Mountain Top Glory & The Descent Series

But the man’s faith isn’t what’s at issue here. It isn’t the degree of faith that’s important. That’s made clear by the man’s reply. He immediately replies “I do believe; help my unbelief!” Isn’t that a great answer? Who of us can say, in the face of long term disease, “We believe God will heal this person.” None of us can say that with any certainty. But we can say I do believe in a God of love. I do believe in the power of Jesus Christ over all evil in this world. I am willing to put my trust in Jesus that he’ll look after me, and the person I’m praying for. And I believe if he chooses not to heal that he does it for a good reason.

And do you see, that’s all Jesus needs. Immediately he’s able to heal the boy. What was needed was the Father’s trust in Jesus. It didn’t depend on the degree or quality or the quantity of faith that the man had. It depended on the relationship he had with Jesus. The man’s faith served to link him with the ministry of Jesus. It’s the power of the master with whom we’re joined by faith that matters, and of course within that relationship, there’s room for our faith to grow. The truth of all this is reinforced by Jesus’ explanation to his disciples. This type can come out only by prayer. Perhaps the disciples had already begun to rely on their own ability to heal, on their own faith. But the only thing that would budge a spirit like this was the power of God.

How do you cope with the realities of life that you come up against? Do you try to do it in your own strength like the disciples? Or do you rely on the power of God. Mountain top experiences are great things, but the test of them is when we come back to the real world, to a broken and hurting world where the glory of God is sometimes hidden. Then the question is whether we remember and trust what we’ve discovered on the mountain top. That everything is possible for those who believe in Jesus, because Jesus is far more powerful than anything we could ever imagine. That was the lesson the disciples needed to take with them from the mountain of transfiguration. This Jesus that they were following transcends any categories they may have had for him. He’s the Son of God. Everything is possible for him, and everything is possible for those who are joined to him through faith, because the name he has is far above every other name.

And when those times come where God’s answer isn’t the one we had hoped for, we need to remember even more clearly what we saw on the mountaintop: that Jesus is the Lord, the sovereign Son of God who came to die for us so he could change the future forever and who rose from death to assure us that his mission had been completed and that there’s now a life with God awaiting us in heaven with him.