My pastor delivered a sermon on fasting and prayer Sunday, he referenced Matthew 17:19 where the disciples questioned Jesus because they failed at casting out a demon. Step back and consider their situation. They were mirroring Jesus actions so that they could be good followers, but this time they failed. Why?

The disciples had seen Jesus cast out demons, heal lame people, and perform other miracles. So, what did they miss? They noticed the great things but overlooked one smaller thing that seemed less important. They overlooked the times Jesus slipped away in solitude to worship His Father and pray. You have to think, at this time the Holy Spirit hadn’t been sent to man. The disciples were raised in a time when you were separated from God by a curtain, and only the High Priest could enter His presence. They were taught prayers by the religious teachers. They didn’t fully understand the power of intimate prayer.

The reason the demon didn’t flee at their command was because they were mimicking what they saw Jesus do, but they weren’t plugged into the power source that He was. They had seen that power at work and knew it worked. The problem was that they hadn’t learned how to plug into it yet through intimate prayer. We’ve all been there. You watch HGN t.v. and decide to do one of the DIY ideas you saw on there. Fifteen minutes into it, we realize we’re in way over our head!

All of that leads up to this question for me. What is stopping us from seeing spiritual growth, seeing lives changed, seeing demons flee, seeing healing? We now have the Holy Spirit indwelling. We have Jesus’s example on how we should live, how we should pray, how we should love. A question for self examination: Are we living like we have the authority of a Spirit filled disciple, that we have the ability to speak Jesus and see life changing results. Or are we living like God is locked away behind a curtain, and we need someone else to approach Him for us?

Reciting quick prayers of thanks over our food and maybe a bedtime prayer because it’s what we were taught to do isn’t enough. My prayer is that, starting now, we seek a more intimate relationship with our King, that our day is filled with time to pray and seek, that we become Christians who plug into the power source that brings help, hope and love to those we meet.