Message: “No Prayer, No Power” from Dr. Rick Mandl

Hey church family. One of the strangest stories that you can read about during Jesus time on earth, had to do with a failure that was experienced by his disciples. It’s a story that you’ll find recorded in three of the gospels. It’s found in Matthew chapter 17, Mark chapter 9, and Luke Chapter 9.

It’s the story of a time when a father came to Jesus asking Jesus to heal his son. This father tells Jesus, “Teacher, I brought my son so you could heal him. He is possessed by an evil spirit that won’t let him talk. And whenever this spirit seizes him, it throws him violently to the ground. Then he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast out the evil spirit, but they couldn’t do it” (Mark 9:17-18 NLT).

I’d encourage you to read the rest of this story for yourself, so that you can see everything that happened during this encounter. But I’ll give you the summary, which is that Jesus heals this boy. He casts out the evil spirit and then he gives the boy back to a very grateful father. It’s a wonderful miracle of compassionate healing, but to me the most interesting part of the story is what happens after the miracle that Jesus performed.

The disciples were puzzled. Not by the fact that Jesus could heal the boy. They certainly had seen him perform many healings, and many other miracles. The specific thing that puzzled them was how it was that Jesus was able to heal this boy, when they who had been performing different signs and wonders and miracles in his power, weren’t able to do it. And so when they had a private moment, away from the eyes and ears of others, they asked Jesus about it. In Mark 9:28 we read, “Afterward, when Jesus was alone in the house with his disciples, they asked him, “Why couldn’t we cast out that evil spirit?” Jesus replied, “This kind can be cast out only by prayer” (Mark 9:28-29).

Don’t miss those last words. . . “This kind can be cast out only by prayer.” Apparently, Jesus disciples were able to have some degree of success doing ministry in His name, and in His power, even without praying about each of the specific things they were doing. And they were successful up until the point where they weren’t. Up until the point where they came face to face with a problem that could not be solved without prayer.

If you want to sum up the main message that Jesus passed on to his followers that day, I think you can sum it up in four words. And the four words are . . . “No Prayer, No Power.” It would be awesome if God gave us a template that we could use as we went through our lives, that told us . . . These problems you can probably handle just fine, even if you don’t stop to pray. These others ones . . .you can’t. Because no template like that exists, the best approach that we can take as his followers is to pray about everything.

From the example of Jesus, we know that the busier he became in ministry, the more he would make sure to take times to withdraw from the crowds and pray. It was his habit. Luke 5:15-16 tells us, “The news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.  But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:15-16).

If Jesus needed to spend time often in prayer, how much more do you and I? May it become a habit for each of us, Amen.