Verse: Mark 9:24
Immediately the father of the child
cried out and said with tears,
“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
If you are
struggling to believe that God can take care of your need, it is because you
don't know Him as He wants you to. Go to Him and allow Him to convince you of
His ability to meet every need you will ever face.
The attitude
of trust and confidence that the Bible calls belief or faith (Hebrews
11:1,6 ) is not something we can obtain without help. Faith is a gift
from God (Ephesians 2:8,9 ). No matter how much
faith we have, we never reach the point of being self-sufficient. Faith is not
stored away like money in the bank. Growing in faith is a constant process of
daily renewing our trust in Jesus.
Application:
Faith does not come from ignorance. Faith is based on what we know.
Before we will
trust others with something precious to us, we first try to find out if they
are trustworthy. This father was asking that he might come to know God in such
a dimension that he could trust Him to cure his son.
His son had
been possessed by an evil spirit since early childhood. The father did not know
Jesus well, but he had heard and seen enough to convince him that if there was
any hope for his son, it lay with Jesus. In desperation he cried out to Jesus
for help. Jesus’ response was to heal his son. The desperate father had
correctly gone to Jesus with his problem even though he was struggling with his
faith.
When you are
struggling to believe, that is not the time to avoid Christ or to be ashamed of
your struggle. You will never increase your faith by not going to Jesus!
Rather, Jesus wants to help you with your belief. He can not only meet your need,
but He will also give you faith to trust Him to provide for you.