Prayer to Repent for Doubt and Unbelief

Beloved, have you been through such hard times lately that you have lost your spiritual “roar”? Have you gotten so discouraged that you’ve allowed doubt and unbelief to creep in? If so, I believe the Lord has a word of comfort and restoration for you today.

I’ve been going through a hard time personally for quite awhile now, but the Lord really spoke to me about the link between doubt, unbelief, and REST today. Here’s the problem He showed me in His Word:

Doubt and unbelief will keep you poor and stressed out.

Of course, these are not the only things that will make you poor or stressed out. The world, unfortunately, is full of stressors that we all have to manage from day to day. Also, God’s Word has literally hundreds of financial principles that will make you wealthy–and failing to follow even one of them will cause you to miss out on great wealth, or even to become/stay poor.

But it’s certain that doubt and unbelief will keep you poor in every way:

• Poor financially;
• Poor in hope (in other words, feeling hopeless);
• Poor in joy (lacking joy);
• Poor in the area of not receiving a lot of answers to your prayers.

Here’s why:

The person who doubts cannot receive anything from the Lord.

We read this in James chapter 1:

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:2-8 NKJV).

Did you catch that little nugget that says, “he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord”?

You literally cannot receive anything from the Lord if you doubt or disbelieve Him.

Why? Because God honors faith. Whatever is not of faith is sin:

“… for whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23b).

And the Bible says we have to have faith to even approach God at all:

“But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6 NKJV).

The problem is that doubt and unbelief can sneak up on you without your even realizing it.

Here are three situations in which it’s easy to let doubt and unbelief overtake you, and you might never suspect that you’ve embraced them:

1. When someone is jealous of the results of your faith, and you want to preserve the relationship with that person.

If you’re in a relationship of any kind with someone who is jealous, envious, or insecure, they might want what you have. Even if they do the same things you have done to get what you have, they will still be jealous of you because of their insecurity–and because they have opened a door to the enemy in their life.

In that case, you might not realize it–but sometimes you could lose faith for your own prosperity, your own answered prayers, and your own promises fulfilled.

It’s not that you would ever suddenly say that you no longer believe God; it’s a subconscious thing.

When it becomes clear that your level of faith and blessing prevents you from being in a healthy relationship with the insecure person, sometimes it hurts. If you really love them, you might want to preserve that relationship (not realizing that it’s a toxic relationship!). And when your gut is reacting and trying to stop the destruction of the relationship, then sometimes you will subconsciously fall into doubt and unbelief.

Why? Because it’s your faith and obedience that got you into that level of blessing to begin with. Your so-called “friend” is jealous and insecure around you. So, subconsciously, your mind deduces that you can preserve the relationship if you go down a few notches in faith and blessing.

The only problem is, it’s a lie. Insecure people can’t have true relationships with you if you’re blessed and they’re jealous.

In fact, the insecure person needs to get healed to truly have any healthy relationships with anybody. Your allowing yourself to become poor and beaten down is not going to preserve your relationship. Your relationship with the insecure person is doomed because all of the insecure person’s relationships are, in some manner, doomed to either failure, challenge, or outright misery.

Insecure people don’t do relationships well–with anybody. There’s no need for you to descend to their level to try and preserve something that doesn’t really exist. You can love them all day long, but let them go. Only God can heal them. Enforce your boundaries, let them go, and keep walking in your blessings that come by FAITH.

2. When terrible things happen to you over and over, and you start feeling sorry for yourself.

Self-pity will take you down really quickly. And unfortunately, we all have things about which we could feel sorry for ourselves. But if we focus on the horrible things that happen to us, pretty soon we will begin feeling like only horrible things happen to us.

That’s why the Bible tells us to “feed” on God’s faithfulness:

“Trust in the Lord, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
Delight yourself also in the Lord,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:3-4 NKJV).

“Feeding” on God’s faithfulness means we are to remind ourselves over and over of how faithful He has been.

