Prayer and Fasting: The Cure for Unbelief

Prayer and Fasting: The Cure for Unbelief
There's a passage in Mark 9 that confronts me differently depending on where I am in life.
The disciples had tried to cast a demon out of a young boy and couldn't. Jesus stepped in and delivered him. Afterward, the disciples asked privately, "Why couldn't we drive it out?" Jesus answered, "This kind can come out by nothing but prayer."
Andrew Murray, in With Christ in the School of Prayer, connects that moment to something easy to overlook: prayer and fasting aren't just spiritual disciplines. They're a declaration of dependence.
Which raises a hard question. What if the biggest obstacle to our prayer life isn't that we don't know how to pray? What if it's that we don't really believe we need to?
The Problem Beneath the Problem
We tend to treat prayer as something we add to an already busy life — we pray when we need something, when someone's sick, when a decision is too big to handle alone.
But Murray pushes us further. Prayer isn't just what we do when we run out of options. Prayer is the acknowledgment that we were never sufficient in the first place.
That's where unbelief quietly creeps in. We believe God is powerful. We believe He answers prayer. And yet we can live as if everything ultimately depends on us — planning, strategizing, building, organizing, solving — and then asking God to bless what we've already decided to do.
That's not dependence. That's independence with a prayer attached to it.
Fasting Makes Dependence Visible
This is part of why fasting matters so much. It interrupts our normal patterns of self-sufficiency. When we fast, we're saying, "God, I need You more than I need this."
We lay something down — not because it's evil, but to remind our souls what's actually necessary. Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone." Fasting creates space to remember that.
It also gets uncomfortable fast. We discover how quickly we reach for something other than God. How easily we get distracted. How badly we want our circumstances to change without letting God change us. How much we crave control.
And underneath all of that, we discover how much we need faith.
Prayer Is the Cure for Unbelief
Murray's insight here is profound: prayer is one of God's primary tools for dealing with the unbelief still living in our hearts — not because prayer is a technique, and not because the right words convince God to act, but because genuine prayer brings us into the presence of the God we claim to believe in.
Prayer turns theology into experience.
I can say "God is faithful" — but prayer gives me the chance to actually trust His faithfulness. I can say "God provides" — but prayer forces me to bring my need before Him. I can say "God is sovereign" — but prayer requires me to surrender my grip on the outcome.
Prayer moves faith from something I believe in my head to something I practice with my life. Fasting intensifies that movement.
Stop Trying to Make It Happen
This is especially challenging for those of us who lead. We're trained to make things happen — identify problems, build solutions, set goals, measure results, work harder. None of that is wrong. But there's a real danger for anyone leading God's people: we can get so good at doing God's work that we forget it can only be accomplished by God's power.
That's why prayer matters so much. It reminds me the Kingdom of God isn't built by human strength. Only the power and provision of God can build the Kingdom of God. Fasting reinforces that same truth: I am not in control. I cannot manufacture spiritual life. I need God.
That's not weakness. That's faith.
"Lord, I Believe; Help My Unbelief"
There's another line in Mark 9 that lands deep — the boy's father says to Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief!"
That might be one of the most honest prayers in all of Scripture. It's a prayer for people who believe and still struggle. Who trust God and still have questions. Who know His character but fear what's ahead. And Jesus doesn't reject that father. He meets him right there.
Maybe that's where some of us need to start — not pretending, not manufacturing stronger faith, not hiding behind religious language, but simply saying, "Jesus, I believe. Help my unbelief."
What If We Became a People of Prayer?
I've been thinking a lot lately about what it would actually look like for a church to become a house of prayer — not just a church with prayer meetings, but a people whose lives are marked by dependence. A church that prays before it plans. That prays when things are going well, not just when they're falling apart. That fasts because it knows there are things human effort simply cannot accomplish. That actually expects God to move.
That kind of prayer changes us. I believe it changes churches, too.
Maybe the Miracle Begins With Dependence
We often ask God for the miracle. But sometimes the first miracle He wants to perform is inside of us — moving us from independence to dependence, from self-confidence to God-confidence, from striving to surrender.
Prayer and fasting don't manipulate God into doing what we want. They position us to recognize that He is God, and we are not.
We don't need another strategy. We need to pray. We need to seek. We need to surrender. And when we discover our faith is weak, we don't have to hide it — we can pray the same prayer as that desperate father: "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief."
Because the cure for unbelief isn't trying harder to believe. The cure for unbelief is encountering the God who is worthy of our trust. And prayer is where that encounter begins.
— Pastor Travis Young Lead Pastor, Frontier Church Advancing the Gospel into New Frontiers