MATTHEW 9:35 Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. 36 But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. 37 Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. 38 Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
MATTHEW 10:1 And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease.
Jesus had picked His disciples and gave them their instructions. If we skip down to vs 8 we see that they were to "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons..." and He gave them power to do that in vs 1....and then He sent them out to preach. Just as He has given power to us today as His disciples, right?
This was authority from the ultimate authority. If you’ve been in the business world a while you understand that there is a little authority (fry manager at Mcd’s) and then there is ultimate authority (CEO). This authority was given by someone who had more authority than anyone on earth.....Jesus! Power to cast out demons, heal the sick.......they had the power! Now I want to show you something that happened .......seven chapters later!
MATTHEW 17:14 And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.” 17 Then Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.
I’m pretty sure they were confused. I don’t know how long their journey had been when they were sent out to preach and heal the sick and chase demons out, but I do know that they had been very successful at it up until that man brought his son to Jesus. Did you ever wonder why they didn’t ask Jesus about it before? If we take this in the right light I think we can see that even though the disciples had been given authority to do these works, sometimes it must not have worked!
If this had been the only one that didn’t get his deliverance after the disciples prayed over him, don’t you think they would have rushed back to Jesus and made a big deal of it? If we follow the story, it wasn’t until AFTER this was brought to Jesus’s attention that the disciples questioned Jesus about it. Sometimes I pray for certain things and God gives me authority. God has used me in many miracles, but sometimes I don’t get the results I expected. The disciples obviously experienced the same thing!
What happened from chapter 10 to chapter 17? Why had the disciples not been able to help this man’s son? The disciples wanted to know, too! We get the answer in the following verses 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. 21 However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
Unbelief? The disciples? Don’t we always believe in the prayer that we are praying? I do. So where does the unbelief come in? Is it doubt. When I annoint someone and pray for them to be healed, some are and some aren’t. I feel like I have the same belief in each prayer. God has given me a great deal of faith, but is that different from belief? If so, what’s the difference? Is there a difference in belief and faith?
Let’s look at the same incident with this boy and his father in Mark 9:17 Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. 18 And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.” 19 He answered him and said, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.” 20 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. 21 So He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 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.” 23 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
I could never really resolve that statement...“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Till now. You see, I think us christians are a lot like that man who brought his son.....and a lot like the disciples.....when we are really supposed to be like...who? Jesus! So I looked it up....I like these two examples...
The first man to run the mile in under four minutes – he had faith. The subsequent men and women who were able to match that record – they had belief.
The Wright Brothers, who built a machine which would allow man to fly in the sky - they had faith. Everyone after, who created the shuttle, helicopter, jet, etc- they had belief.
I have faith that my God can do anything.....but now I must also reinforce that faith with belief...get it? You see, it’s my faith that even gets me to annoint with oil and pray for someone. It is when I do as the Bible instructs me to do (faith), then that is when the belief comes in. Belief has to be based on logic...and we have to reason, or logic in our head that if we exercise our faith, it is only logical that God will answer in kind.
On the other hand, if we exercise our faith and doubt creeps in because we have not seen ALL of our prayers answered right away, then it is our belief or lack of belief that prevents our prayer from being answered. But we still need faith in order to have belief. Still confused? I was too! So I went to the Greek meanings for these words.
There are at least four Greek words for faith, and the one most commonly used is pisteuo, which means persuasion. The root word is peitho, which means to convince. The word belief in Greek is pistis, which means confidence or trust. In essence, the words are one and the same. When people have faith or a belief, it simply means they are convinced by the facts. Faith and belief are like railroad tracks....it takes both rails to get the train to moving and to it’s destination.
Faith is what you do, knowing that what you do will yeild the results that you expect. A farmer thinks that planting seeds will yield a crop. Therefore, he takes the action steps of planting the seeds. He does not see the results of his action steps (planting the seeds) right away, but he is confident that the crop will come forth based on the facts and knowledge of what he knows about the ground, sun, and rain working together to change the elements of the seed into a fruit or vegetables.
Belief is a confession of the heart of what a person thinks and therefore says. ROMANS 10:10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness.......Belief manifests itself in the thoughts and words of a person. Yes, we need to speak the right words and believe the right things whenever we pray for someone....even if there is evidence sometimes you’ll pray for someone and they don’t get their healing, you still need to believe that they will be healed...
Jesus even told the disciples that they couldn’t cast that one spirit out because of their unbelief....the diciples! Help my unbelief, Lord! We have been given power and authority to move mountains with our faith of a mustard seed, but we must have the belief to go with it. Jesus even said that the things we can do here on earth are even greater than what He did! He raised the dead......
Listen, I don’t know why sometimes my belief is greater than other times. I feel the same, I do the same thinigs, but for some reason I don’t always get the same results. I know that my faith hasn’t changed...I am blessed with faith, so I can only pray like that man did, God help me with my unbelief!
Jesus also says that some things come about only by prayer and fasting. I believe that if our faith is strong, then we will be doing some serious praying anyway...and most of us could stand a little bit of fasting along the way! If we want God to move in our lives and answer our prayers, perform miraculous signs, then we all need more belief...alomg with fasting and praying.
God has given us as Christians guidlines to follow when we want to get serious about our prayers. One more thing is this...we cannot get through to God, come to His throne with unrepented sin in our lives. We are called to be holy, even as He is holy. We can’t run around acting like the world and then wonder why God isn’t responsive to our prayers.
PSALMS 18:20 The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands
He has recompensed me. 21 For I have kept the ways of the LORD, And have not wickedly departed from my God.
22 For all His judgments were before me, And I did not put away His statutes from me. 23 I was also blameless before Him,
And I kept myself from my iniquity. 24 Therefore the LORD has recompensed me according to my righteousness, According to the cleanness of my hands in His sight.
Do you have clean hands? The scipture says that God will reward you according to your righteousness.
