I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.
How often we let Jesus down in this way! How often we leave those in need hungry or hurting, unable to bring his blessings to others! The disciples had already been empowered by Jesus to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons (see Matthew 10:8). They had done so and returned triumphant that even the demons were subject to them. But now, somehow, they came up short. Faith that ought to have been reinforced by fidelity was too little to assist this possessed boy. The point is that they didn't approach this problem as though they were people who had never seen the power and the promise of Jesus bear fruit. They most certainly had. It wasn't because they lacked sufficient mental focus to visualize the possibility of desired results or something to that effect. They had seen it before and could easily imagine it again. Such mental prowess was not the meaning of faith. It wasn't about manifesting something through their own effort or skill.
"O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you?
How long will I endure you?
We may surmise, that, like the desert generation failed to maintain trust in the providence of God, the failure of the disciples to heal the boy was a failure of relationship. Perhaps they began to believe that they themselves possessed the power to heal and neglected to remember the need to remain connected to their power source. Perhaps they remembered that Jesus did need to be involved but simply took for granted that he would be. The more they experienced his mighty deeds the more they might have settled into them as a kind of routine. But without intentional connection, through faith, to the source of their authority, their ability to convey the power of Jesus dried up.
"Why could we not drive it out?"
He said to them, "Because of your little faith.
We may never have experienced the power of Jesus working through us in the way that his disciples did. But we can still learn from their failure in this case how to deepen our own faith. Our ability to convey the healing power of Jesus has nothing to do with us or our effort. It has everything to do with remembering and relying on him. It is trust that he can and wants to convey that power to the world, even through us. This kind of trust is not something we can force ourselves to have through exertion of will. But we can gradually learn it by depending on ourselves less, and him more. Our worries and our desire to measure our progress and ability are probably symptoms that we need to let go and let God to a greater degree. Maybe then the healing power that was at work through the disciples will be revealed in our own lives as well.
Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you will say to this mountain,
'Move from here to there,' and it will move.
Nothing will be impossible for you.
There are mountains in our world that need moving. And they can be moved, if only we trust more. Lord, we believe. Heal our unbelief (see Mark 9:24).
Praised be the LORD, I exclaim!
And I am safe from my enemies.
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