Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!
Mark 9:24
Faith and doubt can coexist, and the moment we are honest about where we stand, the freer our souls will feel and the better God can help us. Oftentimes, when our faith falters, we suppress our true emotions. Each time we experience false hope, or feel like our world is crumbling, or that nothing is working out for us, we express that we trust, we pray loudly and boldly, we tell the people around us that we still trust God…yet deep down, we’re simply suppressing what we truly feel.
We may be angry, we may be frustrated, we may feel defeated. And beneath all of that, we have many doubts about the destiny God has laid out for us, causing our faith to flicker like a dying flame. Yet, the moment we admit where we stand—that we do have a small amount of faith yet have overpowering doubts—is the precise moment God can work with our imperfect, struggling belief.
God never demanded us to have perfect belief all the time. Just like Jesus and His followers, it is part of the human experience that our belief will waver, our doubts will increase, and our faith will shrink. For if your belief was perfect, what need is there for a God? What purpose is there to pray? What role would God play in your life if everything was always ‘perfect’? This is the true spiritual journey—where the destination is Heaven, yet the path is filled with various tests, experiences and breakthroughs that constantly mend and deepen the faith within us.
Rather than suppressing our true sensations, we must honestly and openly declare to God where we are in our spiritual evolution. The courage to be vulnerable about our spiritual struggles is the gateway towards more love and light, for that is the moment where we crack our hearts open and truly let God take over. It is the ultimate surrender, where we realize that small faith mixed with honesty is better than pretended perfect faith with deception. Like the father who cried out, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’—our honest, imperfect faith is exactly what Jesus can work with.
