(This sermon finds that it is not enough to pray in the moment of need. The faith we need grows in a praying life – as Jesus’s disciple discovered for themselves.)

When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him. “What are you arguing with them about?” he asked. A man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.” “O unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.” 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 pity 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!” When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up. After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.” (Mark 9:14-29)

The section preceding our text is absolutely packed with allusions to the Old Testament. St. Mark clearly wanted readers to equate what is happening here with what happened on famous mountain in Israel’s history. The links between the two are fascinating, and we’ll explore them when we Go Deep on Wednesday at 6:30.

Our text ends with Jesus’s explanation that “This kind [of unclean spirit] can come out only by prayer.” This kind – the stubborn, tough, pernicious kind –comes out only by prayer. Jesus was speaking about an unclean spirit, but there are other things that torment us that can only be effectively handled by prayer. There are marriage problems that won’t be resolved if we don’t pray. There are financial predicaments, relationship impasses, job difficulties, and health setbacks that can only be overcome by prayer.

There is something odd about verse 29—but here I am starting with the end of our text, and we really should begin at the beginning. We’ll return to that odd thing before we’re done, but first we need to get some context.

Jesus had taken Peter, James, and John up a very high mountain where they had an experience which, as far as we know, no one else has ever had. On that mountain, they stood in the presence of two of history’s great heroes, Moses and Elijah, even though they had lived (in one case) hundreds and (in the other) more than a thousand years earlier.

But that was only the beginning. They saw Jesus transfigured before their eyes. They could hardly bear to look at him—it was like looking into the sun; he was awesome. They were confounded. Frightened. And then they heard the voice of God address them directly, and they nearly came undone.

They never forgot what happened on that mountain. At the end of his life, knowing that his death was near, Peter was still talking about it. It was his mountaintop experience. And yet this wonderful, unforgettable event on the mountain was followed by chaos and confusion in the valley. That often happens.

The mountaintop is not an escape but a preparation. It is not a place to live but a place to be readied for service. Peter wanted to build shelters and stay there, but Jesus did not oblige him. We occasionally (by God’s grace) ascend the mountain, but we inevitably (also by God’s grace) return to the valley. That’s where we live; that’s where we do good.

Jesus took three disciples with him up the mountain, but he left the other nine in the valley to carry on the work. When they returned to the Nine, they could see that a crowd had gathered around them, and it was not a happy crowd. There were experts in the Jewish law there and an argument was in full swing.

Because people were focused on the argument, the crowd didn’t notice Jesus until he was quite close. When they did see him, they ran to him, and something about him caused people to marvel. Mark does not tell us what it was, but some people think that Jesus looked different after the transfiguration, the way Moses looked different when he came down from Mount Sinai (Exodus 34).

Jesus walked right up to the Nine and asked them what they were arguing about. It is possible that the experts in the law had challenged their authority to perform exorcisms. Whatever the case, before the disciples had a chance to answer, a man in the crowd interrupted.

He had brought his son to Jesus, but Jesus was gone, so he asked the disciples to expel the unclean spirit that was ruining their lives. “But your disciples,” the man said, “don’t have what it takes.” Imagine how the disciples felt as this guy blurted this out in front of all those people.

But the distraught dad was apparently not the only person talking, for Jesus did not answer him;he answered them. I think that means that other people were all talking at once: the disciples, the indignant scribes, people in the crowd. There were accusations and recriminations – it was chaos.

Amid all the clamor, Jesus says (literally), “O unbelieving generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I bear with you?” Note that word, “unbelieving.” It is important to the story. Jesus then says of the man’s son: “Bring him to me.”

When the spirit saw Jesus (I don’t know how a spirit sees – was it through the boy’s eyes or in some other way?) it convulsed the young man. He fell to the ground, rolled around, and foamed at the mouth. Jesus immediately turned to the dad and asked, “How long has this been happening to him?”

