Mark 9:22-24
And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.  Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.  And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

Perhaps this is how we feel when we bring our requests to the Lord.  We want to have faith but find it weak and small.  We are desperate for compassion from our Lord, for His help in our situation.  We’ve come to Him and cried to Him, but when we look in our hearts, we fear our faith may not be enough and our prayer may not be answered.  But if we come to Jesus and echo this man’s plea, He can work on our behalf.  He sees the small seed of faith we do have.  He sees our tears and knows our need and our desire.

And in answering our prayers, He helps our unbelief.  By showing us mercy, He encourages us to trust Him again for something else.  By revealing His power in our most hopeless situation, He proves to us all things really are possible, and we can bring other seemingly impossible things to Him.  When we are at the end of ourselves and our lacks are so glaring and everyone around seems so helpless and we’ve fallen in a heap at His feet, He can meet our need with such completeness that all our doubts will disappear.

There are so many things in this life and this world that are totally beyond us.  And God will use those kinds of things to keep us needing Him, keep us seeking Him.  He wants us to know that we can’t but He can.  He wants to bring us to that place of complete reliance on Him.  He wants to change our unbelief into solid faith that looks ever and only to Him.  And it’s going to take some hard things and some challenges to get us to that place.

If we find ourselves with some burdensome need just now, let us not hesitate to bring it to Jesus and trust Him to work in it.  Our faith doesn’t require us to figure out how He’s going to accomplish something.  We don’t have to draw upon our own strength to contribute to the solution.  All we have to do is believe He can, and He will.  So when the tears fall and our heart sinks and we feel our faith start to fly, let’s seek Him out and ask for His help and watch Him do the impossible.