In Mark 9, a father in great distress brought his son who was oppressed by a demon spirit to Jesus. He asked the disciples of Jesus to cast the demon out which they were unable to do. When Jesus came along, the father begged Jesus to help them. He told Jesus that his son had been oppressed by the demonic spirit since he was a child. In a heartfelt cry, he made an agonizing plea to Jesus. He cried, “Lord I believe, please help my unbelief.”
I for one can relate to this father’s dilemma of seeking Jesus in faith, but yet being bombarded with doubt. Feeling the paradox of truly believing and yet at the same time wish your faith was stronger. In studying this passage recently, I asked our congregation how many of them could relate to this father’s struggle and every single hand went up. Then we saw that the very “heroes of faith” of the Bible fought this same battle. We looked at Gideon in Judges where an angel of the Lord came to him to tell him he had been selected by God to deliver his people from the Midianites. The angel addressed him as a “mighty man of valor”, but Gideon gave excuse after excuse that God must have the wrong man. He told the angel that surely, he had made a mistake because due to his personal and family circumstances, someone else would be needed. The angel assured him that he was God’s guy and then Gideon began to ask God for signs that he truly was the one. It took three signs and a confession by his enemy to prove that God truly meant what he said and the rest is history as they say. We, like Gideon, unwisely ask God for signs when he gives direction. We believe, yet we have our doubts.
We also looked at Peter as he got out of the boat at Jesus’s command and began to walk on the water. Yes, Peter, a man, walked on water- until he saw the wind and waves of the storm all around him and he began to sink. Sinking, he cried out, “Jesus save me” and Jesus did. We see that Peter had faulty focus! He took his eyes of Jesus and put them on his circumstances and my Christian friends, we do the same thing. We let our problems become bigger in our sight than our mighty God and we sink, yet Jesus saves us.
Finally, we looked at John the Baptist. Jesus said there was no greater man born of woman than John. He was the forerunner, a voice crying out in the wilderness, a mighty prophet of God who declared “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Yet this mighty man of God would find himself in a dark prison cell where his expectations of Jesus were not meant. He would literally question if Jesus was really the Messiah. Jesus, not offended at his questioning, assured John that he was. Like John, pain and suffering can cloud our vision. There are many other examples for us and we know that we can all cry out with the father in our first story, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!”
