Warning: long post today! Those pop up every once a while...hang in there - shorter ones back on Mon! I would love your feedback on this...for good or bad!
Scripture of the Day: Mark 9:22b-24
"...But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”
23 “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.”
24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
A verse I have pondered over long and hard is Mark 9:24. It
is a story most are familiar with, a father has a demon possessed child and is
at the end of his rope. The father not only questions Jesus, he bring up belief and unbelief. How do those things work together? I
think I understand what the man is going through because I go through it on almost
a daily basis.
I believe that God created heaven and earth. I believe He
can move mountains. I believe He can perform miracles.
The unbelief comes in because I don’t always believe he
would do them for me! This father seems to be in the same boat. He believes in God, I think
he knows who Jesus is – and even that he can work miracles. I don’t think he
can fathom that the Lord would step in and do those miracles for him – or he
doesn’t dare to hope that much. I think that’s why he opens with “If you can do
anything.”
He knows Jesus COULD, he just doesn’t know if he will…and
therein lies my struggle with lots of thing. I don’t think he is questioning if
Jesus CAN heal his child, he is questioning if it is in God’s will for it to be
done.
Because of belief and unbelief battling it out in my head, I
pray conditionally. “God, please do ____ (the big thing). But if You don’t,
please grant peace and comfort to ____ as they struggle.” At the bottom line
most of the time, it goes back to that belief that he could do the
healing/granting/relief/etc, but I have unbelief that He will, so I tone it
down and then ask for a lesser thing. Mainly so I’m not disappointed when the
big thing doesn’t happen.
How do I fix this dichotomy? This morning, God is telling me
it all comes down to grace. As Scripture tells us in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it
is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it
is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
So grace, this getting of something amazing that I did not
deserve, came about as a gift from God. If I believe my life (which is a very big thing) can be
saved through grace, grace can also apply to everything I pray about. If we
revisit the story in Mark, the disciples later ask Jesus why they could not drive the
demon out and Jesus responds with, “This kind can come out only by prayer.”
We need to pray for the big things. We need to pray in
belief that the Lord of all can grant our prayers. We need to get over the
unbelief that he won’t answer prayers because we are not worthy of it or
because he doesn’t want to.
In a weird way I am looking at this new of praying as “praying
with grace.” It’s like saying, “Thank you God for saving me with grace. Because
of this, I am going to pray to you for everything, regardless of what I think I
‘deserve,’ or what I think you will or won’t do to intervene in the lives of
people down here. I am going to trust that You can do all things and show me
what to pray for as continue to bring me closer to You.”
When you pray with grace, you pray big and you pray hopeful
and you pray in faith that he can DO IT. When you pray with grace, you don’t
place a “but…” or an “if not…” in your prayer. When you pray with grace, you
pray with your whole heart because you believe
in the God you are talking to.
So let us thank God for the grace He has given us, grace in
multiple ways, and let us get over our unbelief!
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