Overcoming Unbelief

Overcoming Unbelief

The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” Mark 9:24

SOME OF JESUS’ DISCIPLES TRIED to cast an evil spirit out of a young boy, but nothing happened. Jesus made a remark about faithless people (Mark 9:19)—with no hint from the text whether he said this with an angry expression or a smile on his face—and asked them to bring the boy to him. The boy’s father begged for mercy and asked Jesus to help if he could. “If I can?” Jesus remarked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.” And the father responded with a statement almost every Christian can relate to: “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”

Yes, we have mixed measures of faith in our hearts. We believe—but we also wonder if what we believe is true. We declare things in faith and then grow anxious and fearful about the possibility of our faith going unrewarded. In this instance, the disciples had faith mixed with doubts; they wouldn’t have been trying to deliver the boy from the evil spirit if they didn’t believe it was possible. Yet Jesus called them “faithless.” In other words, by his standards, the only faith that’s real is pure faith. If it’s mixed with doubt, it isn’t truly faith.

Jesus did not rebuke the father who openly admitted his mixture of faith and doubt. God is merciful about such things. He knows our hearts and responds to faith the size of a mustard seed. But he wants our faith to be real. He continually urges us forward into the kind of faith that sees invisible things and will not be shaken by visible contradictions. He understands the journey we are on, and he applauds every step of faith we take, no matter how tentative. But he is pulling us, calling us, leading us into less tentative places. He is setting our spirit on more solid ground. He is conforming us to the image of Jesus, who absolutely insists that for those who believe—truly, purely believe—all things are possible.

Belief is a truth held in the mind. Faith is a fire in the heart.