remind myself daily (sometimes hourly) that my life is a good life, that I am loved, that it will not always feel this way. Despair was a wave that came and knocked me off my feet. Color drained out of my world, and all the joy I felt at home and with friends and at church lessened more and more as the days turned into weeks that turned into months.

That day in the bathroom I was listening to Mark 8, and not long after the disciples witnessed Jesus feed thousands of people not once but twice, they found themselves on a boat in the sea, with nothing to eat. Jesus overhears them talking about this problem, and he asks them²,

“Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”

As I finished brushing my teeth, I thought to myself, “Good grief, these guys have very short memories. How could they forget what Jesus just did? Don’t they know him by now?” But then I stopped and asked myself, “How am I any better? Have I not seen God work and yet still doubt and question?”

That’s when the thought came to me: “If God shows you who he is, believe him.”

I have not been able to find God in all I have felt and experienced the past few months. Physical challenges were added to the emotional ones, and it was not uncommon for me to have multiple medical appointments in the same week. Combine ongoing issues with ulcerative colitis, a CT scan here, a chest X ray there, a sprinkle of pleurisy, a dash of pneumonia, all mixed with a heaping dose of insomnia and fatigue, and the recipe for hopelessness was complete. I told my counselor recently that I felt hollowed out, and instead of love and joy and light, there is a deep, dark abyss.

My mind knows that God has not left me, for there is nowhere I can go that he will not also be³, but my heart has not felt him. All of the pain and sorrow and sickness would be much easier to bear had I felt God’s comfort, but for whatever reason, God has not felt near. It has felt like he was hiding, and as much as I have tried to find him, I couldn’t.

However, these are the times when I must rely on what I know and not what I feel. The words of the Bible that I have spent years of my life reading and absorbing and memorizing mean nothing if they do not affect how I live my life. If the truth of the gospel isn’t true in the hardest of circumstances, for the worst of worst case-scenarios, it isn’t true at all. So even though I feel like God is far away, he cannot be, for he is always with me⁴. Even though I feel like he is not good, he must be, for he is goodness itself. Even though I feel like he doesn't love me, he must, for he sent his only Son to die for me⁵. He clothes the lilies of the field; he will surely care for me⁶. He is not withholding good from me⁷. He doesn’t hate me; he delights in me⁸. When I feel isolated and alone, thinking that no one can understand how I feel, I remember that he numbered the very hairs on my head and knows and loves me more than I can fully understand⁹.

But sometimes, I question the words I know deep down are true because I am not sure they are true for me. It’s then that I rehearse scenes from my own history to remember how God has been faithful to me all along¹⁰. I remember the way he saved me and changed me when I was 15; how he filled my heart with passion for him and for the Bible; how he nudged me to ask for help as a senior in high school when I first experienced the scary world of suicidal ideation. I remember how he provided the means for me to go to my dream college and placed other believers in my path. I recall the way my heart swelled with love for other nations when I went on trips to Honduras and Kenya and Thailand. I remember the way he provided free counseling for me in college and in graduate school, how he placed caring and sensitive therapists in my life when I needed them. When I wake up next to my husband every day, I give thanks for the way God orchestrated our story. I remember how strongly I felt God’s presence in the hospital when I was 31 and felt sicker than I had ever felt. I remember the peace he gave me when I learned that the sickness was a chronic condition that would never go away. Every time my girls smile or laugh, I think of how blessed I am that God chose me to be their mom. I think of all the people in my life who have shown up right when I needed them: my parents, my husband, my friends, my teachers, my pastors. There were cards and texts and phone calls that all came at precisely the right moment, and there were medical bills anonymously paid. I recount all the times that God preserved my life when I wanted to end it. I give thanks for the little pills I take each day that help keep me here. He saved me from my sins when I was a 15-year-old girl at summer camp, and he keeps saving me still.

When my doubts and questions come—as they have with unwelcome frequency recently—I stack them up against all I have read and heard and seen of God. The scales tip in favor of faith every time. Because he is the God of the universe, I know he is more than strong enough to handle all that I bring, so I haul the weighty burden of doubt I have been carrying and give it to him.

A few verses later in Mark 8, after the disciples watched Jesus heal a blind man, Jesus asks them, “Who do people say I am?” The disciples give him a summary (Elijah, John the Baptist, another prophet), and then Jesus asks THE question: “Who do you say I am?” And Peter—dear, impulsive, headstrong, passionate Peter—declares, “You are the Messiah.¹¹” I don’t know how much time had passed between this question and the miracles the disciples had previously witnessed, but for once, Peter got it right. He stacked up all that he had seen and known of Jesus, and he came to the only conclusion he could, given all the facts—Jesus is the Messiah, the Promised One. Jesus showed Peter who he was, and Peter believed him.

We know that Peter stumbles after this. But we also know that Jesus loves him anyway. Because that’s who Jesus is—Friend of sinners, Savior, and God with us.

As he did in the Bible, Jesus keeps showing up in my life and showing me who he is. How can I do anything but believe him?

1. Mark doesn’t include the account of Lazarus, but he does tell us about Jesus resurrecting Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5.

2. Mark 8:17-21

3. See Psalm 139

4. Matthew 28:20

5. Romans 5:8

6. Matthew 6:25-32

7. Psalm 84:11

8. Zephaniah 3:17

9. Matthew 10:30-31

10. And of course even this idea was not mine but was inspired by Psalm 77!

11. Mark 8:27-29