The Crushing Weight of 'Just Believe'
Imagine being a wrestler pinned flat on your back under the dead weight of a two-hundred-and-eighty-five-pound opponent. The breath is being driven from your lungs. Your vision is blurring. And up in the top row of the bleachers, someone who hasn't broken a sweat in a decade cups their hands around their mouth and yells, 'Stand up!' Down on the mat, you hear them. You know they are technically right. You know standing up is exactly what you are supposed to do. But their advice is utterly useless, because they are fundamentally underestimating the sheer weight of what is crushing you. When you are suffocating, you don't need a cheerleader; you need oxygen. You don't need someone telling you the rules of the match; you need a rescue.
I think this is exactly how we feel when we are drowning in the deep end of life and someone well-meaning pats us on the shoulder and says, 'Just trust God.' It makes you want to scream. You want to look at them and say, 'I would love to, but I have just had to lay off fourteen employees who have families to feed. I would love to, but the doctor just called back, and the scan isn't clear. I would love to, but I am staring at a shattered marriage and an empty house.' Trying to figure out how to believe in God when you don t feel His presence is not a theoretical theological exercise. It is a brutal, exhausting, hour-by-hour survival mechanism. You are trying to find a heartbeat in a chest that feels completely hollow.
When the disciples watched Jesus interact with the rich young ruler, they saw a man walk away sorrowful because the cost of following Christ was too high. They realized how difficult, how utterly shattering it is to let go of our earthly securities and step into the unknown. They looked at Jesus and asked the most honest question in the Gospels: 'Who then can be saved?' They were essentially asking, 'If it's this hard, how can anyone possibly do it?' Jesus didn't offer them a cliché. He didn't tell them to just try harder or muster up better feelings. He looked them in the eye and acknowledged the absolute impossibility of the task on human terms. He gave them permission to admit that they couldn't do it on their own.
And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.— Luke 18:27, KJV
When the Cross Feels Louder Than the Empty Tomb
One of the cruelest aspects of suffering is the silence that often accompanies it. When you are desperately trying to hold onto faith in hard times, the enemy of your soul does not fight fair. He waits until you are exhausted, until you are vulnerable, and then he sends the mockers. Sometimes the mockers are people around you; more often, they are the voices inside your own head. They look at your broken life, wag their heads, and whisper, 'Where is your God now? If He loved you, why are you in this hospital room? If He is real, why did He let them walk out on you?' It is a devastating psychological assault designed to make you abandon ship just before the rescue arrives.
If you have ever heard those voices, I want you to know that you are in holy company. Jesus Himself heard those exact same taunts. When He was nailed to the wood at Golgotha, His back shredded and His lungs collapsing, the world stood by and demanded a magic trick. They wanted a God who would bypass the pain. They wanted a God who would prove His power by making the suffering instantly vanish. They looked at the bleeding Savior of the world and told Him that if He was truly who He said He was, He should tear His hands from the nails and come down. They equated His suffering with His illegitimacy.
But Jesus didn't come down. He stayed on the cross. He endured the suffocating darkness, the unimaginable physical agony, and the terrifying spiritual separation from the Father. He let the darkness do its absolute worst, so that the darkness would never have the final say over your life. When you cannot find the strength to believe, look at the cross. We often want a God who will come down from the cross and instantly fix our bank accounts, heal our bodies, and erase our grief. But sometimes, love looks like staying. He stayed in the pain to prove that His silence is not His absence. He knows exactly what it feels like to be broken in the dark.
And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.— Matthew 27:40, KJV
Walking in the Dark When You Can't Feel the Light
So what do you do right now? What do you do on a Tuesday morning when your heart is heavy, your mind is numb, and you literally do not have the emotional capacity to believe? You stop trying to manufacture a feeling. Faith is not a warm, fuzzy sensation of absolute certainty. Faith is putting one foot in front of the other when you are completely in the dark. It is walking toward something you are hoping for, without even knowing if it is possible anymore. You don't have to feel it to trust God. You just have to keep showing up.
Think of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary going to the tomb at dawn. They were not walking up that hill with triumphant faith, singing songs of resurrection. They were carrying spices to embalm a corpse. Their faith was shattered. Their hope was dead. They had watched the man they believed to be the Messiah suffocate on a Roman cross, and now they were just going through the agonizing motions of grief. They were showing up to a graveyard in absolute unbelief. Yet, Jesus did not rebuke them for bringing burial spices to an empty tomb. He met them there. He met them in their grief, in their confusion, and in their lack of faith.
You do not need perfect faith to find Him; you just need to keep walking toward Him, even if you are carrying nothing but your doubts and your pain. When your feelings lie to you, when your circumstances scream that it is over, you must anchor your soul to something heavier than your current reality. Your feelings will change. Your circumstances will shift. The crushing weight you feel today will eventually lift. But the Word of the Lord is an immovable rock in the center of a raging storm. When you have nothing left, hold onto what He has spoken. His promises do not require your emotional cooperation to be true.
Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.— Mark 13:31, KJV
If you are reading this today and your spiritual hands are empty, hear me: you are allowed to be tired. You are allowed to be angry, confused, and numb. Stop trying to force yourself to feel a faith you do not currently possess. Instead, just give Him your unbelief. Hand Him the shattered pieces of your hope and let Him hold them for you. He is strong enough to carry your doubts, and He is merciful enough to sit with you in the dark until the dawn finally breaks. You don't have to hold onto Him perfectly today; you just have to let Him hold onto you.