Jesus said
unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are
possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child
cried
out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
(Mark 9:17-20,21-24)
The above deals with a father of a son beset by a dumb
spirit. The
father upon hearing that Jesus could heal his son cries out that he
believes …
but then adds that he has unbelief. Is this a contradiction? What a
strange
thing to say? Had the man changed his mind from belief to unbelief?
The definition of ‘believe’ can be found with Abraham
being strong in
faith and not in unbelief … being fully
persuaded. Here is the definition of what it means to believe. It
means to
be fully persuaded.
“And being
not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead,
when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of
Sara's
womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief;
but was strong
in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded
that, what
he had promised, he was able also to perform.”(Romans 4:19-21)
An
everyday example of being fully persuaded would be jumping out
of a fifty-story building. There would not be a person on this earth
that would
not be fully persuaded, that they would plummet to the earth under the
force of
gravity and be killed. Dear Reader, would you be fully persuaded that
if you
put your hand on a very hot stove that you would suffer bad burns? So
this is
what is means to believe … you would be 100% persuaded.
Now like
the father in Mark’s account, we all oscillate between belief
and unbelief. Abraham was strong in faith and obviously had 100% belief
and was
fully persuaded … he was 100% persuaded in THE HEART and
the mind.
Now we
read in Romans 14, there are people who are weak in faith, that
is, their faith consists not of being 100% fully persuaded IN THE
HEART.
Dear Reader, I think that may describe us all from time to time. We
read the
following scriptures:
Casting
care (1Pet
5:7); Careful
for nothing (Phil 4:6-8); All things work together for good
(Rom
8:28); Giving thanks always for all things (Eph 5:20); In
everything
giving thanks (1Thess 5:18); Sound mind (2Tim 1:7) and so
on.
Sometimes
we are fully
persuaded in the head at the truthfulness and certainty of these
verses, but
when everyday events happen, we may not be, and God seems a little
further away
as the heart might weaken.
Now we are
reminded
that without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6) and that
our faith
is based on our belief … so we can waver in our faith … that is to be
not fully
(100%) persuaded in heart and mind.
So we can
empathize
with the father in Mark’s account. When Jesus talked about healing his
son, he
was excited and said he believed and was fully persuaded … but then it
seemed
that the physical healing of his son was just a ‘pipe dream’.
The moral
of the story (as they say)
Dear
Reader, the scriptures are true. According to the dispensation of
Paul (Romans to Philemon) we are given instructions for Christian
living.
Sometimes we might just shake our head and say “I couldn’t do what’s
written
there! That’s impossible! I believe what is written as God doesn’t tell
lies,
but the gap between what is written and the reality of it coming to
fruition is
light years.”
Dear
Reader, let us be encouraged with the father’s dilemma in Mark’s
gospel. That is you and me in a nutshell. But this is what faith is and
how it
grows. God’s blessing to us, is to place us in impossible situations …
and then
try out hearts against what we read in his word.
Truly a
prayer that must be music to God’s ears is “Lord, I believe in
the head. Please help thou my unbelief in the heart”, and
in his
will, his way and in his time, God will get all the glory! God
loves to be
needed! He loves our dependency! (James 1:3; 1 Peter 1:7)
Harley
Hitchcock
This
website’s front page is:
www.
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The
scriptures Evolution Cults