The dad said, “From childhood.” Think of that. Years of anxiety and fear, always on high alert, always worried about what other people are thinking. And the great sadness the dad felt for his son in his torments, the helplessness, and, eventually, the hopelessness. And then someone told him about Jesus, so he brought him his son, but what he found were nine disciples who weren’t up to the task. His hopes, which had risen, was dashed and his faith was nearly extinguished.

The disciples, I’m sure, made it harder for this man to trust Jesus. I wonder if we ever make it harder for people – our children, coworkers, and neighbor – to believe? If, like the disciples, we argue, get angry, and act just like people who don’t belong to Jesus, we are making it harder.

Listen to this dad’s words: “But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” There is not much faith there – but there is a little. Faith figures prominently into this passage, into Jesus’s teaching, and into effective prayer. The principle is this: “According to your faith be it done to you” (Matthew 9:29).

Facing a seeming impossibility, the disciples once said to Jesus, “Increase our faith!” Do you know how Jesus answered them? (I paraphrase.) “You don’t need great faith. You need genuine faith. If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Be lifted up and cast into the sea, and it will be done for you!”

Can so little faith really lift so massive a mountain as a critically ill child, a critically ill marriage, an impossible job situation, an extreme financial need? Can it really be true that a little faith is all that’s needed? How can that be?

A little faith is enough, as long as it is genuine, but only because it is joined to Jesus’s great faith. The one who “ever lives to intercede for us” also intercedes with us when our prayers align with God’s will—and his intercession makes all the difference. When we wear his yoke, he does the heavy lifting. When Jesus says to this dad, “Everything is possible to the one who believes,” the one who believes and for whom everything is possible is preeminently Jesus. The desperate father’s smidgeon of faith is joined to the great faith and faithfulness of Jesus the son of God. “This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4).

The word of Jesus to this dad revived the dying embers of his faith – a word from Jesus can do that – and he cried out, “I believe!” then immediately added, “Help my unbelief!” And Jesus did help his unbelief. If Jesus sees even a spark of faith, he will tend it, help it, blow on it until it becomes a fire.

I want you to notice something it took me a long time to understand. Within the same person at the same moment, belief and unbelief can coexist. We are a little like an old-style hard drive in a 1980s computer. We can have bad sectors. We can be tooling along, trusting God, when suddenly we access a bad sector – that is, we discover a part of our life where unbelief dominates – and we crash.

Most of us struggle to face the fact that these bad sectors – these areas of unbelief – exist in our lives. And because we don’t face it, we don’t understand why our genuine efforts produce so little fruit for Christ.[1]

But Jesus is willing to help us. The man’s prayer, “I believe; help my unbelief,” is one that I have often prayed. And the Lord has helped me. And he will help you too.

Jesus aided this man’s belief and helped his unbelief by answering his prayer. Actually seeing God answer prayers greatly helps our belief and systematically dislodge our unbelief. In this case, Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to leave the boy and never come back. But notice that the answer to this dad’s prayer did not at first seem very encouraging. The spirit shrieked, sent the boy into prolonged convulsions (the Greek says something like, “much convulsing), and then came out, leaving him lying on the ground, looking to all the world as if he were dead.

Sometimes things look worse after the Lord answers our prayers. But if we stop trusting at that moment, we’ve stopped trusting too soon. With the frightened dad looking on, Jesus lifted the boy and he arose (both words regularly used for resurrection), and the father’s faith was helped.

Jesus then went into a house and his disciples followed him. As soon as they were alone, the Nine asked him (verse 28), “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” They had driven out demons before; why had they failed this time?

Pay attention to Jesus’s answer in verse 29 (this is where we find something odd). “This kind can come out only by prayer.” Only by prayer. Not by rituals. Not by smarts. Not by a powerful personality. Only by prayer.  

Let’s be clear about that. There are some things – uncleans spirits, deeply-rooted addictions, relationship conflicts – that are only driven out by prayer. That was Jesus’s own word. So, here is the odd thing: Jesus didn’t pray. Remember the story: he saw a crowd running towards them and quickly cast out the unclean spirit before they arrived.   

