Making Miracles

6 min read

21 Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”

“From childhood,” he answered. 22 “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

23 “ ‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”

24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
—Mark 9:21-24

Many believers who read the healing and exorcism episodes may experience a sense of uncertainty and doubt about their own faith. In fact, in the past, I used to feel really uneasy about praying directly with someone for their healing. If they do not get healed, is my faith exposed as weak? Am I exposed as being unworthy to be a pastor?

This may be why some Christian traditions insist that such manifestations of the Holy Spirit cannot happen any more and are unnecessary, because the canon of Scripture has been delivered to humanity. Personally, I believe that the Holy Spirit today is the same Holy Spirit we bear witness to in the Scriptures.

We all believe that Jesus has the power to heal and cast out demons. Yet, very few of us ever witness an outright miracle, where someone says, “Heal!” and the person is healed, or someone says to a demon, “Be gone!” and the demon is gone.

But in the Christian world, we have probably heard enough stories from trustworthy sources to believe that such miracles can and do happen. Also, I have prayed for people’s healing, and they have been healed—not immediately and dramatically like we hear about and read about in the Bible, but healed nonetheless.

Of course, supernatural healing doesn’t happen all the time. And so, if we pray for healing and it doesn’t happen “supernaturally,” we may wonder if our faith is too weak to even be called faith. And on the flip side of that, someone who is sick may wonder if their inability to be healed exposes a lack of faith.

The topic of supernatural healing is a strange space for a believer. Like the father in this episode, I have struggled and wavered between belief and unbelief. And I’ve come to realize that I struggle and waver in my faith if I focus on the miracles and not on Jesus Christ Himself.

Whenever we focus on the miracles, we become like the Pharisees, demanding signs. When we demand signs, we will either not see signs or we will see the wrong signs.

But when the father asked Jesus if He could do anything for his son, Jesus said, rather sarcastically and rhetorically, “If you can?”

What is possible or not possible with Jesus is not even something that needs to be asked, because “Everything is possible for one who believes.”

In other words, we must not obsess over what is possible or not possible. Instead, we must concentrate our focus on believing in Christ Jesus.

Or yet another way: Faith is not so much faith in Jesus, my “Miracle Maker” but in Christ Jesus, our Savior and Lord. There is a subtle but huge difference.

And so the father’s heart was brought into the proper focus—”I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.” I’ve prayed that prayer often.

Father, I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief. Every day I waver in unbelief and doubt. I don’t know if I have faith that even measures up to a mustard seed sometimes. But I have faith enough to know that Your faithfulness overcomes whatever little faith I have. Grow my faith in You, for You are my Miracle. In Jesus’s name. Amen.