My husband
and I went to an estate sale a couple of weeks ago. On the way, Adam pointed
out the street name on the opposite side—Whit’s End. He couldn’t help but notice the play on words.
He asked me jokingly, “How would you like
to live on ‘Whit’s End?’ ”
The truth
is, many couples feel like they are stuck in this precise spiritual location.
A lot of junk mail has piled up with their names on it. They have come to a dead-end in one or more areas of their lives and feel that
this must just be their permanent address. You may even feel like you have somehow let God down because of an apparent lack of faith. I have learned that we are often
harder on ourselves than God is. Jesus does not condemn you for not having
faith, He meets you just where you are so He can give you new faith.
One of my
favorite passages is in Mark 9, where the father of a son who was possessed by
a spirit since childhood approached Jesus. In verse 22, the father speaks, “It has often thrown him both in the fire and
into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and
help us!” In verse 23, Jesus responds to him, “‘If You can?‘ All things are possible to him who believes.” Keep in
mind, earlier the father had brought him to the disciples, but they could not
cast the spirit out. For years the father had experienced the emotional and
spiritual turmoil of raising a child with such an extreme infirmity. The father
was completely exhausted and exasperated. You could say, for all intents and
purposes, he had been living at his “wit’s end” for quite some time.
This Scriptural
account gives us insight into the enemy’s tactics in our lives. One of his
favorite schemes is to wear us down to such a point that doubt and unbelief
become a residual part of our spiritual makeup. The enemy knows that Jesus has
all authority—that is something he can never change. Therefore, his tactic is
to try to skew our perception of
Jesus. Notice the father’s words, “if You
can…” When the word “if” enters
through your mind in a negative package, you can be sure the author of that
thought is Satan himself. Remember in Matthew 4:6 when Satan tempted Jesus: “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself
down; for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning You’ and ‘On
their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not strike your foot
against a stone.’”
This is why
in Mark 9 Jesus had to address the father’s unbelief first. Satan had utilized
the passage of time, marked by disappointments and delay, to plant seeds of doubt
in the father. Jesus had the power to heal his son and the desire to heal him. Jesus wanted the father to first know Him
personally in His true identity—as the Son of God.
When the
father received this revelation, his response is powerful. In verse 24, the
father said, “I do believe; help my
unbelief.” At first read, you may think this is a contradictory statement.
If he believes, how can he have unbelief? But, if we were to be honest with ourselves,
we all know this is exactly how we have felt at different points in our lives.
Through the father’s statement, we glean a better understanding about faith.
·
Faith is not something that
originates in ourselves-
The father’s statement showed the spiritual dichotomy of human nature versus
God’s nature. He effectively was saying, I don’t have anything left in me that
even resembles faith, but You are God. He met Jesus as the Author and the
Finisher of his faith.
·
Faith given by God is multiplied in
His love- He believed that God was the source of all faith and
that through His infinite compassion, He could touch and heal His spirit of
unbelief and resurrect new faith in Him. As the father was seeking a physical
miracle for his son, the father received a parallel miracle in the Spirit. The
son was suffering from a physical condition that had “...often thrown him both
into the fire and into the water to destroy him.” Similarly, I would imagine
the father must have oscillated from the fiery anger of confusion to the drowning
waters of his emotional turmoil—both seeking to destroy the health of his soul.
After Jesus commanded the deaf and mute spirit to come out of the boy, verse 26
says, “After crying out and throwing him
into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a
corpse that most of them said, “He is dead!” Is that not exactly the scheme
of the enemy? He wants to get into your soul so that you will not hear (deaf
spirit) and not speak (mute spirit) God’s Word in faith. You may even feel spiritually
dead instead. Oh, how I love verse 27, “But Jesus took him by the hand and
raised him; and he got up.” No matter what you feel, or how it seems…BUT JESUS….
·
Jesus does not run out on us when our
faith runs out-
God knows that we cannot run today’s race with yesterday’s faith. He designed
it this way so that we would have fresh encounters with the Living God. Imagine
if you told your spouse, “Remember, I talked to you a month ago.” Many times,
we think, we have already prayed, so why bother to talk to God about it again.
More than anything, the Lord wants to draw us into intimacy with Him. He longs
to hear the voice that He created speak His Name. He wants to give us the
desires of our hearts, but we must first delight ourselves in Him.
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