Faith & Doubt in Prayer
It is impossible to talk about prayer without also talking about faith and doubt. The two are bound up with prayer in Scripture and in our experience. The extreme ends of our struggle in this area are reflected in two key passages. One is the extravagant promise of Jesus in Mark 11:22–23. The other is the sober warning in James 1:6–7. The statement of Jesus emphasizes faith’s potential to a seemingly limitless degree. With faith, anything is possible. “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,” Jesus assures us.
James looks at the same prospect from a different angle. Instead of focusing on what God can do through faith, he warns of the undermining effect of doubt. “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you,” he assures. “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:6–7). James calls the person who doubts double-minded and unstable.
It is hard for me not to feel caught between these two Scriptures. On the one hand, as encouraging as the promise of Jesus is to us, it creates an expectation for the results of prayer that does not seem to match my experience. This does not shake my trust in God so much as it erodes the confidence I have in my own faith. Jesus’s promise seems to place pressure on the outcome of my praying. I review the answers to my prayers, trying to determine whether they rise to the standard of Christ’s “whatever you ask for.” Does the fact that they do not mean that my faith was deficient? It is a little like investors who read the quarterly statement and second-guess their choices. Would the answers have been better if I had prayed differently?
If Jesus’s promise causes me to question my prayers after the fact, the warning of James 1:6–7 makes me worry about them at the outset. James seems absolute. If you doubt, don’t expect to receive
anything from God. But if by doubt, he means someone who sometimes wonders whether God is going to grant their request, then I am afraid that I am often guilty. Jesus’s promise may lead me to have unrealistic expectations of God, and James makes it sound like God has unreasonable expectations of me. Either way, it is hard for me to come to prayer without a certain amount of doubt.
However, the problem on both sides of this equation is not really with God. It is with me. I have put the wrong figure at the center. In either instance, I think that my prayer’s answer is more dependent upon me than it is upon God. This is certainly not where Jesus begins. His primary assertion is not “trust in your faith” but “have faith in God” (cf. Mark 11:22). Prayer’s vast potential springs from a faith that is placed in God. The “whatever” potential of prayer is not because the one who prays has the potential to accomplish whatever he or she might want but because God can do whatever he pleases (Job 23:13; Psalm 115:3). Faith is the foundation of all that we do in the Christian life. Our Christian life begins in faith when we receive the righteousness of Christ as a gift by faith. As Paul explains in Romans 1:17, it is a righteousness that is altogether by faith.
Still, there are times when our faith does waver. Perhaps it is the nature of the request that gives us pause. We are overwhelmed by the problem and have difficulty seeing a solution. Or it may be a concern that is so long-standing that we have begun to lose hope. I admire the heroes of faith in church history and Scripture, but I most identify with those who struggled with doubt.
As much as I would like my prayers to be bold confessions of unshakable faith, they are more like the halting pleas of the father who described the suffering of his demon-tormented child to Jesus and said, “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us” (Mark 9:22). Jesus seems to rebuke the father for his lack of faith. “If you can?” Jesus says. “Everything is possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23). The man’s weakness was his view of Jesus. He questioned Jesus’s ability to do what was asked. In turn, Jesus demanded faith at the focal point of his doubt. He called upon the man to believe, not so much in the possibility of healing, but in him.
The father responded with honesty. The fact that he had come to Jesus with his son in the first place suggests that he must have possessed a measure of faith, but like the doubter of James 1:8, he was of two minds in the matter. Jesus’s tone may seem unnecessarily harsh, but the father’s response shows that it had the intended effect. Instead of turning inward to try and find more faith, the father looks to Jesus for help. “Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’ ” (Mark 9:24).
Jesus did not speak this way to the boy’s father to humiliate him but to open his eyes to the nature of the problem. This is Jesus’s pattern with all who struggle with faith. He does not drive us away but challenges us to press in further. Great faith is admirable, but according to Jesus, we do not have to wait until we become giants in faith to pray. Begin with the faith that you have, even if it is only the size of a mustard seed. According to Jesus, that will be enough (Matt. 17:20).
This is an adapted excerpt from chapter 9 of When God Is Silent: Let the Bible Teach You to Pray by John Koessler (Lexham Press, 2023).
John Koessler is an award-winning author and retired faculty emeritus of pastoral studies at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of Dangerous Virtues, Practicing the Present, The Surprising Grace of Disappointment, and now When God Is Silent. You can find his blog and podcast at JohnKoessler.com.