I will share about Christian books I have read or listened to.
I will be sharing about my life before and after Christ. I will include stories about my pet and other pets I have encountered.
Jesus Challenges Doubt
While the Gospel of Mark’s author is anonymous, early church traditions associate the book with John Mark, “the Evangelist.” In Mark 9, he writes about an emotionally charged scene where a father, surrounded by a crowd, is asking Jesus to help his son who is possessed by an evil spirit.
Jesus’ response? Our verse of the day, verse 23: “‘If I can?’ … Anything is possible if a person believes.” The very next verse contains the father’s response, confessing that he does, in fact, believe, but asks that Jesus would help him overcome his unbelief!
This pair of verses extends a rich invitation to dive deep into the questions: What is belief? Why is it so important to Jesus? What can we do when we both believe and doubt at the same time?
The answers can be found in Jesus’ answer. He confronts our “if” with His “anything.” His ability isn’t in question, our belief is. Do we trust Him? Are we confident in Him?
That’s not to say our emotions dictate our faith. Like the boy’s father, we can confess that we’re experiencing both belief and doubt at the same time, trusting God is able to do “anything” with the faith we do have.
Believing in the One who created us stabilizes us. Jesus prizes our belief because, without it, we can’t know Him; it’s the first necessary thing. It’s what allows everything else to follow, and anything at all to become possible.
Walk As Jesus Did
Have you ever asked yourself, “How did Jesus live His life?” “What does obeying Him look like?” “How does Jesus want us to live?”
These are great questions to ask in order to discover what God expects from those who love Him.
1 John 2:4-6 says this:
“Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way which he walked.” (ESV)
When Jesus was with His disciples, He said to them, “This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” (John 15:12 NLT)
When His followers loved one another, it was a sign of their obedience to Jesus—and it is the same for us. We are told by John in his letter to a group of Christians that it is God’s commandment that “we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one ...
