Increasing Faith

I have been so challenged this week in my faith that I can't begin to express all that I've felt. It seems that as I draw close to returning home to see my family and friends in the U.S. I seem to get more stressed out. I've never felt more clearly the call to Uganda as I have in the past day. I've realized now that much of this stress is a result of how I feel in leaving all the people here who love me so dearly in every way: kids who consider me a father to them, students whom I am mentoring to understand the fullness of their calling in Christ, friends that will be remaining here for the holidays away from their own families in the U.S. and much more.

I think somewhere in the process of knowing that I was going home for an unplanned visit, my faith began to struggle. I was especially challenged the other day when I announced to the students at the high school that it would be my last chapel day there. I explained to them that my dad was sick and that I was needed at home to care for him. Many came afterward and expressed their love for me and their belief that God would heal him. I laughed as many of them said that and at one point even expressed that I didn't feel that God was going to heal him. But after pondering those thoughts that night, I wondered...did I not want God to heal him?...did I not have enough faith in God that He could heal my father? There was a major problem in my head. I had come to the realization that maybe I lacked faith in the power of God. There's a big difference between knowing in your head the power of God to do the miraculous and the belief that He can and will do the miraculous in this world. It's not like I haven't seen people healed of injuries and diseases, but I guess I had been skeptical of the reality of God's power to heal.

At that moment, I had to rebuke those thoughts in my head and choose to believe that God can heal my father of his illness if it is in His will. Before I had already decided it was God's will for him not to be healed, but that was my human judgment maybe even a result of the lack of a solid relationship with my earthly father. Instead now, I choose to increase my faith in God's power and His will for my father first to save him from his sin and secondly to heal the problems with his earthly body.

Mark 9:20-24
So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. he fell to the ground and rolled around foaming at the mouth.
Jesus asked the boy's father, "How long has he been like this?"
"From childhood," he answered. "It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pit on us and help us."
"'If you can'?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes."
Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

I feel like the father in this passage. I deeply want healing both physical and spiritual for my father, but I'm the one to use that word..."IF" "If it is possible God, heal my father" has been my prayer. Instead, I have to claim what Jesus says that "everything is possible for him who believes". So I write today believing that God can and will heal my father if it is in His will. I now believe it, but ask Jesus to help me with my unbelief!