Help my lack of faith

Scripture: "If you can?" retorted Jesus. "Everything is possible for one who has faith." At once the father of the boy cried out, "I have faith. Help my lack of faith!" Mark 9:24

Prayer: I don't know much about most things, but I do know the joys and challenges of being a father. And oh does the father quoted in this verse resonate with me, especially—Help my lack of faith! So this morning, when I simply wonder, what is happening? Let me follow up quickly with Help my lack of faith and witness miracles unfolding before me.

Response: Faith is not something that you keep secured in a pouch fastened on a belt to be retrieved at certain times—like extracting the money to pass a toll station in life. Faith is living breathing, a force every bit as mysterious and powerful as the raging sea growling, thundering toward the shore. The father in the verse knows faith by experience, but makes no effort to define it, or contain it. But to his great credit and to all who read and hear his words thousands of years later, he yields and humbly pleads the words that demonstrate paradoxically the deepest faith, Help my lack of faith.

Would that these words impacted on those who prance about so assured and confident, ready to preach confidently to those before them without hearing the plaintive moans of the fathers—and of course the mothers—help my lack of faith. And instead of preaching eloquently, they joined hands and in a chorus cried out, Help our lack of faith!

This verse is summoning you to authentic prayer, a prayer that mirrors the contours of one's heart as it is and not as one would want to be judged by others. What a great opening for this morning's prayer, Help my lack of faith.