Lord, Help My Unbelief
God sees. God hears. God answers.
God sees when we are down and we are so deep in pain and trouble that we can’t see heaven. When we are in the valley of the shadow of death, God not only sees us there but He sets a table for us in the valley (Psalm 23:5), He brings manna from heaven (Exodus 16), and He brings bread and meat in the mouths of birds both day and night (1 Kings 17:6) to provide sustenance to us. For God knows we have need of these things (Matthew 6:31–34).
When the children of Israel were trapped between Pharaoh and the Red Sea, they told Moses it would be better to serve the Egyptians than to die there and they asked him were there no graves in Egypt? (Exodus 14:10–12). Moses told them to be still and have faith that the Lord would rescue them (Exodus 14:13–14). When Moses reflected the fears of the people to God, God answered and said, “Why do you cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward” (Exodus 14:15). God wanted them to walk through valley of the shadow of death under His hand and be rescued. God saw their fear and doubts and worry and lack of faith, and assured them they were not alone. The power of the promise of His presence lies in the fact that for His name’s sake (Psalm 106:8; Ezekiel 20:9), God can see past our fears and doubts (Psalm 106:7). He acts for our good so that His mercy and grace may be known to us and to others in this life.
Life hurts, and in times of failure do you ever wonder if God hears? Does He see? Does He care? The Bible says to have faith, and it also says hope deferred makes the heart sick. How are those two things squared? How can you have faith when your heart is sick? Lord, Help My Unbelief reviews some of the famous stories in the Bible with a focus on the human pain within these stories and how God actually sees our pain and doubts and fears and works with them, and in them, to prove His love for us and to make our lives better.
Lord, Help My Unbelief proposes that God’s heart and hand are shown to be practical and can be counted on in times of need. In times of trouble, it is less about our faith and more about His faithfulness in the process of time. The heart is made sick in the middle of that process, but in God’s time that longing of the heart is fulfilled by the root of the tree of life.