Zig Ziglar is quoted as saying, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”

It’d been almost 3 months since I passed through the doors at my church…and, well, amazingly, I find every time I do, it’s as if the message had been specifically tailored to something going on for me RIGHT NOW!  Fortunately, today was no epiphany really…but rather an underscore and exclamation point to the things I’ve been experiencing in my own life in recent months.

I’ve written before about having a vision, about seizing all the “now” moments you can, about being thankful, about believing in yourself…but today was an interesting element I’d never considered.

How much faith is enough?

If I’m a person who is believing in something, whether it is God, myself, or whatever…if I’m believing in something, just how much faith do I need?  If I commit to a direction in life – what measure of belief will it take to achieve that dream?  For those who pray, just how much prayer does it take for it to be relevant…for it to matter enough so that God can work with it?

Many who know me will readily support the notion that I’m a bit of a dreamer.  My bucket runs over with that list of things I want to accomplish.  But one thing I’d never really understood was why some of those dreams didn’t pan out.  Heck…I had more dreams to accomplish, so those that I missed out on were just “character builders” for all I knew.  Reflecting on it a bit more thoroughly, it became very clear to me that those dreams where I’d failed, I’d really not believed in them in the first place.  And on the other side, those where I’d had any level of success, that measure of success was essentially proportionate to the level of faith I’d had that it’d happen.

The minister, Jay Utley grabbed my attention in his first three words… “Coveting Luke’s Faith”.  I fumbled through my notes from the last sermon, and through the note-card I’d been given walking in.  We were studying the book of Mark, not Luke.  Maybe they were taking a week off in this series to get another point across.  But no, the story continued.  Jay quoted a few lines from Dana Tierney’s New York Times’ article about her own son, Luke (found at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/magazine/lives-coveting-luke-s-faith.html).  The story ends with a snippet of the passage we were studying today and it’s that passage that seemed to shoot that arrow directly into my heart – that this was why I was here today.

For those who care to read the passage, Mark 9:14-29 tells the story of a man with a demon-possessed son who’d been afflicted his entire life.  The man had tried his son’s entire life to find anyone who could cure him.  The plight of every parent – to make the best life possible for their children – was the underlying drumbeat to this lesson on faith.  Included on that path was a run-in with Jesus and His disciples.  This young father brought his son to the disciples in hopes they could do something for him.  While they tried unsuccessfully to rid the boy of his demons, Jesus approached to see about the ensuing ruckus.  The father appeared, explained what was going on, and as soon as the boy saw Jesus, this evil spirit inside him threw the boy to the ground in a convulsion and began tossing the boy around.  Jesus asked the man how long this had been going on and the man replied that it had been going on since childhood.  Then in verse 22, the man said, “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.”

It’s funny, two thousand years later, the man’s words stood out as I read them… “If you can…”

Can you imagine saying something that silly to Jesus?  Honestly…if I look myself squarely in the eye, I am probably right there beside that guy.  I’d say it too.  And what was the response?

“If you can?” (I believe in an almost mocking tone…)  Jesus continued with words I hang my hat on every day:

“Everything is possible for him who believes.”

Let that sink in…read it again if you need to…but let it really sink in…

Everything…anything and everything…is possible to anyone who believes…

The story really hit me in the heart because of a parallel in my own life.  While my son is certainly not demon-possessed, he is by some definitions a bit different.  He’s a smart, brilliant, quick-witted, dinosaur-loving funny-man that, at the age of 7, is perfecting the art of timing with his jokes.  But according to the world’s definition of “normal”, he’s not.  Normal, that is.  He’s challenged because of the way his brain works to make connections.  Things don’t always flow from his brain to his hands the way they do with others.  You wouldn’t necessarily know it by seeing him or talking to him…there are no real signs of anything “wrong” – he just doesn’t measure up by the way standardized tests would grade him.  And that has been a challenge to my own faith since our family first figured it out.

Jay said today that “doubt is an inescapable part of the human condition.”  He continued that “as long as you have faith, you will have doubt…they are two sides of the same coin.”  It makes perfect sense.  There is no canyon between faith and doubt.  Just as there’s a fine line between love and hate, the difference between faith and doubt is a razor-thin edge.

When I finally let go of worrying about things related to my son and, instead, believed that he was on the right path to growing into himself, my approach to him and his process changed.  I believe that he also started believing that he was finally on the right path – however adolescent children assimilate that in their brains.  He’s settled in and comfortable with his routine, his friends, his school, and at home.  His ability to have faith in himself will be, as it is for all of us, the strongest attribute he could have in his bag of tricks.

As that story in Mark continued, the young father immediately exclaimed back to Jesus, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”  Jesus turned to the boy and rebuked the evil spirit and, long story short, everything turned out as any parent would hope.

How much faith did it take?  The boy’s father really didn’t appear to have all that much.  Remember… “if you can…”  It doesn’t take much, friends.  In Matthew 17:20, one of my favorite verses to quote, it says, “…I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there’ and it will move.  NOTHING will be impossible for you.”

Nothing?  Yes…NOTHING!

James 4:2 says, “You want something but don’t get it.  You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.  You quarrel and fight.  You do not have, because you do not ask God.”

There’s the answer…how much faith is enough?  Simple…all you need to do is ask.  You can be like the desperate father…the father who believed that even Jesus couldn’t help.  Just ask.  Jay ended with a line very similar to the Ziglar quote above… “the only prayer God can’t answer is the one never asked.”

Just ask.

Blessings,

Tim