"You Don't Have to be a Spiritual Giant by Matt Neely at The Watershed Church on Vimeo.

 ¹⁴When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. ¹⁵As 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. 

 ¹⁷A man in the crowd answered, "Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. ¹⁸Whenever 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." 

 ²⁰So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth. 

 ²¹Jesus 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 him who believes." 

 ²⁴Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" 

 ²⁵When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil^[a] spirit. "You deaf and mute spirit," he said, "I command you, come out of him and never enter him again." 

 ²⁶The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, "He's dead." ²⁷But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up. 

 ²⁸After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, "Why couldn't we drive it out?" 

 ²⁹He replied, "This kind can come out only by prayer.^[b]"   

Mark 9:14-29

I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.

What a prayer!!  

Noah wanting God to show himself to Noah by knocking a real chair off of a cloud and falling down on our house.  I asked him why he wanted God to knock a chair down . . . that sounded kind of dangerous.  He said He wanted God to show Him that God is real.  I told Him to just watch and see and that I would show him stuff that showed Him how real God is, but He wanted the chair . . .  He wanted the concrete proof.

Now I don’t know about you, but I can relate to that.  Don’t get me wrong, I have seen God work in so many powerful ways for me personally, in the lives of the people around us, and right here in this church.  I mean that.  I have seen grown men changed by the Grace of Christ.  I have seen marriages healed.  I have seen God’s provision for us as a church, with the land that we have, filling needs for people to play in the band or staff people or finances to grow, etc . . . 

But no matter what I have seen God do, it always seems like I want God to drop a chair off a cloud.  Do you ever feel that way?  No matter how faith-full we are - Sometimes we need to have help with our faith.  We want God to answer our prayers with chairs falling out of the skies, with healing at a moment’s notice, with the perfect job upon request.  And I think that sometimes when we don’t see those things happening, we feel like maybe there is something wrong with us.  Like maybe we don’t have enough faith.  And we begin to buy in to the myth that we must be some sort of spiritual giant to pray.  

Heck, we even hear occasionally, some well-meaning but I think misguided people,  say that when we see something bad happen or a desperate prayer goes unanswered, that the person offering it must not have had enough faith . . . and we hear that and we think that we must be spiritual giants to pray.

Well friends, this scripture flies in the face of that way of thinking and so I want us to take a serious loko at it together this morning.   

The first thing we need to see here in this scripture is that …

Prayer grows faith  . . . how do you think people you consider to be spiritual giants got to be spiritual giants?

In the scriptures, Jesus always seems to honor prayers of strong faith.  In the story of the woman who is healed after a blood flow of years, she is a Gentile who knew that if she just touched the hem of His robe, she would be healed.  When a centurion visits Jesus in Matthew 8, Jesus offers to go to his house to heal one of his servants, but the centurion says “I don’t deserve to have you in my house.  Just say the word and she will be healed.”  And Jesus said the word and the servant was healed.  Jairus, the synagogue ruler at that time, comes to Jesus in Mark 5 and asks for him to lay his hands on his daughter as she is close to death.  Even after they find out that she is dead, he still is willing to go to her with Jesus in faith that Jesus might be able to bring her back from the dead and Jesus does.  Jesus heals for people like these consistently . . . they have that spiritual giant faith and he heals for them.  

But this is a clear case of a man who says “I believe.  Help my unbelief.”  He’s no spiritual giant.  He’s no hero.  He’s just a guy with a problem, with a need.  He’s a man for a lot of love for his son.  His son is possessed and he has had to watch him be tormented for years.  He wants to believe, but he has some doubt.  He’s a part of this unbelieving generation Jesus is talking about, but he wants to believe more.  

And yet, Jesus answers this man’s prayer.  This is not the prayer of extreme faith.  This is a prayer of desiring faith.  This is a prayer of growing faith and Jesus honored it too.  

And you know what happened.  This man’s faith grew.  His son was healed and his faith grew.

I weighed myself the other day after not doing so for a long time and I realized that I weigh more today than I have ever weighed in my life.  Too many donuts before church, I guess.  But I realized that I need to lose weight.  So I’m going to do something about it.  I’m not where I want to be, but I’m going to start.  So a member of the church invited me to do kickboxing with him for a month.  So I start that this week.  You’re not going to want to mess with your pastor after the month of March is over, let me tell you that.  You’re lucky, I’m a man of prayer.  Now I may not make it through March.  I may not continue after March, but I’m going to try it.  I’m going to exercise my muscles and see what happens.  Why?  Because strengthening my muscles is going to raise my metabolism.  And raising my metabolism is going to help me get my weight down and my health up.  If I want to get where I want to be, though, I’m going to have to exercise my muscles.

Well, friends, prayer is a muscle too.  And when you practice prayer, when you exercise your prayer muscle, it begins to strengthen your faith.  When you see God do something that you’ve been talking to Him about, whether its big or small, it strengthens your faith.  Maybe you asked God for help in a difficult time and received it.  And your faith muscle grows just a little bit.  But it doesn’t always happen how you think it should happen.  God is not Santa Claus, he’s better!  God doesn’t always give you what you want.  But He gives you what you need.    

So maybe you asked for help in a difficult time and you merely survived it, but you saw God’s hand in it anyway.  

When I was a young pastor in Richmond, TX, I was privileged to know a family who had a son born with HIV/AIDS.  And Maybe you asked for a Lambourghini and He didn’t give you one, but He did bring someone into your life to show you how to save your money.  That might be God at work.      

You may not be where you want to be.  But if you want to get where you want to be, you had better start exercising that muscle.         

There are no spiritual giants . . . The disciples could not cast out this demon.  If anyone would have been thought of as people on the inner circle, it would have been them.  And yet, they can’t cast out this demon and don’t even know why they can’t.  If the disciples couldn’t   

I get a lot of people who ask me to pray for them.  I love the privilege of praying for people and am glad that people ask me to do that.  But it always makes me nervous because the unspoken expectation is that if the preacher prays for me, something will happen.  Because of course, the preacher has superhuman prayer powers!  I just want to let you all know, that I have prayed for a whole lot of things in my life that I didn’t like the answer.  But I can tell you that God has never failed to answer one of my prayers.  By the way, he’s never failed to answer one of your either. 

So please don’t think that I’ve got an “in” with God like he listens to my prayers over yours or anyone else’s . . . the reality is that we are equally small when compared to God.  We’re also equally loved and valued by the King!  There’s no such thing as a spiritual giant.  If the disciples didn’t always get it, then no one is always going to ‘get it.’

If you had to be a spiritual giant to pray, no one could pray.  We would all be excluded.            

There are people in this church that I think of as spiritual giants and then you talk to them and they have the same struggles, the same concerns, the same issues.  

Everybody starts somewhere in their faith . . . If you can do anything . . . If you can???  Jesus talks to this man even though he doesn’t have any real faith.  He’s starting at ground zero.  If this man needed to be a spiritual giant before Jesus would talk to him, this conversation would never happen.  Jesus uses this as an opportunity to teach about faith “If you cam?  All thing are possible for those who believe.”  

Kids have a picture of what they think love or money or something is . . . its not where I want them to end up, but it is what it is . . . they have to start somewhere.  And from there they can move forward.

In your prayer life, start where you are.  Does that mean you can’t move forward and do it differently or pray with more faith.  You can.  But it means that starting right where you are is the place to start.

Preachers beat themselves up al l the time because they don’t pray like they should.  

Posted by: Matt Neely
03/07/2010