Saturday 27 October 2007

Saturday Reading: Mark 9:14-29
 
Key Verse: Mark 9:24
24  And immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.
 
Devotion:
There are many times in our lives when we feel totally helpless; no matter what we try to do, nothing seems to work or go our way. We feel like there is nobody helping us or willing to help us – And yet there is... What is failing to help us is our lack of faith or our unbelief. We may think that we are strong Christians and that we have God on our side all the time, or we may feel like we are weak Christians, bending all the rules and not being very successful. Well, we kind of fall in the same boat.
 
The strong Christians may well find something that they just cannot face up to. These disciples did. No matter how much they tried to get rid of the spirit within the man's son, they could not. They had to wait upon Jesus for the final victory over the spirit. Even though they had been told that anything is possible through belief, they could not quite go all the way. They were trying to go all the way by themselves. When Jesus came to their assistance He did nothing more than turn it over to God in prayer. He demonstrated absolute faith by giving up the problem totally to God.
 
As weak Christians we may well find that all sorts of things go wrong all the time and we simply put it down to being weak. We may find that we still get into all sorts of trouble. We may find that we don't quite trust our belief. That is the issue. We don't trust... This man cried out to Jesus to help his unbelief. He knew that he did not fully believe. But seeing Jesus in front of him allowed him to realise his unbelief. We will not get a personal audience with Christ until we get to heaven, but that does not stop us from seeing everything that Christ does in our lives or everything that He has already done through passages like this. There is no reason for us not to believe other than our own pride or Satan. You see, Satan is going to continue his best to throw everything in our way. Look up to Christ to seek His grace to cover our unbelief so that we can draw on His strength and be totally prepared for everything!
 
Points to Ponder:
What is your biggest fear in life?
 
Have you ever asked God to help you with that?