Help My Unbelief!

“How long has this been happening?” Jesus asked the boy’s father. He replied, “Since he was a little boy. The spirit often throws him into the fire or into water, trying to kill him. Have mercy on us and help us, if you can.” Mark 9:21-22

FAITHLESS PEOPLE. We don’t want to think we fall into that category. We say that we’ve trusted Christ with our lives and deaths. But we find it so very hard to trust him with our children. We find it hard to trust his methods, his timing, and certainly his good purposes in what only looks bad to us.

It is difficult to imagine the sadness, the fear, and the weariness of the father of a son who couldn’t speak, a son who foamed at the mouth and ground his teeth. Ever since his son was small, an evil spirit would seize the boy and make him fall into a fire, seeking to burn him to death, or make him plunge into water, trying to drown him. This heartbroken father longed for a miraculous healing, but Jesus wanted him to want much more than that. Jesus wanted this distraught dad to put his full confidence in who he was and what he had come to do in the world. And he had come to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

“I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” the father replied when Jesus told him to put his complete trust in him. We’re glad these words are there for us, spoken by a father wearied by his long-term love for a child in the grip of forces over which he had no power. It was a simple prayer prayed out of spiritual weakness —a prayer that God always answers with a glad yes.

Lord, I easily become so focused on problems that I don’t see the bigger issue: my lack of faith in you. But your Word is helping me see that you are the source, not only for the intervention I long for, but for the faith I need to trust you for it. I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief. Show me the ways I simply want to use you without deeply and fully trusting you. As I feed on your Word, increase my confidence in your promised help and in your preordained plan for ________ and for our family. Like the father in this story, I come to you asking you to have mercy on us and to help us.