It just ain’t happening ... (Part 8 - of 12) ...

faithfulness, wisdom, & prayer...when the miracles don’t come. Mark ch9v14-29 (to open in a new window, hold control down as you click the link)

Faithfulness (& Prayer):

We have looked somewhat at PRAYER, much more could now be said about FAITH. In fact Matthew’s rendition (Matthew 17:14-21^[1]) of our pericope is a doorway into much more. The images Jesus used for faith, faithful people, or faithful structures were varied, & included many peasant & homely analogies: salt, light, patches in clothing, & wine-skins.

Interestingly there seems to be a bias towards life in them. They are tending towards the organic, bodily or the relational. In the organic world, things are withering if they are not growing. “I tell you truly, if you have faith like a grain of....” and note what he says here, not “a grain of SAND” (though Abraham would have more descendants than “the grains of sand”), or “a spec of dust” (though Jesus warned about trying to take a “spec of dust” out of your brother’s eye, while maintaining a log in your own), he is talking about a “(living)seed” of faith.

Maybe faith is not so much a commodity, or utensil, as a growing living organic thing; like a cereal crop, or a mustard seed/bush, or a grape vine, or an olive tree, or a fig tree, a bride/groom (their relationship, & the celebration of it), or even yeast.

Have a look at these few renditions of Jesus’ prayer -> faith & his disciples’ prayer -> faith at work…

 

plus,  look at this other instance in Mark's Gospel where Jesus ties the concept of "effective authoritative commanding"  together  with "prayer":




Now, here is Luke's rendition of that first event where the disciples tried to throw out an evil spirit "but they couldn't", and Jesus steps in and easily demonstrates God's power, (after some comments on having to put up with unbelief etc).




And have a look at Matthew's rendition... (especially look at what Jesus answers the disciples when they ask "Why weren't we able to get rid of it?"

And when the disciples listen to Jesus on pitfalls & problems & then ask him "Give us more faith" we hear from Luke:

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Q: “Why weren’t we able to get rid of it?”

Is Jesus responding...

“YOU LET GO.
YOU LET YOUR FAITH STOP!
Instead of letting your faith grow deeper roots through this next level of difficulty, you let it be pulled out or chopped off!

God won’t do that, he can be trusted, & if you are trusting him, He will never let that happen to you - (without making an Exodus, a  “Way out”, a “Way of escape”)

though you may be tested even more severely than this  time when you had this bunch of faithless “Teachers of the Law” argue that you can’t do it & you don’t have the authority; don’t you remember me giving you authority, personally giving it to you. Take it & use it! You know what they are like with me, & what I am like with them. Don’t listen to their hypocritical lives! Though they claim to be teachers of the Law of Moses - the man of God, - they aren’t going to teach you to trust God, are they!

You listened to hypocrites instead of a tried & true, trusted friend.
You “planted” on the brake, instead of the accelerator!  
You started ok, but when the going got tough, instead of getting really going, you got out.
You found yourself losing faith in God, or in whether he’d really want to co-operate with you anyway, or in yourself as a co-operator with him, ..or something like that.
You found yourself giving up.

Now, don’t do it again! Start right now to make a change, to trust what I say...
& what I do,
& what I have done,
& what I will do,  

Trust God’s LIFE & love, trust my LIFE (& death too), my LIFE that can pass through death & out the other side, not as a mere shade of the previous life, but to conquer death & come out with a new kind of RESURRECTION LIFE (never to die again), & trust my love for you, to be enough for the impossible-est situation, and thus obey me -
that is how you will show that your faith is expressing itself in love.

You can still trust God. He brought me along in the nick of time (after I had wasted enough time with God & his servants in prayer, stood in God’s council, & strengthened my capacity to live by his vision of reality) to act decisively to save you from losing it completely, & to help pull you up out of the water (so to speak), so that you can have another go!

Be ready for it! Watch out, & be ready!

Prayer---> FAITH --->Speaking/Acting Authoritatively--->Prayer --->etc

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^[1] Note that the oldest manuscripts don’t have vs 21. It appears to have been added to help make sense of what appeared to be a discrepancy between Matthew & Mark. As we see, there need not be a discrepancy at all.