Down the Mountain

Peter, James, and John came down from the mountain with Jesus, and there waiting for them was a demon-possessed child. But they were unable to do anything about it. Twenty-four hours after seeing the deity of Jesus, and they couldn’t help this poor boy.

Luke’s gospel tells us the child’s father approached Jesus and said, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, my only child. An evil spirit keeps seizing him, making him scream. . . . I begged your disciples to cast out the spirit, but they couldn’t do it” (9:38–40 NLT).

Like those disciples, we can be on a mountaintop one moment and down in the pit the next. We leave a church service, get in the car, and start arguing or getting angry about something. Or we turn around and slander someone or gossip—immediately after we’ve just sung the praises of God with the same lips.

I don’t think we need more mountaintop experiences in our Christian lives. But I do think we need more day-to-day obedience as we walk by faith and not feeling.

The disciples couldn’t understand why the demon hadn’t come out of the child. But Jesus put His finger on it. It was because of their unbelief.

We can have the same problem. We have faith, and we believe God. But our faith is small. It’s weak and underdeveloped. Faith, however, grows through use. In fact, it’s a lot like muscle. It’s painful in the process of growing, but it gets stronger every day through rigorous training.

God will bring faith-stretching experiences into our lives, and sometimes it seems as though our faith has been stretched to the limit, and we can go no further. But afterward, we realize that we had more faith than we thought we had. And it’s during those difficult times that our theories become reality.