When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, “Why could we not drive it out?” And He said to them, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:28-29. NASB).


This statement by Jesus, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer” augurs a dramatic understanding of prayer unknown by any of his disciples. Jesus’ understanding and practice of prayer stemmed from His intimate, unbroken relationship with His Father. For Him, this was the foundation of prayer. That intimation between Jesus and the Father was carried in Jesus’ incarnational life. This life bore the fruit of prayer which carried the authority that commanded the unclean spirit to depart from the boy (v. 25).

The measure of Jesus’ prayer was in tandem with the depth of His relationship with the Father. The latter is the cause of the earlier. No prayers of ours as men and women are to be greater than the lives we live. Our prayers are as deep, high, mature, and effective as our lives are. When the external performances of prayer are greater than our internal relationship with the Lord, pseudo-spirituality soon becomes the order of the day. Nowhere is this display more apparent than in the Pharisees of Jesus’ days.

The fortuitous question of the disciples deriving from the crisis, “Why could we not drive it out?” must pass from a sense of shame to a definite severance of all lingering human presumptuousness and self-confidence.

Embedded in our relationship with the Lord is the discipline He brings to us that from time to time edges us to a place of “why could we not drive it out?” The purpose being that we would abandon and be brought to utter helplessness. A dying is required if our prayer is to change. Our helplessness changes our view of God. More often than not, most of our views of God have gone awry until they are confronted. In relational reality, our hearts are reconstituted and realigned. Like a child, we begin to feel His heart, perceive His mind, and pray His prayer.

In the most profound economy of God, His choice of the priesthood whereby man, in all his days, would serve Him is indeed life’s highest calling and mystery. The priestly garment initially designed in heaven-mindedness was seen by God Himself as a prophetic act of salvation that He would clothe man with. In His wisdom, the intention was that the salvation that comes upon man will re-image him in the likeness of Jesus Christ and that that image will serve the Father.

It is what looks like God that serves God – this was the intrinsic foundation of the priesthood. God’s pleasure was in what reflects His heart and nature. The tragic departure of this reality was to set Israel’s course down the path of religious idolatries. The same path that perhaps multitudes in our time are unconsciously treading on. Convincingly in a utilitarian (a man’s usability) mentality, much of Christian enterprises powers on with the emphasis on a man’s self-will, ambition, determination, availability, and self-interest. The indomitable slogan is, “what I do serves God.” If what I do serves God, I have then no need to be clothe with His salvation. I can then serve God in any way imaginable, except being priestly. Priestly service returns to God what first came from God. Priests could only serve with what belongs to God. No one single part of the entire Priesthood was ever devised, formed, planned, and initiated by or through man; what comes from God returns to God.

God is served when His work of salvation in a man finds fulfilment. The salvation that is worked out in all the nooks and crannies of our lives turns into a sweet aroma, a satisfying fragrance that ascends as priestly offering in His Presence. What salvation becomes in the deepest part of a man is what serves and pleases the Father as the highest: “…in bringing many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10 NASB).

Any wonder that our Elder Brother, the Lord Jesus Himself declared this: “The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind, You are a priest forever…” (Ps. 110:4 NASB). As Jesus is in the Father’s Presence as High Priest, so are those who are partakers of His Divine nature—bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. They are priestly like Him in every way.