The Father Who Prayed With Half a Faith

Jesus came down the mountain into an argument.

He had been on the heights with Peter, James, and John, where His face had shone like the sun. At the bottom He found a crowd, some scribes, nine embarrassed disciples, and a father holding on to a boy who could not be helped.

The father explained. His son had a spirit that made him mute. It seized him, threw him to the ground, and had often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him. This had gone on since childhood. Picture the years behind that sentence: the burns, the near drownings, the nights of watching, the hope that rose with every new remedy and then fell again. That morning he had brought the boy to Jesus' disciples, and they could not do it either.

So when he finally speaks to Jesus, his request comes out bruised.

But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.

-- Mark 9:22

He says us. The father has suffered every seizure with his son. And he says if you can. Jesus picks up those words and hands them back to him.

"If you can"! All things are possible for one who believes.

-- Mark 9:23

This is the turning point. The father could have pretended. He could have produced a confident religious sentence for the crowd. What came out instead was the truth, and Mark says it came immediately, as a cry.

I believe; help my unbelief!

-- Mark 9:24

Both halves are real. He believes enough to have come and enough to ask. He also knows that years of disappointment have worn a hole in him. He does not tidy himself up before praying. He gives Jesus the faith and the lack of it in the same breath, and asks for help with both his son and his own heart.

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Jesus did not send him away to get stronger faith. He rebuked the spirit, and it came out with a final convulsion that left the boy so still that people said he was dead. Then Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he stood.

Later the disciples asked privately why they had failed. Jesus said this kind comes out only by prayer. The nine had tried to act from their own store of power. The father, with far less confidence, had done the one thing that worked. He had asked.

Many people believe that doubt disqualifies them. They think prayer only counts when it is offered with complete certainty, so they wait to feel sure before they ask, and they feel like frauds in church when the questions will not go quiet.

This father tells a different story. His prayer was half confidence and half confession, and Jesus answered it. The power was never in the quality of the man's faith. It was in the One he brought his faith to. A weak hand holding on to a strong Saviour is safer than a strong hand holding on to nothing.

Long disappointment does wear faith thin. If you have prayed for the same child, the same illness, the same door for years, you may recognise the tiredness in the words if you can. You do not need to hide that from God. He already knows it, and He is not offended by it. You can tell Him exactly how much you believe and exactly where your belief runs out.

The second half of the father's prayer deserves attention too. Help my unbelief. He treated his doubt as one more need to bring to Jesus. That is dependence at its deepest. We rely on God for the miracle, and we rely on Him for the faith to ask for it.

For parents, there is comfort in the word us. Jesus had compassion on the household, and He healed the son on the strength of a tired father's honest cry.