I Believe!

Here is yet again another post about faith and doubt. I have often considered when I will be “finally” done with posting about faith and I feel that I never will. Faith is one of those things that is essential to the Christian life yet misunderstood and I feel that I will always be finding out new things. However Paul rates faith along with hope below love on the scale of importance so perhaps I should be writing about love more often. Back to the post, one prayer I would pray in my “search for faith” (among other things) came from Mark 9:24 “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.” I’ve said a lot about what C.S. Lewis says and St. Augustine say about faith, but here is the principle straight from the Bible. Time for some background, basically what happened is a man had a very sick son and was desperate after the disciples couldn’t heal him, so he came to Jesus and said “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” If you can? Imagine what Jesus’ response could have been “If I can? Do you know who I am?” But let’s see what His response was “If you can? Everything is possible for him who believes.” So basically Jesus is saying “Hey I can do it…if you’ll believe it.” Now on to the nature of the man’s reply, I believe but help me overcome my unbelief. That is, I think, the best response to doubt. He didn’t give up thinking ‘Oh this’ll never work’ instead he brought it out into the open and sought help, not certainty. The man didn’t ask Jesus to make him certain that He could heal his son, he asked Jesus to help him overcome his doubts, to take a leap of faith. Everyone has doubts, but the key to faith is not to get rid of them, but to overcome them; to say that although they exist they won’t get in the way of my belief. This man was standing before Jesus and he had doubts, but instead of running away he asked for faith, and the perseverance to overcome his unbelief.