February 26th | Matthew 17

I have two children- so I can imagine the way this father felt as this man came to Jesus with his son begging for him to heal him. “Lord, have mercy on my son…he suffers terribly…for often he falls into the fire and often into the water…” As a mom, I can imagine the pain this man felt watching his son suffer and the desperation he felt when he came to Jesus that day. The man had so much faith, he had already been to Jesus’ disciples and tried to get them to heal him. Jesus answers the man and says, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” Jesus rebukes the demon in the boy and the boy was instantly healed. The text says, “the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith.’”

I love how Matthew includes this description –the disciples came to Jesus privately. It doesn’t give a description of how the disciples felt, but I can tell you how I would feel if I was one of the disciples- I would be flat out embarrassed! I would feel confused. I would feel like I let Jesus down. You see, it’s not that the disciples lacked faith completely. But, in this moment it was weak. 

I’ve been there, haven’t you? There have been seasons in my life when my faith was strong- I trusted in him completely. But then there have been other times, when I struggled and doubted- trusting more in myself than Him. I think that is what Jesus was getting at in this story- reminding us that in Him we have the power to fulfill what he has called us to do. I love though that this story doesn’t tell us we have to have a huge amount of faith–we just have to have a mustard seed amount. If you haven’t seen a mustard seed before- it is teeny-tiny! That should encourage us!! It doesn’t take much for a mountain to move! Just put your faith in the one who can do all things!