"Help Me Overcome My Unbelief"

Scripture: Mark 9: 22-24
"But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”
“ ‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

Observations:
These verses are found within the story of a father who brings his son to Jesus because he is possessed by an impure spirit that is causing him to have convulsions and hurt himself.  There are four huge concepts packed into these three little verses:

• Doubt- Both times the Father speaks, he qualifies his statement with unbelief.  Obviously, faith in Jesus doesn't come easy for him.  He asks for help, not out of assurance, but out of desperation.  Jesus was his last resort.
• "But IF YOU CAN do anything."
• "Help my UNBELIEF."
• Faith- In those same two sentences, the father shows that he has just enough faith to keep asking. If he'd had no faith at all, he wouldn't have bothered to bring his son to Jesus.  And so even though he was asking out of desperation, he still had the tiniest mustard seed of faith… enough to keep asking.
• "Take pity on us and help us."
• "I do believe."
• Truth and grace- Right here, Jesus does exactly what Jesus always does.  He shows the fullness of his truth by pointing out to the man that healing is going to come through faith.  He says, "Oh I know its hard to believe.  But I need you to trust me if this is going to work."  But then he shows the fullness of his grace too.  Because even though the dad was doubting at least as much, maybe more, than he was believing, Jesus healed his son anyway.  Just like Jesus always does, he says, "Here's the truth about your sin.  But there's no condemnation because I am offering you grace."

Application:

Did you catch that?  The father was doubting and Jesus healed him anyways.  I can relate to the guy in this story.  A couple of years ago, I had a major faith crisis.  It's hard for me to even talk about still because it was so scary and to be honest, my human side continues to feel shame over it even though I know the Lord has covered it.  

I had grown up in church, and for the most part, I had always had a very childlike faith.  If the Bible tells me so, I believed it.  And the really strange thing to me at the time was that I had just gotten involved at Faith Promise when this happened.  After a period of irregular attendance and generally being disconnected at my old church, I felt like the Lord had picked me up and dropped me in the middle of Faith Promise.  I was growing, seeking, being fed.  

But then I had a conversation with someone one day who expressed to me doubts about God. This person is someone I love very much and who loves me.  My friend's purpose of this conversation was not to make me question.  Instead, the intention was just to be honest with me about some of the beliefs that person had begun to question due to science and history and such.  

But for some reason, when I went home that night, all of those doubts were swirling around in my head.  I cannot describe the amount of fear I had for the next couple of days.  I started wrestling with questions of faith that I had never dealt with before.  I seriously felt like I was surrounded by this dark, heavy "something" and couldn't get it off of me.

One night I was laying in bed, pretty much just freaking out, and I said to my husband, "But how do we know???"  And he, in his laid back, easy way of speaking said, "Right now, your just going to have to decide that believing is a better option than not believing and make the choice to believe."  And suddenly the darkness started lifting.  I was just about out of faith when suddenly the momentum switched.  I didn't realize it at that moment but what I was basically saying was, "I do believe.  Help me overcome my unbelief."  And just like Jesus did with the father in this story, he did with me.  He acknowledged my unbelief but in his grace, began restoring my faith.

That was the turning point.  I had a long way to grow from there though.  Sine then, the Lord has put one thing after another in my path to strengthen that mustard seed of faith.  

• I went back over my own story and counted all the times that the Lord had intervened and worked things out in my life.  There are lots!  So many that it would be really hard to discount those as coincidences.
• I listened to other people's stories and gained strength from their faith.  (Small groups are so important.)
• I read Beth Moore's Believing God which made a HUGE impact on me because it gave me a mental script for when doubts start to push their way in again. "God is who he says he is.  God can do what he says he can do.  I am who God says I am.  I can do all things through Christ.  God's word is alive and active in me.  I'm believing God."
• I watched Andy Stanley's Starting Point message series which basically invites you to press the reset button on your faith and allow the Lord to rebuild it from the foundation up.
• I started reading up on creation apologetics and realized that for every science or history fact that tries to disprove anything, there is hard evidence to the contrary.  
• I learned to not only believe in God but also acknowledged that there is a very real enemy who is working to destroy anything that is godly.  And I now see that this whole faith crisis was an attack.  Before, I was so afraid to acknowledge the existence of the enemy because I thought I would be opening myself up for an attack when actually just the opposite was true.  Pretending he didn't exist made me an easy target because I wasn't watching out for him.  And so as soon as I got plugged in and started being effective for the Lord, the enemy tried his best to choke me out (Matthew 13:7).  The Lord has taught me over and over, through sermon series, small group discussions, and just conversations, the importance of being on the lookout (1 Peter 5:8).  

I share all this because during the Godfidence series at FpStudents, I know lots of really hard questions are being asked.  I know it is really scary to try to defend your faith.  I know some of you wish we just wouldn't talk about the "whys" of believing.  But if anyone is in the middle of this same wrestling match, I would say to you exactly what my husband said to me, "Right now, your just going to have to decide that believing is a better option than not believing and make the choice to believe."  I encourage you to cry out just like the father in this story, "I do believe.  Help me overcome my unbelief."  Because I can tell you from experience: GOD IS FAITHFUL.  He WILL help you overcome it.

Prayer:

Dear Lord, I thank you so much that you've brought me this far.  I thank you that when I was in the pit of unbelief, you acknowledged my mustard seed of faith and in your grace pulled me up out of there.  Lord, I pray that anyone reading this who might be struggling with faith would be encouraged to cry out to you.  You are our ONLY source of hope.  I pray that you would just empower this reader with your hope and grow his/her faith from there.  In Jesus' name!  Amen!

CONFIDENT in this…

Miranda