We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christ Church.
This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication,
redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christ Church.
Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristChurchEastBay.org.
Today's scripture reading is from the Gospel According to Mark, chapter 8, verses 34 and 35,
and chapter 9, verses 14 to 29, as printed in the liturgy.
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said,
Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it.
But whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.
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.
You 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, Jesus said,
Everything is possible for one 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 impure 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 up 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.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Good morning, Christ Church.
It's good to see you all on this holiday weekend.
And it's great to see the sun come back out today for us.
And we're here in the gospel of Mark.
We've been preaching this since Christmas,
and we'll preach it all the way to Easter.
And if you're paying any attention to the literary structure of this little book,
it's written as a three-act play.
And we've been primarily in act one with Jesus in Galilee,
and he's demonstrating his power and his authority.
That's basically the first eight chapters of Mark's gospel.
On Wednesday night, Ash Wednesday,
we took a turn to act two of this play.
And it's basically Jesus on the way to Jerusalem,
and he takes his disciples on this journey
where he's teaching them now about his cross
and about what his cross means for their discipleship.
And he's re-educating them about the nature of the kingdom of God.
And that's basically from Mark 8 to 10.
And then act three of this book is Jesus in Jerusalem,
the final events, this final week leading up to his cross,
and that's Mark chapter 11 to the very end.
And so we, the other night, Ash Wednesday,
we began looking at act two,
where Jesus is talking about the meaning of his mission
and therefore the manner of our discipleship.
And he asks his disciples, he says,
who do you say that I am?
And Peter answers, on behalf of the 12,
and he says, you're the Messiah.
And Jesus says, correct.
And the kind of Messiah I am is that I'm going to be killed,
and I'm going to lay my life down
in humble service and suffering for the sake of others.
And then Jesus says these words we just heard.
He says, whoever wants to be my disciple
must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.
If you lose your life for me and for the gospel, you'll save it.
And what a great theme that is for us during Lent.
If you want to be my apprentice,
Jesus says there's a cost to that.
He says you've got to deny yourself,
which is not so much about giving up chocolate or alcohol for Lent,
as it is about, it's not so much about denying something to yourself,
it's just denying yourself,
your self-interested, self-centered ego.
Jesus is saying, I want you to surrender to me
your entire identity structure and your destiny.
I want you to surrender that to me.
Deny yourself.
Take up your cross.
That is, be ready and willing to be executed with me or to die for me.
And he says, I want you to lose your life for me and for the gospel,
which means I want you to give yourself to my mission.
I want you to become an ambassador of my good news of the kingdom of God in this world.
So that's where we are now in Act 2 of Mark's gospel.
And if you want to turn to your pew Bible on page 820,
that's where we are today.
And you can kind of see some of this larger context.
You can see that this is just after the transfiguration
where the glory of Jesus as the divine son of God
has been revealed to the disciples Peter, James, and John.
And while Jesus is up on the top of that mountain with his three disciples,
you've got nine other disciples down at the bottom of the mountain.
And they're struggling with, in this valley, they're struggling with evil.
And Jesus shows up to find them in an argument.
And he says, well, what are you arguing about?
And this father steps forward and he says, I'm responsible for this commotion.
My poor boy has been attacked with convulsions since he was a child.
And I thought that you and your disciples would be able to help and to heal him.
But your people basically could do nothing.
And they tried, but they failed.
And Jesus then proceeds to exercise the demon out of this boy
and to heal him and restore him in a moment.
And the disciples later on, they asked, Jesus, why couldn't we drive this demon out?
We've had success with these things before, but today we failed.
Why do we fail?
And why, Jesus, were you able with extreme ease and with just a word to speak?
And evil is vanquished and the boy was healed.
Why are we, your people, your disciples, your apprentices, not yet able?
Why do we not yet have the power to do what you do?
And so that's the question today.
Why don't we have the power to do what you do?
Now, I preached the body of this sermon before,
but it was a time when many of you weren't part of this church.
So I'm putting it back on some of your radar.
And for some of you, you're hearing this for the first time.
And I'm going to make some fresh application.
