Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Mark 9:21-29 and Luke 8:40-48

"I believe, help my unbelief."  Many of us think our struggle is that we have too little faith. We can believe a little, but still wrestle with our doubts.  Why does God make it so hard to believe?

 Jesus approached faith from nearly the opposite perspective. Instead of treating belief as a very difficult thing, he acted as though people have plenty of faith.  Belief, according to Jesus, is pretty easy.  The real question is whether our belief is properly informed.  Have we lined up our belief with truth? 

Let me show you how easy faith is.  Picture this.  As we pull into the parking lot at work we notice that the boss's car is parked in his regular spot.  As we walk past the boss's office we note that the lights are on and we can hear voices that sound like some kind of meeting is happening.  When we ask the boss's assistant if he is available, she replies that he is in an important meeting but will be available in half an hour.  So we go to our desks and someone nearby asks, "Is the boss in?"  How should we reply?  We haven't actually seen him.  If we answer, "Yes, he's in," it is a statement of faith.  Surely, it is a reasonable statement of faith.  Based on the evidence, isn't it fairly easy to believe the boss is in his office? [1]

You and I already have enough faith.  If we doubt that, just think about the last time we went to the doctor for an illness.  We go to a doctor whose first name we may not know.  We take a piece of paper with writing we can't read.  We hand it to a pharmacist that we have never met.  The pharmacist gives us a bottle with some pills that we have never seen before.  And what do we do?  We take the pills.  That is faith!

When I was a junior in college I learned the power of faith.  One afternoon at a gymnastics practice I landed wrong on the mat and destroyed the ligaments of my right knee.  Within two hours I was rushed into emergency surgery to remove the damaged cartilage and repair several ligaments.  The doctor later described that my lower leg was basically held to my upper leg mostly by skin.

The next two days in the hospital I basked in the attention.  It was fun being the wounded athlete surrounded by caring friends and family.  It was fun until one of the nurses made a surprising statement.  She checked my chart and then commented how impressed she was at my ability to handle pain.  She noticed that I had not had any pain medication since the surgery.  She said something like, "Since this is such a painful surgery, I am really impressed!"

What she did not know was that nobody had told me it was supposed to be painful.  The doctor had rushed me straight to surgery without much explanation.  The follow-up visits had all been positive.  My family was supportive.  Nobody told me that it was supposed to hurt, nor did they tell me that I could request pain medication.  Here is the sad part of the story.  Within a half hour after that nurse left my room I was in complete agony.  I felt so foolish having to ask for pain medication simply because I now knew that this recuperation was considered painful.

Faith is an incredibly powerful tool in our lives.  Jesus taught that a small amount of faith, as small as a tiny mustard seed, brings powerful effects.  The problem is not that we lack faith or need more faith, but that we need it to be lined up with truth. Consider the story of the woman healed in a crowd. 

Read Luke 8: 40-48.

Jesus was on his way to Jairus' house to heal the synagogue leader's dying daughter.  Suddenly Jesus stopped the entire crowd and asked who touched him.  The disciples thought it was a silly question.  In such a crowd they were all jostling each other.  But Jesus was thinking specifically of someone who had received a miraculous healing.  A woman came forward and practiced the discipline of confession by agreeing with Jesus that she had been healed.  Jesus responded to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well."

Why would Jesus stop an entire crowd to say these few words to one woman?  I'm sure Jairus was frustrated that they were wasting precious time while his daughter was dying.  Consider what might have happened if Jesus had not stopped the crowd.  The woman would have gone home and told her friends and family that the hem of Jesus' garment healed her.  Her testimony would quite likely have put together a faulty understanding of cause and effect.  Soon others, based on her testimony, would have been giving credit for healing to a magical piece of cloth rather than her faith. 

When followers of Jesus talk about faith, we need to carefully define what we mean.  We are not talking about some undisciplined, blind leap in the dark.  We are talking about a disciplined faith that is informed by multiple trustworthy pieces of evidence.

Perhaps an image will help us.  Picture that you are rowing a boat across a large lake.  You are looking backward as you row.  So how do you keep the rowboat headed in the right direction?  By faith not by sight.  Yes, however, there is a way to keep the boat going in the right direction.  The key is to line up the boat with appropriate signals behind you.  As you face backward and row by faith, you can watch where you have been.

Are you lined up with someone's helpful testimony?  They remind you that God saw them through a tough time.  Just as God was faithful for them, you can trust the Lord to be faithful and guide you as well.  But testimonies alone can still be confusing.  Perhaps their situation was not quite the same as yours.  What other signals can we use to line up the rowboat and move forward by faith?

How about using scripture as another directional signal?  When I go through tough times I frequently turn to the Psalms for guidance and support.  I often pray Bible passages back to the Lord.  Songs that come from the scriptures can bring clarity and heal our wounded hearts.

A third signal to help us row the boat forward by faith while looking backward are our memories of lessons learned over the years.  I keep a journal of my devotions and life lessons.  Sometimes when I am struggling I go back and reread my journal entries to see that God has taken me though rough patches in the past.  I also save helpful emails and encouraging notes people have sent me.  When I hit a time of doubt, I get out my journals and saved notes and remember how good God is.

While we could add several to this list of signals we can use to keep the boat of faith moving forward, let me simply add one more.  We can use circumstances to help us clarify how God is at work. 

I find that God sometimes gives me a vision for something but the circumstances are not right for it yet.  Thus, I have to wait on the lining up of circumstances to move it forward.

"I believe. Lord help my unbelief?"  How about this instead, “Lord help me line up my faith with your truth."

[1] Peter Grant, quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000) 85.