When Suffering Causes You to Doubt
My husband was leading worship the first time I heard “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.” I wept. The words of this simple hymn reflected the weary groans of an uncertain child—one who wanted to believe God cared for her but was too afraid.
Pass me not, O gentle Savior,
Hear my humble cry
While on others Thou art calling,
Do not pass me by.
The last line especially gave me pause, giving words to feelings I’d been unable to speak aloud. I’d always struggled with a deep-rooted self-sufficiency—the belief that I was strong enough to please God with my own accomplishments. Yet, as soon as I messed up, my faith wavered—How could God possibly love me now? My doubt often led me to believe wrongly that God had forgotten me.
A recent study found that over 70% of Christians have experienced doubt at some point in their faith. Likely these numbers are even higher; it’s not easy to admit that one has experienced doubt or uncertainty about one’s faith.
In the gospel of Mark, a father brings his son to Jesus’s disciples for healing, but they are unable to rid the child of his demon. In this passage, we typically focus on the father’s confession, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). But this story is wedged in the middle of Jesus teaching his disciples about faith and doubt, reminding us that Jesus has the final word on weary faith.
Forgetful Faith
After having been away for some time, Jesus returns to find an angry mob arguing about the disciples’ inability to heal a young boy of his demon. When Jesus hears this, he cries out, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” (Mark 9:19).
Why were the disciples unable to heal the boy? Jesus identifies that the problem was due to their lack of faith. They’d forgotten where the true source of their strength and ministry came from. Their doubt stemmed from a mistaken trust in themselves instead of their God.
Jesus’s attention then moves to the father and his son, but he doesn’t forget this moment with his disciples. When they’re alone after Jesus heals the boy, the disciples ask Jesus privately: “Why could we not cast it out?” (Mark 9:28).
Jesus explains, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29). Their inability to cast out the demon leads them to the only One who could provide the answer they sought. As Charles Spurgeon pointed out, this inability “drove them to Him in prayer.” It drove them to closeness with Jesus and his Father.
Was Jesus angry with his disciples when unbelief entrenched their hearts? His rebuke is certainly harsher than the question he asks the father. Still, he doesn’t leave them in their self-sufficiency but provides the solution as an invitation to pray—offering the opportunity for them to experience closeness with their heavenly Father and with him. Ultimately, he wants them to depend on him, instead of themselves, for what they need (Mark 9:29).
Battered Faith
After Jesus rebukes his disciples, he reaches out to the boy’s father with a question: “How long has this been happening?” (Mark 9:21).
As his son convulses on the ground, the father tells Jesus that his boy has been possessed since he was very little. This father has seen his son cast into water and into fire. This father has stood by helpless as his little boy suffers. This father has suffered, too.
When he heard about Jesus, the One who cast out demons and healed people in miraculous ways, there was finally a glimmer of hope. So, imagine his crushing despair when Jesus’s disciples are unable to heal his son (Mark 9:18). If even Jesus’s own disciples couldn’t cast out evil from his son, then who could? Was no one stronger than the evil spirit inside his little boy?
In the middle of this conversation with Jesus, the boy’s father betrays his weakened faith: “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (Mark 9:22). That one word—“if”—reveals a lot about his heart. Jesus also hears it. “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23).
“I believe; help my unbelief!” the boy’s father cries out in response. Here, I see more than just a hopeless cry. Instead, there’s a commingling of belief and unbelief, a recognition of who he is and who he’d like to be. As Jesus gently pokes at his soul, the floodgates open and out comes grief, exhaustion, and fear. In this moment, all the suffering of both father and son spills over as he begs Jesus, “I believe! But please, Jesus, we’ve suffered so long. Help my unbelief.”
Jesus did indeed heal this man’s son, commanding the evil spirit never to enter the boy again. But his conversation with Jesus wasn’t only a catalyst for his son’s healing—Jesus was also addressing the doubt that had burrowed and festered in his heart. And when everything within this father gave out, Jesus drew near to him.
Dependent Faith
I’m convinced that Fanny Crosby, the author of my beloved hymn, learned the same lesson from Jesus as his disciples and this devoted father. She writes in the second verse:
Let me at Thy throne of mercy
Find a sweet relief;
Kneeling there in deep contrition,
Help my unbelief.
I’ve since sung this hymn many times, usually with tears in my eyes. And each time, those tears reflect less of a certainty that God has forgotten me and more of a certainty that Christ has accomplished what I once thought I needed to.
So, where do we go when we seek that sweet relief? Where do we go when our suffering or self-sufficiency has weakened our faith and made us uncertain?
We allow our inability and doubt to draw us to the One who provides the healing we need. We go to the throne of mercy, to the One who draws near to us when we bring our weakened faith to him (James 4:8). And because Christ has promised to come close, we can believe—whether with whispered dependence or strengthened cries—that he will never pass us by.