But my thesis today and my golden thread is just Jesus' simple statement at the very end
where he says, this kind can come out only by prayer.
This kind can come out only by prayer.
So let's think about this kind.
In this boy, we have a picture of the modern world,
which is seized and convulsed by evil.
An evil which is distorting and destroying the image of God in human beings.
And in these disciples, we see the church of Jesus Christ, which is trying.
It's doing its uttermost, but it's lacking in power.
And it's obviously failing to deal with the situation.
Do any of us ask the question of these disciples?
Do we say, Lord, why?
Why don't we have the power?
Why don't we have the power to deal with the evil that's so obviously convulsing our world?
Why does the church in North America and the Western world seem to lack such spiritual energy
and authority to engage with the situation that's confronting us?
And Jesus answers the question about why they couldn't drive out the evil spirit.
And his answer is, this kind.
You don't yet understand this kind.
You've not yet learned to differentiate between that kind and this kind.
The disciples know how to deal with that kind of spirit.
Because after their initial training, we saw this in Mark chapter 6,
Jesus sends his disciples out and he says,
I want you to go preach the kingdom of God and I want you to cast out demons.
And they went out and they did that very thing.
And in Luke chapter 10, we read that on one occasion,
they were so successful that they came back with such elation and such excitement
that they felt overconfident.
And the Lord rebuked the pride of his little disciple community.
And he says to them in Luke 10, 20, he says,
Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you,
but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
He says, you guys are full of excitement because in my name and in my power,
the devils are made subject to you.
And because this kingdom of darkness, this kingdom full of evil spirits
is just falling down before you as you preach the kingdom of God.
But Jesus says, this time, this father brings his son to you for healing
and you're approaching that problem with overconfidence.
You're approaching this problem with a sense of self-assurance.
You have no doubt that you're going to succeed against the darkness.
And yet, in spite of all of your efforts, this boy, he's no better at all.
In fact, he's just as desperate, just as miserable as he's ever been.
And so Jesus says, I want to give you, my disciples,
I want to give you eyes to see the difference between that kind
that you've encountered before with success and this kind,
which is way stronger than you ever realized.
You guys tracking with me so far?
If you've ever read the Screwtape Letters,
if you've never read the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis,
if you're in middle school or high school or college
and you've never read the Screwtape Letters,
I encourage you to get this book and read it between now and Easter.
What an amazing book that is.
But it draws on this New Testament teaching
about the difference between this demon and that demon.
Right?
That in this evil kingdom of dark powers that Jesus describes,
there's gradations and there's hierarchies.
And the Apostle Paul writes about this in Ephesians 6.
He says,
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood.
He says,
What do we wrestle against?
What we really wrestle against,
he says,
are principalities and powers
and the rulers of the darkness of this world
and spiritual wickedness in high places.
There's a gradation.
There's a hierarchy.
And at the head of all of that is Satan himself,
whom the Apostle describes in Ephesians 2.
He says,
He's the prince of the power of the air
and the spirit that is now at work
in the sons of disobedience.
And so under Satan,
there are these spirits,
these forces,
these powers that vary in strength.
And earlier,
the disciples could easily deal with the lesser spirits.
Right?
They could master them.
They could exercise them in Jesus' name.
But Jesus says,
Here is a spirit of greater power.
This kind is not like the other feebler spirits.
It's altogether different.
You're facing a much bigger problem.
And the disciples rush to attempt a treatment
before they've truly understood
the nature of the problem before them.
And I think the church in the Western world today
is so active,
so busy,
it's so devoting,
massive amounts of time and energy
and money
without really stopping to consider
Jesus' diagnosis of this kind.
Right?
We may not be as aware as we should be
of the real essence
and the real depth
of the problem that's confronting the church.
And what do I mean by that?
Well, in 1882,
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
said that we should,
our modern project,
our project in the late modern world
is that we should unchain
the earth from the sun.
We should unchain the earth from the sun
and therefore,
on that basis,
we should revalue all values.
Okay?
I can't explain what that means
this morning.
But think about that.
What happens if you unchain
the earth from the sun?
And what happens
when you revalue all values?
