Truly Believe

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF MARK

TRULY BELIEVING

Mark 9:14-19

14 When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. 15 As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him. 16 "What are you arguing with them about?" he asked. 17 A man in the crowd answered, "Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. 18 Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not." 19 "O unbelieving generation," Jesus replied, "how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me." 

NIV                               

                           

We know that it was just Peter, James and John who went up on the mountain with Jesus, so that would leave nine of the others that Jesus had called to himself and who were among the twelve that he had sent out with power to heal and cast out demons which we already saw earlier in the gospel of Mark. Yet it seems those nine who did not go up with Jesus were not capable of casting out this demon which inflicted the boy we are told about here. We would think that once empowered by Jesus that empowerment would continue, yet no power was to be had in those nine disciples. It also seems interesting that the father of the boy did not try to take him to Jesus first, that he took his son to the disciples to have the evil spirit sent away from his son. There must have been some talk about how the disciples had already been doing this, yet it seems they have no power over evil now. We surely can tell Jesus in not happy about their lack of faith. We will deal with the rest of the narrative later but first we must deal with the expressed sadness of Jesus regarding their disbelief. What we must ask of ourselves is if Jesus ever becomes saddened over our disbelief? Does he see us as an unbelieving generation? Sure we believe in Jesus for our salvation. We believe he is the Son of God. We believe he died for our sins. We believe all those things we find in the statement of faith established by our church. But do we believe? Has Jesus given us power over evil? He has given us the Holy Spirit who empowers us to do even greater things than Jesus did. Those were his words, not ours. So if we are going to do greater things, it would appear we are going to need to truly believe. It is obvious, at least for the time being, his disciples did not have that kind of faith, or truly believe they had the power over evil spirits, but after they received the Holy Spirit, they were indeed filled with all sorts of power. The Holy Spirit is still here and still empowering people who believe. Do we what Jesus to think, “how long shall I put up with you”? If not we have to start truly believing.