#DailyDevotion Not Getting What You Want From God?

Mark 9:25 And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it,  “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” 26 And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 28 And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 And he said to them,  “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

Well Jesus, despite the father’s lack of faith, out of mercy, commands the demon to leave the boy and it comes out with a shriek. You might remember the disciples couldn’t do it. Jesus had given them authority to cast demons out, heal the sick, and even raise the dead. They were wondering about this themselves. Now we were never told by what means the disciples were normally casting out demons. Were they just commanding demons, “Hey you! Get out of there!”? Were they following some rites familiar to Jewish exorcists? Well whatever they had been doing, it wasn’t working in this case.

Jesus answers them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” Imagine that! The disciples didn’t pray. They had not, in the midst of their failure, ask the Father above to cast out the unclean spirit from the boy. No wonder Jesus accost his disciples with a lack of faith. Faith prays. James reminds us, Jas 4:2-3 “You do not have, because you do not ask.  (3)  You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” They couldn’t do it because they didn’t ask.

Jesus has given us some wonderful, marvelous promises concerning prayer. Mat 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you” Joh 14:13-14 “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  (14)  If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” Joh 15:7 “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Joh 15:16 “… but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” Such promises should spur us on to bigger and greater prayers. Has any other God ever made such promises to man?

But you say, “I have prayed! But I didn’t get what I asked for.” Did you pray or did you wish? Your Father in heaven is not a wishing well. Jas 1:6-8 “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.  (7)  For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;  (8)  he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” Was it according to the will of God? 1Jn 5:14-15 “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.  (15) And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” And if we are not confident that what we ask is according to God’s revealed will, we humbly ask in faith like our Lord Jesus Christ, “not my will but your will be done” trusting He hears us and will do all that is best for us and for his Church.

Heavenly Father, grant us such faith, that we pray according to your will, that you and your Son Jesus Christ are glorified on the day of his revelation. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.