Well, since Nietzsche's time,
we've seen belief in God
rapidly fading in the western world.
We've seen the knowledge
of biblical truth diminished
and almost virtually gone.
Probably in the next generation,
it will be completely gone.
We've lost a sense of universal,
timeless, moral absolutes
of what's right and what's wrong.
The notion that human beings
are a species that need saving
is increasingly dismissed and mocked.
Jesus is interpreted
as just a man among men,
a social reformer,
a political agitator,
a good moral example
or ethical teacher,
but he's nothing more than that.
The Bible is interpreted
as just a book among books.
It's got inspiring stories,
beautiful poems,
wise sayings,
but it's mostly just
superstitious myth and legend.
Nothing more than that.
And the result of all this
is that most of our friends
and our neighbors
and our colleagues
and our family
are in positions of plenty
in our culture of affluence.
They have everything they need.
They're able,
at the click of a button,
to get whatever they want,
but they're totally unconcerned
about spiritual things.
No interest in the soul,
no interest in higher
and eternal things in life,
no interest in God
just eating and drinking
and enjoying the pleasure
of the moment,
completely powerless
in the face of evil.
Right?
Totally unprepared
to meet God face to face,
to stand before
the judge of all the earth
with his exacting standards
of absolute righteousness.
righteousness.
This is what happens
when you unchain the earth
from the sun
and you revalue all values.
We're facing this unprecedented
post-Christian context
and this increasingly
anti-Christ zeitgeist.
That's the spirit of the age
that we live in,
the zeitgeist of our spirit,
the spirit of this age,
is resisting Christ.
And so can we carry on
thinking that the problem
is that kind
when really Jesus would say,
no, it's this kind.
Like the disciples,
are we trying to deal
with this kind of situation
that we find ourselves in
without prayer,
without extraordinary prayer,
how arrogant,
how clueless
the disciple community
seems to be
about our inadequacy
to deal with evil
and suffering in the world.
We seem not to understand
how weak we are,
how proud we are.
We overestimate our abilities
and our faith.
We underestimate the power of evil
that's out there in the world
and indeed the power of evil
that's in here in ourselves.
And Jesus is wanting us,
I think,
to confront
and to contend with
this kind.
This kind.
Do you understand
that you're dealing
with this kind?
Does that make sense?
But Jesus says,
this kind can come out.
This kind can come out.
When you look at the actors
in this scene,
you notice that,
number one,
there's the devil
who the New Testament
calls a roaring lion
seeking whom he may devour,
who comes to steal
and kill and destroy
and the disciples
seem to give him
no trouble at all.
The boy,
here he is
in this terrible condition
of helplessness
and evil
is making him
increasingly subhuman.
The scribes
just argue and debate.
The clergy
is completely useless
when real evil
needs to be confronted.
The crowd is just
in absolute distress.
Who else in this crowd
needs to be healed
and delivered
like this boy?
And this father
is so distraught.
He's just a man
who his basic prayer
is just rescue me
from my unbelief.
And then you have
these disciples
who are confident
that they can help,
confident that they can
do something
in this situation
and then they're mortified
and they're baffled
by their failure.
It's a scene
of total despair.
And isn't that
our situation exactly
in Berkeley in 2024?
That Satan is rampant,
the world is convulsing
with evil
and if you're not
convinced of that
you just need to read
the headlines more often.
The church is impotent
with her squabbling scribes.
The crowd is agonizing
with her massive levels
of need
just watching this spectacle.
The people of God
are faltering
in their faith,
just their faith
is polluted
and choked by unbelief.
And the disciples
are perplexed
about what to do
in the face
of overwhelming evil.
Doesn't that feel
just desperate?
Well, Lent is a season
in which we humble ourselves
before our desperate situation.
It's a season
in which we say,
Lord, help us.
Lord, deliver us.
And what's amazing
is that you've got
more than just
these six actors
that I've named.
You have the seventh actor
that enters the scene
and he says,
this kind can come out.
And he demonstrates
the power to drive it out.
And then in this
follow-up Q&A,
Jesus says,
you know,
this kind can not
be driven out
by anything but.
