God of Every Grace

I believe. Help my unbelief.

This is a refrain that exists in the heart of every true believer. This “world of sorrows” often “steals our hope away,” and gives us plenty of chances to wonder if this God-stuff is really real or not, if Jesus really does give an easy burden and light yoke, and if the Spirit of God really is a comforter. The world can weary us with its weight, and wear down our joy through lingering hardship.

I have seen this experience time and time again with the people I sit across from in the counseling room—dear people overcome by anxiety, living day-to-day life battling constant fear. Bruised reed souls burdened by depression, looking for some sense of hope and light when seemingly the only thing present in their experience day-to-day is sadness and grief. The scrupulous, tender conscience of the one battling OCD who finds that reading the Bible seems to bring more pain instead of relief when they read things like “my sheep hear my voice.”

These are the moments, along with a thousand others, where verses like “but He gives more grace,” or “my power is made perfect in weakness” find themselves on the proving ground of life. These are the seasons where we know in our experience that we really are “jars of clay,” fragile, earthen vessels that can be shattered and broken. These are the moments when we actually do come to the end of ourselves. And these are the exact moments where we find ourselves saying “I believe. Help my unbelief.”

The father whose son was harassed by an unclean spirit was certainly in a place like this. 

And it is at this moment that he had to risk faith in Jesus. He had to risk being let down. He had to risk things not being better and Jesus being a disappointment to him. And we will too.

The apostle Paul found himself in this place too. Though debate exists about what exactly his “thorn in the flesh was,” the thing we do know is that this “messenger of Satan” had brought Paul to the place of saying something like “please, can this stop.” 

God responds to Paul, and through Paul to us, by saying “my grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.” And the journey of faith is being able to respond the way that Paul does, from a place of faith and trust instead of cynicism. The only way this happens is by looking back and seeing the sustaining work of God in our lives that we may have missed. It is to quite literally re-collect your memories so that you start to believe that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. As you call to mind how God has indeed preserved you up to this point in your journey.

When you see this to be true, you will be able to join with Paul and say “therefore, I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” As you look back on your life and see the work of God, your faith will grow. And as your faith grows, your hope will grow. And when you have faith and hope, you are able to love. As your trust in God’s goodness grows, your trust that a good future is on the way for you will grow as well.

The psychologist Dan Allender says it this way, “Faith is hope for your past. Hope is faith for your future.” As the power of God is made perfect in your weakness, and you boast in His goodness, you honor Him. As you offer your honest plea to the God who catches all of your tears in His bottle, you honor Him. As you look to Jesus the Lamb who has saved you from the penalty and power of sin, you honor Him. As you worship Jesus for destroying the works of the devil, you honor Him.

This beautiful hymn helps us to remember. And by remembering we have hope that “after we have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called us to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”