When fasting is the only answer

Both in Matthew and Mark’s gospels, Jesus used the expression, “This kind goes not out except with prayer and fasting.” The occasion was a private moment Jesus shared with His disciples when He, Peter, James and John came down from the top of the mountain where Jesus had been transfigured before them. The nine disciples who had remained at the foot of the mountain had tried to help a father who brought to them his son who had epilepsy and was possessed by a demon.(Matthew 17:19-21 and Mark 9:28-29). They did not have success in healing the boy and asked the Lord as soon as He returned to them, “Why could we not cast out that demon?”

 
This is a fascinating scene to me and has been since I first heard my pastor in Baltimore, Rev. Frank Downing preach on it nearly fifty years ago. I have pondered this passage and read what many Biblical scholars opined about it. Simply put, the disciples were asking why could we not defeat the devil? Where were You and your mighty Spirit’s anointing we have felt before operating through us to heal and deliver people? What did we do wrong? Or what did we fail to do?

I have often posed the same questions to the Lord I love. Why did you not heal the one I prayed for so earnestly? In the Gospel accounts Jesus replied to these questions by pointing to two ways the disciples erred. Most directly, the Lord said, “because of your unbelief.”  But quickly after Jesus chided them for their lack of faith, he comforted them by assuring them that even a mustard seed sized faith would be enough to defeat the devil’s work in the sick and tormented. But then he added this profound statement after encouraging them to believe in His power to heal. “This kind goes not out but by prayer and fasting.” So what does Jesus mean by “this kind?”

I propose he meant hard cases where the devil was at work. To dislodge demon power, Christ enjoined the disciples to pray and couple their believing prayers with fasting.

I recently located a sermon that C.H.Spurgeon preached over one hundred and twenty years ago. He presented a reason the Lord allowed the disciples to experience failure and disappointment. This mighty  orator’s words comforted me, and I pass them on in the hope they will encourage you.

In a sermon entitled “The Secret of Failure,” Spurgeon explains that the Lord allows hard things to come along from time to time in a believer’s life. These challenges put him on his face before the Lord in desperate need of more spiritual light and power. In stirring words, Sturgeon referred to the boy from the Gospel account we just referenced, the boy who threw himself into the fire in spite of the prayers of the disciples as the  kind of humbling event that “wakes them up; they have something to deal with now that is very different from that they have had before, it is not a common fever, or even an ordinary case of Satanic possession, but it is a dreadful demoniac who is now before them, foaming, and raging, and wallowing in their presence, and altogether beyond their power to heal. This wakes them up; and the Lord permits us sometimes to have trouble in the church, or a shock in the family, that we may wake right up, and not go on mechanically with no spiritual life in us.”

The obvious lesson of this dramatic moment in the ministry of Jesus is that we need to stop and ask the Lord a question when we face strong Satanic resistance in our lives. Why can’t we cast out the devil and restore sanity and health to ourselves and the ones for whom we pray?  When we do not see the breakthrough we desire and need in our health, in our family members’ lives, in our church or community, or yes, even in the country we love, it is time then to pray in faith and to fast. Esther did just that. She fasted and asked others to join her, and the deceitful and devilish plotting of Haman was revealed in time to save the Jewish people from death at the hands of a crazed and arrogant high government official.

As Purim, the Jewish holiday that honors the faith of Esther, begins tomorrow, let us pray and put aside our normal eating and feed on God’s Word until our faith is so energized that we can say, “Mountain of devilish divisiveness and rancor that seeks to destroy our land be plucked up and cast into the sea.” Father God, bring spiritual awakening to our country. In wrath, remember mercy.

John Knox prayed and fasted while crying out to God, “Give me Scotland, or I perish.”

There are situations that more talking (even praying) cannot heal. Sometimes fasting is the only answer to our needs. Let’s fast and pray this Purim season. March 8 through 11. Let us cast the demons out of our lives and the life of the nation.

Sovereign Lord, give us America or we perish!