And he's basically saying,
look, certain approaches
to being a disciple community
are utterly useless
when applied to this kind.
The power that
maybe you've had before,
the things that
were sufficient before
are insufficient now.
The things that were
adequate before
are inadequate now.
The things that were
effective before
are ineffective now.
And it's leaving you
helpless and hopeless
and it's leaving this boy
diseased and powerless.
And Jesus,
in this conversation
with his disciples
is driving them
to a sense of
deeper dependency.
When these disciples
realize
that in spite of their efforts,
they're not enough,
that they're actually
quite useless,
that they lack power
that's needed
to confront the powers
and the principalities,
what do they do?
And what does the church
do today
when she realizes
that we're not touching
the secular age at all?
That the spiritual,
moral condition
of our society
seems not affected
by us one bit.
In fact,
in many ways,
we're being drawn
into the spiritual
and moral condition
of our society.
And in many ways,
in many pockets,
the church is making
the spiritual and moral
condition of our society
worse.
Do you realize that?
Jesus says,
if you realize that,
I want you to put your faith
in my power
to deal with the situation.
I want you to put your faith
in my power
to deal with this kind.
And so he says
in verse 19,
you unbelieving generation,
how long shall I stay with you?
How long shall I put up
with you?
Bring the boy to me.
He just looks out
and he sees everybody's
full of unbelief,
no faith.
Jesus is the only one
that believes.
He says,
bring the boy to me
and they brought the boy
to him
and when the spirit
saw Jesus,
it immediately threw the boy
into a convulsion
and he fell down
to the ground
and he rolled around
foaming at the mouth
and we've seen this
over and over
in Mark's gospel
that the spirits
know Jesus.
The spirits know Jesus
better than human beings
know Jesus
and so when they see him,
they tremble.
They understand his power
and when Jesus
gets closer to them,
they resist
and they tighten their grip
on human beings
and Jesus,
in verse 21,
it says,
he asks the boy's father,
how long has he been
like this?
And he says,
from childhood,
he's often thrown him
into the fire
or water to kill him
but if you can do anything,
if you can do anything,
take pity on us
and help us.
You can kind of imagine
this father just shrugging
his shoulders
and saying,
hey, Jesus,
go for it.
If you got anything,
just do it.
And Jesus teasingly
rebukes him
in verse 23
and just bounces
this question back
to him and says,
what is this
if you can nonsense?
It's not about
my ability
or inability.
It's totally
about you
and your setting limits
upon God
and what for him
is possible
or impossible.
And so this man
hears that
and immediately
in verse 24,
it says,
the boy's father
exclaimed,
I do believe,
help me overcome
my unbelief.
What an awesome prayer
for the season of Lent.
What an amazing thing
for the church
to just honestly pray.
I do believe
but oh Lord,
help me overcome
my unbelief.
Lord,
rescue me
from my doubts.
Liberate me
from half believing
to full believing.
Save me
from notional faith
into real faith.
It's a prayer
in which we say
to Jesus,
awaken me,
enliven me,
quicken me,
revive me.
Give me
just the smallest
amount of,
just a mustard seed
size of faith
to grab hold
of your massive
amount of power.
Lord,
please enable me
to believe in you.
And in verse 25,
it says,
when Jesus saw
that a crowd
was running to the scene,
he rebuked
the evil spirit.
He said,
you deaf and mute spirit,
I command you
come out of him
and never enter him again.
And the spirit shrieked,
convulsed him violently
and came out
and the boy looked
so much like a corpse
that they said,
he's dead.
What have you done,
Jesus?
He's dead.
But Jesus took him
by the hand
and lifted him
to his feet
and he stood up.
Jesus is the giver of life.
Jesus is the one
who breaks the power
of Satan.
Jesus is the one
who releases us
through his
authoritative word.
Jesus is the one
who's on his way
to his own death
and his own resurrection
and so he just
grabs a hold
of this boy
and he pulls him
out of this death-dealing evil
and he raises him up
to new life with him.
And this is a wonderful instance
of what Jesus said
he came to do.
In Mark chapter 3,
verse 27,
he says,
I came to bind up
the strong man
and to plunder his house.
