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Help Me Overcome My Unbelief!

 This is what the Lord says— your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.” (Isaiah 48:17)

I get it. It’s the temptation of Genesis 3 all over again. We would be like the Most High. We just have to distrust God and rely on our own perceptions and understandings. I know. I recognize the problem. We have our perceptions. We don’t have God’s. To trust God requires that we let go of what we have to accept the unknown. It’s a scary prospect. We’re being asked to buy a pig in a poke. Perhaps worse, we’re being asked to buy that pig in a poke when there’s another “perfectly acceptable” pig right in front of us and it looks pretty good. I mean, what if the thing in the poke isn’t even a pig?

That’s fallen human nature for you. But if we really trusted the person offering us the pig in the poke, we wouldn’t hesitate. I’m not suggesting that a moment’s hesitation to evaluate is a bad thing, it is a signal of which we should take notice. Fear and anger also signal a lack of trust.

So what’s our answer? The good Sunday School answer is, “Yes, of course God is the one who teaches us what is best for us. Of course He directs us in the way we should go. And those are what we want.” We know there’s no reason it shouldn’t be the answer. But more often, the best we can do is say, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark9:24b). And Jesus made it clear that He can work with that. It’s a learning curve that is sometimes steep.

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