When you ponder and meditate on how good God has been every day …

• When you think about how He has always come through for you;
• When you remember all the times He provided for your needs, even though you didn’t know how He would or could even do it;
• When you remember how He works everything out for your good, no matter what foul things you encounter in your life;
• When you chew the promises of His Word over and over in your heart and mind …

… Then the faithfulness of God will become bread and meat and drink for your spirit, soul, and body. You will be encouraged and strengthened by His Word. And if you don’t feed on His faithfulness like this, you are more likely to establish a pattern of remembering only the difficult things you encounter, instead of God’s blessings.

In these situations, doubt and unbelief sneak in without our realizing it because we have legitimate reasons to feel sorry for ourselves.

However, we have to give up our right to feel sorry for ourselves in order to trust God and obey Him by counting it all joy. Remembering only the difficult things takes you down into doubt and unbelief fast, and you might not even notice yourself going there. But pondering the faithfulness of God will help you stay on the straight and narrow walk of FAITH.

3. When you take care of other people all the time, but no one takes care of you.

Whether you are physically caregiving (e.g. for an elderly parent or for a dependent child), or even if you are simply doing all the emotional caregiving in a one-sided relationship, you can get drained quickly. And when you get drained and no one else is caring for you, it can really impact your attitude.

In those situations, it helps me personally to spend extra time with the Lord and ask Him to nurture me. It also helps me to ask Him to manifest His tangible nurturing and caregiving to me. For example:

• If no one else is comforting you when times are hard, the Lord still will.
• When you’re at your lowest and no one is leaving any casseroles on your porch, God will provide the money for you to take yourself out to eat.
• If no one else is praying for you or encouraging you, ask Holy Spirit to encourage you–and ask Jesus to tell you what He is praying about for you. (Remember that He ever lives to make intercession for you, so He is praying for you right now–and He knows you best!)

It’s easy to go downhill into doubt and unbelief when times are hard. We often feel justified in doing so because times are legitimately difficult. However, we still have to do whatever it takes to get centered in Jesus again and stay grounded in faith.

Doubt and unbelief will also keep you stressed out.

Again, there are many, many things that can cause stress. This is not the only reason a person could be stressed out; DO NOT go around accusing people of being in doubt and unbelief if they’re stressed and tired.

But doubt and unbelief DO keep you from resting.

Check out a couple of key Scriptures about how doubt and unbelief keep you out of God’s rest:

“Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God” (Hebrews 3:12 NKJV).

And Hebrews 3:18-19:

“And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:18-19 NKJV).

Whoa! That hurts, right? The Israelites could not enter God’s rest because of their unbelief! And the revelations continue in Hebrews 4:

“Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:

“So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest,’”

although the works were finished from the foundation of the world” (Hebrews 4:1-3 NKJV).

We must mix our faith with the hearing of the Word in order for the Word to do us any good.

And finally, read this key passage in Hebrews 4:

“There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience” (Hebrews 4:9-11 NKJV).

These passages tell us seven crucial keys about doubt and unbelief and their impact on our rest:

1. Unbelief is evil;
2. Unbelief is disobedience;
3. Unbelief keeps you from entering into God’s rest;
4. Unbelief keeps you from accessing the works God finished for you before the foundation of the world;
5. You can still rest starting TODAY if you decide to believe God and obey His command to rest;
6. If you rest, you will no longer feel shackled by the weight of your responsibilities; and
7. We are to be DILIGENT to enter God’s rest.

I don’t know about you, but I got convicted about ten different ways when I studied these passages this morning.

One of my highest spiritual gifts is faith. I believe God; God is not a man that He should lie! And I learned long ago that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. As it says in Deuteronomy 8:2-3:

“And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 

So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:2-3 NKJV).

But beloved, I have to admit that the Lord showed me I had let doubt and unbelief in, and I didn’t even know I had done so!

All three of the situations above have happened to me for extended periods of time in the last year and a half:

• I dealt with a jealous and insecure person who was very important to me, and I lost my faith for big blessings because my big blessings made them more jealous and insecure–which impacted the way they treated me.
• Attack after attack has been levied at me from the enemy, and often I have felt like I was only cognizant of pain.
• I have poured out and poured out, but have often felt like there was no one to take care of me except God.

And because of all these reasons, I have struggled with despair. I have struggled with discouragement and depression. I have struggled with hopelessness and the spirit of death. I have struggled in many ways …

… And although I still believe God in my mind and choices, knowing that God would never fail me because I know Him that well and I’ve come too far to look back …

I confess to you today that I believed God in my mind and choices, but my heart ceased to roar over His Word in faith.

