“Jesus said unto him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes. 24. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
While Jesus was on the “Mount of Transfiguration” with Peter, James and John, the other disciples were at the foot of the mountain awaiting their return. A father brought his demon-possessed son, who was having epileptic-like seizures, to be healed. The disciples tried to exorcise the demon, but were not able to do it. When Jesus arrived on the scene, the father approached Him about the situation. The verses above recorded the conversation. Jesus told the father what He would tell us – believe, have faith. The father’s answer is interesting: “I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” This is a painfully honest prayer, and if we are honest, there are times when we could say the same thing. We like to think that our faith in Jesus is complete and that we always have unmitigated faith. If your faith is strong all of the time and you do not ever need Jesus’ help with it, more power to you. The rest of us human Christians have to sometimes struggle with it. The fact is that Jesus knows where we are in our faith at any particular time, and He wants us to be honest with ourselves and with Him. If we are having a difficult time believing at a particular time, there is no greater help than the object of our faith - Jesus Christ. Those who never ask for help seldom get it. I want to point out that the father said, “with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” He brought his emotions into the matter. Have you noticed that we are emotional about what is important to us? When we come to Jesus, He looks into our hearts and determines the validity of our requests. I think that Jesus knew the man’s heart and knew that he was sincere, and that he really wanted to believe with all of his heart that Jesus could heal his son. The man’s call for help in his belief was not a hindrance to what Jesus could do, but a help. Like this father, we need to seek Jesus honestly with our whole hearts. Jesus knows the sincerity of our hearts. This doesn’t mean that we need to cry every time we talk to Jesus about our troubles, but it does mean that we should bring, not just our logical minds,into prayer, but that we should bring our hearts into it. At the same time, if we are struggling with believing that Jesus can do as we ask, we need to honestly confess it. In contrast, we need to consider the problem that the disciples had. They wanted to know why they couldn’t do exorcise the demon. Jesus answered them that, “this kind can come forth by nothing but prayer and fasting.” What Jesus means is that we cannot experience the power of God if we do not spend time in prayer on a daily basis. Jesus was telling these disciples, as He would tell us, that in order to really serve Him we need to spend time in prayer, and that we would be so involved in seeking Him that we would not even take the time to eat. In other words, Jesus was telling His disciples that they need to get “prayed up” if they were going to serve Him. We need to take heed to this admonition. In the final analysis, the boy was healed. The father’s honest prayer brought forth the power of God. In the mean time, the disciples learned a valuable lesson about the importance of prayer. I hope that we get it too. Bro. Joe
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
All
Archives
September 2021
|