Today PAYG centred on Mark 9:14 - 29, the account of Jesus healing a young man who his disciples had been unable to heal.  It is a bewildering passage at best, and one that can lead to an awful lot of unnecessary angst about our own lack of faith or inability to pray aright.

In summary, the father explains the story of his son's life to Jesus ending with the words 'if you are able, have pity on us and help us.'  The NRSV has Jesus reply 'If you are able!' as if this is the most preposterous thing the poor father - who has just had a whole gamut of failed attempts to heal his son - could say to him.  Jesus then says 'All things can be done for the one who believes.'

So it happens - our prayers don't get the answers we want so we must have faulty faith. These aren't selfish prayers, these are good prayers for world peace or an end to child poverty, or for the physical healing of a good person.  Perhaps it is sometimes true, especially with the 'general intercessions' that our faith is wanting, at least in so far as our prayers and our actions have a mismatch.  I have vague recollections of someone in Manchester concerned about gun culture who prayed, very earnestly, that God would 'raise up Christian policemen' (sic) to tackle the issue, completely missing the point that issues of poverty, injustice and racism actually fuelled the gun culture and that it was in their gift to do something, however small, to address that.

Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me that the faith bit has to be linked with action, especially given my love of James' 'faith without deeds is dead' but I think sometimes we reduce our praying to words alone.

The father's reply to Jesus is oft quoted: I believe, help my unbelief.  We do believe, intellectually, that God can answer any prayer consistent with God's character and in ways that concord with God's will (thus a prayer for healing may result in what I have sometimes termed 'ultimate healing' - the transition through death to life eternal).  The trouble is, I think, that we have experienced earnest prayer seeming to go unanswered (or getting a 'no') which makes our believing more tentative, our prayers more general (which may be no bad thing sometimes) and our expectations lower.  We believe but we are also plagued by unbelief.  

Many years ago I was leading a chidlren's holiday club and asked the children if they had any prayer requests.  A little boy of seven asked us to pray that he'd have gained sufficient weight to be discharged from hospital.  My heart sank - what if we prayed and it didn't happen... his faith out-faithed my unbelief and he was discharged.  It isn't always so.  Sometimes we get the answers we long for, sometimes we don't.  It's a mystery and we need to beware measuring our own, or others' faith, by 'visible answers.'

PAYG posed three questions arising from this passage - which may seem to have nothing to do with what I've written:

• Do I believe a person can be changed?
• Do I believe I can be changed?
• Do I believe my nation or the world can be changed?

My instinctive answer to each of these was 'yes' but it was the last one that got me thinking... yes, the world can be changed but only one person at a time.  And the changing isn't just some supernatural alakazam moment, it is a process and it demands me to engage with people.  The six degrees of separation idea or the 'pay it forward' or the 'random acts of kindness' ideas all depend on this tiny scale belief in change being possible.

So, I believe that poverty can be overcome - I don't know how or when, which confuses and sometimes dampens my belief - which means I have to do something to make a difference.

I believe that one day all types of cancer will be curable or even avoidable - not in my lifetime and not to my personal gain - which means I have to do something to further that belief

I believe in the Revelation vision of a new heaven and earth where race, status, education, gender and the like have no power to divide - which means I have to work towards that now.

I believe... Lord help my unbelief.