I came to bind up
the strong man
and to deliver
all the prisoners,
all the people
that he's put
into his house.
Have you experienced this?
Has Jesus taken you
by the hand
to raise you up
from darkness
and evil
and sin
and death
and to give you
a new kind of life
with him?
Has Jesus unleashed
the power
of the Holy Spirit
in you
so that you've been
delivered and liberated
from the kingdom
of darkness
into the kingdom
of light?
You can't
become a Christian.
You can't enter
into the kingdom
of God
in any other way.
So if you're here
and you're exploring
Christianity with us,
we're so thrilled
that you are.
but if you've not yet
experienced
the power
of Jesus
but there's a part
of you that wants to
and maybe there's a part
of you that just wants
to want to,
I want to encourage you
to just take a risk today
and even right now
in your heart
and maybe later today
you can just pray,
Lord, I believe
but rescue me
from my unbelief.
And if you're a Christian
you've said that.
You're a disciple.
You're a follower of Jesus.
You've apprenticed yourself
to the master.
This season of Lent
is a time to examine
ourselves
and to ask ourselves
where is my faith
in Jesus?
What unbelief
is lingering
in the shadows
of my heart
and my mind
that I need Jesus
to overcome for me?
And in what parts
of my life
am I saying,
Jesus,
if you can,
help me?
When I'm looking
at the challenges
that I'm facing
or that we're facing,
where have I succumbed
to unbelief
and thought to myself,
I'm pretty sure
that this particular need
is beyond your ability.
And I'm pretty sure
that this particular challenge
that I'm facing
is outside of the realm
of what's possible
for you to accomplish.
What are the areas
of my life
where Jesus
is looking at me
and going,
you unbelieving
and faithless soul,
how long,
how long do I have
to be patient with you?
Oh.
One of the verses
in Mark's gospel
just haunts me.
It's where it says
in Mark 6,
verse 5,
he, Jesus,
could not do any miracles
there in Nazareth
and he was amazed
at their lack of faith.
And that's the question
for us is
how much do we believe
that Jesus has the power
to do the things
that we need him to do?
How much do we believe
that Jesus has the power
to make this kind
come out?
He says this kind
can come out
but in conclusion
he says this kind
can come out
only by prayer.
This kind can come out
only by prayer.
You succeeded before
because you were dealing
just with that kind
of lesser,
weaker demons
and you've failed here
because now
you're in a different situation
with this kind
and you have
insufficient power.
Your ignorance
about the hierarchies
of powers
and principalities
in this world
has led you
to a lack
of preparation
and therefore
insufficient prayer
and therefore
powerlessness.
And Jesus says
what I did,
he says to his disciples
I did what you could not do
because I have the power
and because I'm filled
with the power
that God gives me
by the Holy Spirit.
What Jesus has just been doing
on the Mount
of Transfiguration
is he's been there
in a time
with his disciples
Peter, James, and John
in a particularly
intense time
of prayer.
Praying to the Father
fill me
with the Holy Spirit.
Fill me with the power
of the Holy Spirit
and he comes back
from that time
of prayer
with a heightened
sense of power.
And friends
we're never going
to be able
to deal
with this kind
that's facing
the church today
unless we've applied
to God
for the power
which he
and he alone
can give us.
A power that's beyond
any of our ability.
I assume
that these disciples
had actually been
praying
but they were praying
unbelieving prayers.
And Jesus
I think
is calling us
to a kind
of extraordinary
believing prayer
where we say
God
I'm so aware
now of my need
I'm so aware
that we are in
over our heads
and that we're
confronting something
too deep
for us
to deal with
on our own
and I'm aware
of myself
that I half believe
and that I'm riddled
with doubt
and that I barely
pray
but help me
with my unbelief
enable me
to depend
upon you
fill me
fill us
fill this church
with your power.
Jesus is calling us
to act out
our faith
through this kind
of prayer
and if you hear
that as
an individualistic
just sort of
do it yourself
kind of project
you're hearing it wrong
because Jesus
is talking
to his circle
of disciples
and he's saying
y'all need something
you guys
need something
that can go down
underneath
this evil power
and that can shatter it
and there's only one thing
that can do that
and that's the extraordinary
supernatural power
of my father.
