{"id":7341,"date":"2016-02-03T00:05:35","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T08:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7341"},"modified":"2016-02-02T22:35:11","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T06:35:11","slug":"belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2016\/02\/03\/belief\/","title":{"rendered":"Belief"},"content":{"rendered":"

He answered and said, \u201cO faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.\u201d Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth. <\/p>\n

\tSo He asked his father, \u201cHow long has this been happening to him?\u201d <\/p>\n

\tAnd he said, \u201cFrom childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t Jesus said to him, \u201cIf you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tImmediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, \u201cLord, I believe; help my unbelief!\u201d <\/p>\n

\tWhen Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, \u201cDeaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!\u201d Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, \u201cHe is dead.\u201d But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. <\/p>\n

\tAnd when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, \u201cWhy could we not cast it out?\u201d <\/p>\n

\tSo He said to them, \u201cThis kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.\u201d (Mark 9:19-29)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tBelief can grow from unbelief. The boy\u2019s father, the disciples, the people witnessing his convulsions all had a problem: they suffered from unbelief. Jesus saw the problem for what it was and marveled at it. Had they forgotten who their God was? Was their rescue from Egypt and the words of their prophets that far in the past?<\/p>\n

\tDemon possession appears only in the Gospels and Acts. No stories of demons inhabiting people appear in the Old Testament or elsewhere in the New. The symptoms of demon possession vary widely, ranging from intensified strength, to deafness, to fortune telling. Here, the demon has taken the child\u2019s speech and seems intent on causing him physical harm.<\/p>\n

\tFacing his child\u2019s suffering, the father of the boy was desperate enough to admit to Jesus what Jesus already knew: that he didn\u2019t believe. And rather than continuing to pretend, the father finally asked Jesus for help. He believed that Jesus could help him believe. Even Jesus\u2019 disciples lacked faith. But unlike the disciples, the father asked Jesus to help him overcome his unbelief\u2014thereby acknowledging that he believed Jesus could cure even a lack of faith. Perhaps granting the father faith was the greatest miracle that occurred in this story.<\/p>\n

\tCertainly Jesus healed the boy and removed the demon plaguing him. But more importantly, God restored faith to a father who had lost it but wanted it back desperately. <\/p>\n

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He answered and said, \u201cO faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.\u201d Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7343,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7341\/revisions\/7343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}