He didn’t pray … at that moment, but he did pray—day after day and sometimes night after night, year after year. Jesus’s life was characterized by prayer. It was punctuated by times of prayer. Jesus is not here talking about praying on the spot but about praying before you’re in a spot. This kind does not come out by praying in the moment but by praying (as Paul would later put it) “at all times with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:18) from a life that is increasing in faith.

I’ve known people who seemed to think if they tried really hard to believe and spoke very loudly when they prayed, their request would be answered. I haven’t seen them succeed any more than the prophets of Baal did when they tried the same thing. Prayer that has power is never the prayer of a moment; it is always the prayer of a life – a life connected by a thousand cords to Jesus.

At four places in the New Testament record, we hear Jesus tell his followers, “When you pray …” He took for granted that they would pray. But those words brought something definite to the disciples’ minds that might not come to ours. They understood “When you pray” to refer to the three times every day when they said their prayers. That was their practice and Jesus didn’t put an end to it (though he did instruct them to do it differently).

We will never know the power of prayer if we only pray when we feel like it. Powerful prayers don’t appear magically in an emergency. They come out of a praying life. I was once stuck in a small village in Senegal because the taxi I was riding in had broken down. It was our third car repair of the trip. I was anxious to get back on the road and get our 13-hour cross-country trip behind us – thirteen hours crammed into the back of a small Renault station wagon without A/C in 100-degree heat. Finally, the car was ready. Together with five Africans, my friend and I stuffed ourselves into the car. The driver started it up but, before we could get on the road, the call to prayer rang out over the loudspeakers. Everyone, including the driver, bailed back out of the car, unrolled their prayer mats, and said their prayers, as they do five times every day.

It was three times a day for the people to whom Jesus was talking. When they heard him say, “When you pray,” they naturally assumed he was talking about those regular prayer times. When you read Jesus saying, “When you pray…” does anything definite come to mind? Do you have a regular prayer time? A twelve-second prayer before a meal is good, but it’s like a twelve-second fill up at the gas station. It won’t get you far.

Jesus said, “When you pray,” because he expected his people to pray. His disciples knew from watching him that the power to live well is gained, at least in part, through prayer. It’s no wonder they – men who had been praying all their lives – asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.

When Matthew tells this same story, he includes a part of Jesus’s answer that Mark leaves out. Mark records Jesus saying, “This kind comes out only by prayer,” but in Matthew he begins his answer with, “Because you have so little faith.” Faith is a spiritual muscle that is strengthened (in part) by praying and seeing answers. People who don’t pray don’t have the strength they need when they need it.

Jesus, whose faith in his Father was unbreakable, prayed regularly. He once went on a 40-day prayer retreat. He sometimes prayed through entire nights. He got up early in the morning to pray. And, no doubt, he joined his family, friends, and neighbors in the three daily times of prayer.

I am not suggesting that you go on a 40-day prayer retreat or spend entire nights in prayer (though I am not suggesting that you don’t, either). I am suggesting that you have a regular prayer time each day. There is not a one-to-one correspondence between time spent praying and power, but there is a relationship. I can’t promise that if you pray three times a day you will have power to move the mountain of illness or financial need or marriage troubles. I can promise that if you don’t pray, you won’t.

Some people try to pray as they go, which is the kind of prayer we looked at last week, and is essential to living the adventure with God. But in my own experience, I have found that I am much better at praying as I go if I have prayed before I left. The two kinds of prayer are symbiotic. Our planned prayer time empowers our unplanned prayers and our unplanned prayers enrich our regular prayer time. If I cut out one, the other invariably suffers.

There are stubborn, difficult things in life, in relationships, and in church that will only come out by prayer. If we don’t pray, they won’t change. Learn to pray. Ask for help. Read books on prayer. Make yourself a prayer schedule. Form a prayer group. But just do it. Pray!

Blessing/Sending (1 Thessalonians 5) Now may the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it.

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[1] Dallas Willard says something very like this – only says it better – in Renovation of the Heart.