A long time ago, there was a father who had a demon-possessed son. For years this father watched helplessly as his son was wracked with convulsions, rolling on the ground and foaming at the mouth.* Worst of all, the demonic spirit would often “cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him” (Mark 9:22, English Standard Version).
The father couldn’t do anything to stop this demon. He could only watch it all happen and try to care for his son’s injuries.
Over.
And over.
And over.
And then one day, the father heard about a Man who was traveling around the country doing the impossible: Casting out demons. Healing the sick. Even raising the dead.
Jesus of Nazareth, they called Him.
So the father did what any loving parent would have done—he took his son to see the miracle-worker, hoping beyond hope that this Jesus could save his child from a lifetime of torment. But Jesus’ disciples couldn’t heal him. And then when the boy came near Jesus, the evil spirit seized him once again and sent him into convulsions.
The father had heard the stories about the Man from Nazareth, and he wanted them to be true. He wanted his son to be whole again, and this seemed like his only real chance. But with that hope, there was doubt.
Was it really possible? Could this one Man have the answers to a problem his family had struggled with for years? Could it be that easy?
“If You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (verse 22).
If. The doubt was there; the question marks were showing through. None of the man’s internal struggles were lost on Jesus Christ, who replied, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes” (verse 23, ESV).
For the father, there was only one response: “Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’” (verse 24).
In just a handful of words, the boy’s father encapsulated the most difficult, most frustrating thing about faith:
It’s not binary. It’s not either/or. Just having some faith isn’t enough to make all the doubts go away. It’s easy to find ourselves wrestling with dozens or hundreds of question marks that fill us with hesitation and uncertainty.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t have any faith. It just means that, like the father who cried out to Jesus, we need help with our unbelief. Paul listed faithfulness as part of the fruit of the Spirit, which means faith is something that ought to grow over time. It also means that faith doesn’t start out complete—it starts out small.
For us, that means we can expect to encounter times in our lives where our faith isn’t as strong as we’d like it to be. And that’s okay. What isn’t okay, however, is being content with our faith staying at that level. If our faith stagnates, we stagnate. We stop developing as Christians, because “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
Before the father brought his son to Christ, Christ’s disciples had tried to cast the demon out on their own—but they couldn’t. It wasn’t the first evil spirit they’d encountered—Jesus Himself had given them the authority to cast out demons and heal the sick (Matthew 10:1, 8)—but for some reason, they couldn’t do anything with this particular demon.
For Jesus, this demon wasn’t a problem: “And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour” (Matthew 17:18). Afterward, the disciples came to Him privately (and no doubt embarrassed) and asked, “Why could we not cast it out?” (verse 19).
Jesus explained, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting” (verses 20-21).
The disciples had unbelief too. Jesus told the disciples if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, it would be enough to move mountains.
But when it came time to move those mountains, their unbelief got in the way. They believed, but not fully. And unlike the father who came to Christ, these disciples had been traveling with Jesus long enough to see Him perform miracle after miracle with their own eyes. But when it came time to put that faith into practice, they fell short. (Jesus also remarked that this kind did not go out except by prayer and fasting—indicating a need to be closer to God to perform such a task.)
So if that’s us—if that’s where we are in terms of faith—how do we get better? How do we drive out doubt and nurture faith?
To answer that, we first have to understand where faith comes from.
Paul told the Romans, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). He later emphasized that “God has dealt to each one a measure of faith” (Romans 12:3).
In other words, faith comes from God.
Not from us.
That might sound a little strange at first. Our faith in God comes from God? But it turns out, yes, that’s exactly how it works. To the Ephesians, Paul explained, “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
We can’t generate our own faith in God. That’s a door God opens. The very ability to trust in God is a gift given to us by God Himself. We can’t earn faith—but we can use it. In fact, we must use it if we want to please God.
The apostle James asked, “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?” (James 2:14). To James, faith without works was as pointless as trying to wish good deeds into existence (verses 15-16). Just as seeing a physical need and not taking action accomplishes nothing, he saw faith as part of something bigger—an impetus for action. Because we believe, we must do.
“Show me your faith without your works,” he challenged, “and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?” (verses 18-20).
Sure, it’s important to believe in God—but even the demons know God exists. That’s not enough. Unless we couple that belief with action, our faith is dead in the water. If we trust God, we must also obey God. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of God—and that Word—the Bible—exists to show us the kind of life we ought to be living.
Again, it’s not that obeying God or doing good works somehow earns us faith or grace. It doesn’t. It can’t—those things are gifts from God. “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. … Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law” (Romans 3:28, 31).
By having faith in God, we also have faith that God’s “law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12)—and is therefore something we ought to obey.
We get our faith from God. But that doesn’t relieve us of all responsibilities—the strength of our faith depends largely on our choices, our decisions. We grow in faith by putting that trust into practice—by learning God’s way of life and living it, day in and day out. And as that faith grows and our doubt shrinks, that same faith points us toward the future God has planned. If we can trust that He exists, and if we can trust that His law is there to guide and direct us, we can ultimately trust His promises too.
The author of Hebrews called faith “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). When we have true, unshakable faith in God, it’s as if the invisible things are visible. We trust Him and His promises to the point that the future we’re looking toward might as well already be here—in our minds, that’s how unshakably certain it becomes.
The rest of Hebrews 11 is focused on the men and women who did exactly that—heroes of faith who met life’s challenges and trials head-on, secure in the knowledge that God can and will fulfill His promises. “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (verse 13).
These were men and women who “through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again” (verses 33-35).
They were also men and women who “were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth” (verses 35-38).
But they didn’t receive the promises they were waiting for.
They still haven’t.
Why?
“And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us” (verses 39-40).
The men and women of Hebrews 11 died with absolute certainty that God would raise them from the dead and into a future He had prepared for them. And although God will do that, He hasn’t yet.
Because of us.
He’s giving us a chance to join their numbers. He’s giving us the opportunity to grow in faith by living it. When we trust Him in the little things and in the big things, we’ll live a life that reflects that trust.
God gives us our faith through His Spirit—and the more we put that faith into practice, the more the fruit of the Spirit will grow and blossom in our lives.
* It’s important to note here that, although the son’s symptoms might appear similar to a grand mal seizure, the Bible is not somehow equating seizures with demonic possession. All we’re told is that in this specific instance, these specific convulsions were caused by a demonic presence.