And the first place
that my father's power
is going to show up
in your disciple community
is through your prayer meetings.
The prayer meeting
is the spiritual thermostat
of the church.
The prayer meeting
is where
the spiritual heat
and the spiritual energy
gets cranked up
among us.
Right?
The prayer meeting
is where people
come in with hearts
that are cold
and hard
and closed
and they walk out
with hearts
that are warm
and soft
and open.
At Christ Church
we're hoping that
prayer is happening
in our homes
and our community groups
but we have this
weekly meeting
for prayer
at 9.30
on Sunday morning
in our boiler room
just back there
and down beneath
the sanctuary
and that's a place
where we just pray
Lord would you
cause whatever
is going on
with this kind
in our church
and in our city
to move aside
so that you can
create space
for your kingdom
to come in.
Once a month
we gather
on second Wednesdays
at 7 o'clock
for prayer
to pray
for the particular
needs of individuals
and the corporate
needs of our church
and of the world
that we live in.
Once a quarter
we come together
for prayer vigils
our next one
happens to be
on Good Friday
and here's my
crazy hope
during Lent.
You want to hear
my crazy hope
during Lent?
Is that our prayer
meetings would be full
and I know that's hard
for parents especially.
That may be actually
a miracle
if you could make it
to a prayer meeting
but I'm praying
that our prayer meetings
would become full
and that we just have
no space left
for people
to pray.
There'd just be
too many people
that want to come
and pray
and I think
that would happen
if we're utterly
convinced of our need
and if we were
to cease
having so much
confidence in ourselves
and if we know
that we can't succeed
in the mission
that we've been given
without the presence
and the power
of the Holy Spirit
and if we collectively
decided that yes
we want to see
this power
that can enter
into the souls
of people
and break the grip
of evil
and liberate people
and make people
new
if we wanted
to experience
the power
of the living God
we just simply
have to pray for it.
It's not going
to come automatically
you have to ask
God to give it to you
and you have to ask
him again
and again
and there's only
one thing
that stands
in the way
of this kind
of praying faith
this faith
that prays
and Jesus calls
it yourself.
If anyone
whoever wants
to be my disciple
must deny yourself
and take up
your cross
and follow
me.
The church
is never going
to deal
with the problems
that's facing us
unless we give up
more than chocolate
and alcohol
for Lent
and definitely
give that up
but what we should
really give up
is our prayerlessness.
What we should
really give up
is the thing
that our prayerlessness
is rooted in
which is self-confidence
and self-reliance
and self-satisfaction.
If anyone
asks you
what are you
giving up for Lent
I hope you'll say
myself.
I'm just going
to stop trusting
so much in myself
and I'm going
to start
taking up
this cross
of prayer
and just
deliberately saying
Lord I believe
but help my unbelief.
That's how I'm
that's what I'm doing
in Lent.
That's how I'm
preparing for Easter.
We really have
no hope to deal
with this kind
unless God
manifests his power
among us.
But when he does
it's like this boy
Jesus just
overcomes the evil
in him
with apparent ease.
He just deals
with this problem
in an effortless manner.
The devil's exercised
the boy is healed
the father's relieved
the family's restored
the community
rejoices.
That's what happens
when the power comes
from on high.
And friends
Christ
Jesus is risen
from the dead.
He's our risen
and living Lord
who's just waiting
for us to come
and pray to him
and ask him
for his power
and so may we
come to terms
with our
powerlessness
in the face of evil
and may we come
to know the power
of God in Jesus
by the Holy Spirit
and may we seek
more and more
in this season
to be full
of the Holy Spirit
and full of his power
through prayer.
And as we pray
let us pray
with the confidence
that everything
is possible
for those who believe.
And let us pray
with deep believing
that nothing
is impossible
for God.
And let us pray
knowing that
the eternal
infinite
unlimited power
of God
it's right there
for the asking.
if only we would
radically rely
on his ability
and not on
the self.
This kind
can come out
but it can only
come out
by prayer.
In the name of the
Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit.
Amen.