“When they came to the crowd, a man
approached Jesus and knelt before him.
‘Lord, have mercy on my son,’ he said.
‘He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the
water. I brought him to your disciples,
but they could not heal him.’ ‘O
unbelieving and perverse generation,’ Jesus replied, ‘how long shall I stay
with you? How long shall I put up with
you? Bring the boy here to me.’ Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of
the boy, and he was healed from that moment.
Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, ‘Why couldn’t we
drive it out?’ He replied, ‘Because you
have so little faith. I tell you the
truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this
mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.’”
(Matthew 17:14-20)
One of the things that God desires most from us
is faith. The Hebrew writer declared,
“And without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 11:6) Faith is simple trust that God cares and that
He can and will move in our behalf and at our request.
The demon would not leave the boy when the
disciples tried, because they did not believe God would really do it. They went through the motions to drive the
demon out, but their hearts didn’t believe it would really happen.
How many times have we been guilty of the
same thing? How many blessings from God
have we missed because, though we asked, we did not really believe He could or
would move in our behalf?
It seems to me that those through whom God
has worked the most, even in our own day, are those who believe He can and step
forward as a result of that belief. They
are the ones who have faith and who exercise it!
I admit that I am not there a lot of times,
but that is where I want to be. In a
parallel passage in Luke, the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
(Luke 17:5) Will you pray that prayer
with me? “Lord, increase my faith.”
God loves you and He can and will do amazing
things in response to your faith.
His, by Grace,
Steve
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