Help my Unbelief

Isaac Watts might have known a thing or two about writing hymns. Another hymn of healing doubt. I was introduced to this hymn while enjoying Indelible Grace's Fifth Album: This song adapted to a modern folky treatment by Andrew Osenga. Man, Andy knows how to pick those gems to redo!:

1. How sad our state by nature is!
Our sin, how deep it stains!
And Satan binds our captive minds
Fast in his slavish chains
But there's a voice of sov'reign grace,
Sounds from the sacred word:
"O, ye despairing sinners come,
And trust upon the Lord."

2. My soul obeys th' almighty call,
And runs to this relief
I would believe thy promise, Lord;
O help my unbelief!
To the dear fountain of thy blood,
Incarnate God, I fly;
Here let me wash my spotted soul,
From crimes of deepest dye.

3. Stretch out Thine arm, victorious King,
My reigning sins subdue;
Drive the old dragon from his seat,
With all his hellish crew.
A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On thy kind arms I fall;
Be thou my strength and righteousness,
My Jesus, and my all.

Edwards and Newton: Battling Doubt

So do we merely accept doubt and unbelief? I was interested in searching for Edwards’ prescription for doubt and found it in his thoughts on those who take communion but have doubts:

“And though the pastor is not to act as a searcher of the heart, or a lord of conscience in this affair, ...but... to be helpers of their joy, and promoters of their salvation.”
-Qualifications for communion

And his Resolution 25: "Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it."

But how? Jay Bennett probably knows better as he has made Edwards the focus of his studies, but I like hymns, so Newton fills in the gaps vividly for me in "Begone Unbelief": look to Christ, not to your faith or will, by Christ is faith strengthened:

1. Begone unbelief, My Savior is near,
And for my relief Will surely appear:
By faith let me wrestle, with God in the storm
And help me my Savior, the faith to adorn

2. Though dark be my way, Since he is my guide,
'Tis mine to obey, and His to provide;
Though cisterns be broken, And creatures all fail,
The word he has spoken will surely prevail.

3. Why should I complain, Of want or distress
Temptation or pain? He told me no less
The heirs of salvation, I know from his word
Through much tribulation Must follow their Lord

4. Since all that I meet will work for my good,
The bitter is sweet, The medicine food;
Though painful at present, will cease before long,
And then, O! how glorious, The conqueror's song!

Doubt: Hymn for the week

"Why must holy places be dark places?" -C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

William Cowper lived a life to study. He wrote "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" and "Sometimes a Light Suprises." Some men's lives are read to know what great heights in faith may be reached (i.e. Paul and Adoniram Judson). Others are examined to know failure and depression are not the marks of a bad saint ( i.e. David Brainerd and William Cowper). Cowper lived a life painfully aware of his own inadequacies in depression, and even attempted suicide. John Newton and William Cowper began writing a hymnal together, but Cowper, due to his crushing depression, was unable to finish all of his half.

C.S. Lewis said we should not present ourselves to God as we should be, but as we truly are. Many times our modern songs tell us what we should feel. Cowper lets us know, we should not only tell God what we think He wants to hear, but admit to God our doubts so He can heal them like in this lesser known hymn/poem:

The Lord will Happiness Divine:

The Lord will happiness divine
On contrite hearts bestow;
Then tell me gracious God, is mine
A contrite heart or no?

I hear, but seem to hear in vain,
Insensible as steel
If aught is felt, tis only pain
To find I cannot feel.

I sometimes think myself inclined
To love Thee, if I could
But often feel another mind,
Averse to all that's good

My best desires are faint and few
I fain would strive for more:
But when I cry, "My strength renew",
Seem weaker than before

Thy saints are comforted, I know,
And love Thy house of prayer;
I therefore go where others go,
But find no comfort there.

Oh make this heart rejoice or ache;
Decide this doubt for me;
And if it be not broken, break,
And heal it, if it be.

Hear this hymn put to song once, in a decent way: here

In this Album

More on William Cowper from John Piper. (MP3)
On Battling Unbelief: Book by Piper

Doubt: The companion of faith

“I believe, help my unbelief.” - Mark 9:24


Many believers are told their doubt is not normal as a Christian. Doubt perhaps shows they really are not a Christian. To all those of little faith a Southern Baptist minister is quoted, at another site, as saying at the end of his sermon:

“If you’re not 100% sure that you are saved…if you are 99% sure, but have even 1% of doubt, then I want you to come forward this morning and repent. You need to rededicate your life to Christ.”


Sola fide run amok! Is faith binary: either a 0 or 1, either on or off? I thought to balance this quote with a little quotation on doubt I found illuminating in one of my classes. I will wait until the end to tell you who said it:

We ought not to seek any more intimate proof of this than that unbelief is, in all men, always mixed with faith. [cf. Luke 24:11-12] …While we teach that faith ought to be certain and assured, we cannot imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not assailed by some anxiety. On the other hand, we say that believers are in perpetual conflict with their own unbelief. …In the course of the present life it never goes so well with us that we are wholly cured of the disease of unbelief and entirely filled and possessed by faith. Hence arise those conflicts; when unbelief, which reposes in the remains of the flesh, rises up to attack the faith that has been inwardly conceived. But if in the believing mind certainty is mixed with doubt, do we always come back to this: that faith does not rest in a certain and clear knowledge, but only in an obscure and confused knowledge of the divine will toward us? Not at all! For even if we are distracted by various thoughts, we are not on that account completely divorced from faith. Nor if we are troubled on all sides by the agitation of unbelief, are we for that reason immersed in its abyss. If we are struck, we are not for that reason cast down from our position. For the end of the conflict is always this; that faith ultimately triumphs over those difficulties which besiege and seem to imperil it. (John Calvin, The Institutes 3.2.4,17,18)


Doubt is an evidence that there is a faith to doubt. While we chase assurance, we are all reminded to pray the prayer of Mark 9:24, “I believe, help my unbelief” for '100% total assurance' is a façade we might fake because we think we are supposed to, or a delusion we might imagine, but it is a fish we will never catch and demon we will never cast out this side of glory, when faith becomes sight. Though doubt is common, we still pray "help my unbelief."