And although I never realized it, the Lord showed me today that this lack of ROAR in my faith is actually the seed of doubt and unbelief that I allowed in–and which was growing.

Beloved, I know this was the Lord convicting me of doubt and unbelief because, when I saw what He was showing me, I repented immediately. And immediately, my roar came back.

And with it, joy.

With joy, a flood of hope.

With hope and joy and roar, a smile made its way onto my face.

O beloved. With all the love in the world, I ask you today: Have you lost the roar of your faith too?

I ask you:

• Are you still choosing to obey and believe God in the big ways, but in the little ways have you lost your hope?
• Have you lost your faith that God IS coming through for you with miraculous power?
• Have you lost your ability to believe BIG, despite what anyone else thinks of your blessings and breakthroughs?

If so, would you join me today to pray this simple prayer and repent for doubt and unbelief?

Pray this with me:

“Dear Heavenly Father, I come to You in Jesus’ name.

Father God, You are good, and Your mercy endures forever. Thank You. I praise You for Your faithfulness and lovingkindness to me.

Abba Father, I confess that I have been harboring doubt and unbelief.

I have allowed the sins of self-pity and unthankfulness to get into my heart and life. I have failed to feed on your faithfulness, and have instead developed a thought pattern of remembering all the terrible things that have happened to me–and wondering why You let them happen.

Father, I confess that:

• In my inmost heart, I have come to feel like You do not care about me very much since You let these things happen.
• I confess that I have been feeling, and even telling myself, that You are treating me like some kind of celestial joke, where You let the wicked attack me and You do not come to my aid.
• I have not believed Your Word that You will work all things out for my good.
• I have despised Your many blessings without meaning to, for I have been thinking and telling myself and You that these things are not good enough.
• I have told myself that I will just have to fix things in the nonexistent power of my flesh, for You do not seem like You are doing anything to help me.
• I have even been jealous of the wicked who do not seem to encounter difficulties, while I belong to You and it seems that hardship is often my portion.

But Father, I confess that these things are all sin–and I repent of them right now.

Please forgive me for my doubt and unbelief. Please forgive me for going down into self-pity and unthankfulness. Please forgive me for despising Your many blessings, considering them not to be good enough.

Please also forgive me for doubting Your Word that says You will work all things out for my good. Please forgive me for failing to count it all joy when I fall into diverse trials and hardships. Please forgive me for believing in my heart of hearts that You will not come through for me, even though You always have–and even though You come through for others.

Father, I repent for every way I have embraced doubt and unbelief. I repent for every way I have let these things into my life. I repent for disobeying You, insulting You, despising You and Your faithfulness. I repent for my lack of gratitude and my own insecurity.

Please forgive me, Father. Cover me in the blood of Jesus. Wash me clean in every part of myself and fill me with Your Holy Spirit.

Father, I choose to believe You from now on:

• I choose to believe that You love me and are hiding me in the shadow of Your hand.
• I choose to believe that You will work ALL things out for my good.
• I choose to believe that You are alive and You want me to prosper; that You take pleasure in the prosperity of Your servant. I am Your servant and Your child, and You take pleasure in prospering me.
• I choose to believe Your Word that You have plans for me: plans to prosper me and not to harm me; plans to give me hope and a future.
• I choose to believe that my future is full of hope, not failure.
• I choose to believe that my past is under the blood of Jesus, and all my sins are forgiven me in Him.
• I choose to believe that You are going to help me, and are right now helping me, in every challenge I face.
• I choose not to worry or fret, but to in all things with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make my request unto God–and Your peace, which passes all understanding, will guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

Father God, I enter into Your rest today.

Please restore my peace, joy, hope, optimism, power, and faith by Your Holy Spirit. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. Give me more “roar” and more holy sense of expectation than I’ve ever had before. Thank You, Father. I give You all the praise.

In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”

Friend, did you pray this prayer to repent for doubt and unbelief today?

If you did, could you feel Holy Spirit moving in your heart as you prayed? How do you feel now? Leave a comment below–and choose to embrace faith today!