Help My Unbelief

GETTING STARTED

In today’s passage, Jesus, Peter, James, and John come down from the amazing mountaintop experience and step right into a real-life drama. Real life is sometimes a pain. It’s disappointing, frustrating, and confusing. We seek out times of rest, vacation, self-fulfillment, and excitement only to come back to real life and the disappointments found therein. All of us let those real-life circumstances distract us and cloud our vision of the power and love of Jesus AND what he wants to accomplish through us. In spite of all our disappointments and doubts, God invites us to have faith, to pray, to trust HIM for the power to live even in the doldrums of real life.

READ THE WORD: MARK 9:14-29 (ESV)

¹⁴And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. ¹⁵And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. ¹⁶And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” ¹⁷And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. ¹⁸And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” ¹⁹And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” ²⁰And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.²¹And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. ²²And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” ²³And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” ²⁴Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” ²⁵And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” ²⁶And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” ²⁷But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. ²⁸And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” ²⁹And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

DIGGING DEEPER

RESPOND TO GOD

I think the disciples looked back on this episode as a “duh” moment in their lives—they got wrapped up in a false sense of a personal adequacy to do a work that only Jesus could do and missed the opportunity to walk by faith. The boy’s father, however, came with an honest faith, confessed his inadequacy to care for his son, and acknowledged that his faith was as exhausted and weak as his son’s body was about to be (vs. 26). The father then saw great things happen from the hand of Jesus!