Lord, I Believe; Help Thou Mine Unbelief

A father brought his son to some disciples and they could not help him, and by the time Jesus got there the whole thing had turned into an argument.

This man had been living with something for years. He tells Jesus how long it had been going on, and he describes what it did to the boy, and then he says the sentence that shows exactly where he is.

If thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.

If thou canst. That is a man who has run out. He is not being disrespectful, he is being accurate about his own state. He had already asked the disciples and it had not worked, and by now he is bringing his request with a hedge on the front of it because he cannot afford to hope cleanly anymore.

And Jesus repeats the word back to him. If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

And what comes out of that father is one of the most honest sentences in the Bible, and the text says he said it with tears and cried out immediately.

Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

That is a contradiction. He puts belief and unbelief in the same breath, about himself, out loud, in front of a crowd.

And his son was healed that day.

He did not clean it up

Read what he actually said, and notice what he did not do.

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. (Mark 9:24, King James Version)

Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

He did not go home and work on it. He did not say give me a week to get my heart right. He did not pretend the first half without the second half, which is what most of us do in a church setting.

He said both. And he said the second half as a request, which is the genius of that sentence: he asks Jesus to help with the very thing that was supposed to disqualify him.

You are able to bring a divided heart, and He has never once required it to be sorted first. That is not me lowering a standard. Mark 9:24 has a man name his own unbelief out loud and receive what he asked for anyway, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a person willing to say the whole truth about themselves.

Where the disqualification idea comes from

I want to be careful, because there are verses that get used to build the opposite case.

James says a doubting man should not think he will receive anything, and that verse is real and I am not going to skip it. But read what James is describing: a man wavering like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed, double minded and unstable in all his ways. That is not a person who believes and doubts in the same breath. That is a person who has not settled which direction they are facing at all.

This father is not tossed. He is planted in front of Jesus with his son and he is not going anywhere. He is asking for help with the part of him that lags behind.

Those are different conditions and they get treated as the same one constantly, and the result is a lot of people who will not ask for anything because they can feel the doubt in themselves and have concluded they are the wave.

You are not double minded because you have a doubt, and He has never once confused an honest struggle with instability. Mark 9:24 answers a man who named his unbelief, and the Spirit of God is the one who distinguishes a person who is wavering from a person who is asking.

Why the request works

Here is what I think is actually happening in that sentence, and it is the reason it is such a good model.

The man does not treat his faith as the currency. If faith were the payment, then naming his unbelief would be admitting he could not afford it.

He treats his faith as something Jesus can also help with. That is a completely different posture. He is not producing an amount and hoping it is enough. He is bringing a need, and one of the needs he brings is the state of his own believing.

And Jesus does not correct that. He does not say come back when the second half is gone.

You have permission to ask Him for the faith itself, and it has never once been a thing you had to manufacture alone. Mark 9:24 makes unbelief the subject of a request rather than a barrier to one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies what a person cannot produce in themselves.

The disciples had failed first

And do not miss the setting, because it matters for somebody reading this.

That father had already brought his son to the disciples and they could not do it. So by the time he reaches Jesus, he has a real experience of asking and nothing happening.

His hedge did not come from nowhere. It came from a genuine disappointment inside the community of faith, and anybody who has asked a church for help and not received it knows exactly what that does to the next request.

Jesus does not scold him for that either. He deals with the disciples separately, privately, later. He does not put that on the father at all.

You are not being blamed for a hedge you learned honestly, and He has never once held a past disappointment against somebody. Mark 9:18 has the disciples fail before the father ever arrives, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives a request that comes in wrapped in old wounds.