Help my unbelief
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
Repetition is vital to learning. Some of you may remember at school reciting aloud our “times tables” or writing out the word “necessary” fifty times (I hope I have spelt it correctly!). God never ceases to remind us to trust Him. In the 21st century He still expects us to live by faith. This trust in Him is not only for times of crisis but for every day of our lives. Trust is something which grows. As we learn to trust the Lord in ordinary circumstances, so we learn to trust Him in extraordinary circumstances.
We thought it was important that our daughter, Anna, learnt to swim when she was very young. As she grew more confident in the water, I invited her to jump from the side of the baths as I stood in the water, and I would catch her. She wasn’t convinced. She thought I would drop her. Until one day she decided to throw caution to the wind, and she jumped! And I caught her. Then she wanted to jump all the time. Trust is about a relationship. There is a joy in trusting God because it demonstrates our relationship with Him. It is the experience of throwing ourselves into the arms of God and discovering that
“The eternal God is your refuge,
And underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).
When we first came in all our need and in simple faith to the Saviour, we experienced the wonder of God’s love and peace and the joy it brought to our hearts. It is strange, then, that after such an experience, we would hesitate to trust the One who so transformed our lives. Yet this does happen. Often the Lord Jesus had to rebuke His disciples’ lack of faith. Their unbelief was irrational because they witnessed the power of the Saviour in every circumstance, yet when the storm came, or they faced a crowd of hungry people, their faith retreated. I have to confess to experiencing my faith fleeing in the same way.
In Mark 9 a father comes to the Lord to ask him to heal his mute son. He says, “But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (Mark 9:22). He just wanted help. I have noticed that often in public prayer, we use the expression, “Lord we just want…” Sometimes in our distress, we set our sights low; we only want some help. It seems we are uncertain about asking for more, probably because we don’t feel worthy or deserving. The Lord addresses this problem. And even though the father was so distressed, the Lord pressed him: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Why does the Lord sometimes add pressure when we are already under pressure? Because he wants to take us to the place of utter trust. This pressure produced the father’s powerful and honest response when he cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). The father expresses what it means to trust God. Twice he uses the word “help”. In Hebrews 4:16 we read: “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
The father had travelled in a short time from a place where he asked the Lord Jesus “if you can help” to throwing himself into the arms of God. Tears can express sorrow and also joy, and they also represent great need; we break down when we have a deep sense of our complete weakness. Trust is about sensing our weakness but, at the same time, appealing to the One who can answer all our need. The father recognised the Lord’s person and his power, and he believed in the Lord: “Lord, I believe.” But he also understood how fragile his faith was and how much he needed the Lord’s help to trust Him. We don’t think enough about this. Even when we are trusting, we worry that our faith will fail and we think everything depends on us. The power of the father’s faith was not only that he believed the Lord could heal his son, but that he called on the Lord to remove the unbelief his circumstances generated. It was a prayer that moved the heart of Christ; it still does.
