Today's passage: Mark 9:14 - 29 World English Bible
Coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration with the disciples Peter, James, and John, our Lord Iesus saw a crowd gathered around the other disciples and questioning them.
Our Lord asked the scribes who were among them,
"What are you asking them?" (Mark 9:16)
One of the people in the crowd answered the Lord,
"Teacher, I brought to you my son, who has a mute spirit; and wherever it seizes him, it dashes him down, and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth, and wastes away. I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they weren't able.' (Mark 9:17 – 18)
The big question in today's passage is, "Why weren't the disciples able to cast out the spirit from the boy?"
The answer is given by our Lord in verse 29, " . . . except by prayer and fasting".
- Mark 9:25 – 29 WEB World English Bible
- 25 When Jesus saw that a multitude came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to him, 'You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him, and enter no more into him!'
- 26 Having cried out, and convulsed him greatly, it came out. The boy became like one dead; so much that most of them said, 'He is dead.'
- 27 But Jesus took him by the hand, and raised him up; and he arose.
- 28 When he had come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, 'Why couldn't we cast it out?'
- 29 He said to them, 'This kind can come out by nothing, except by prayer and fasting.'
Brothers and Sisters in the Anointed One, there are times in our life when nothing seems to work. Those are the times we need to turn to God in prayer and fasting. Without much prayer and devoted fasting, "this kind" cannot come out.
