Last Sunday, we gave our 7-year-old congregation a spiritual challenge—to join together in an on-site, 24-hour prayer chain. Each person was asked to consider signing up to pray for 30 minutes. Nearly 100 people signed up to participate through prayer! We gave our congregation this challenge because, unlike the disciples in Mark 9, we did not want our ministry effort to be an embarrassing failure because it lacked the power of God that comes through prayer.

The scene in Mark 9 opens with Jesus, Peter, James, and John descending from the mountain where Jesus had been transfigured. They came to the foot of the mountain, only to find the scribes arguing with the disciples who had remained behind. What were they arguing about? The argument was probably motivated by the disciples’ failure to cast out a demon from a boy.

No doubt their public failure and subsequent humiliation seemed curious and strange to the disciples, for they had been given authority to cast out demons (Mark 3:14-15) and had been successful in doing so (Mark 6:7, 12-13). Jesus sighed in frustration at the faithlessness of the disciples, the scribes, the crowd, and the troubled father, and ultimately healed the boy. In the debriefing session, the disciples asked Jesus why they could not cast out the demon (Mark 9:28-29). Jesus zeroed in on the cause of their failure—they were fruitless in this ministry endeavor because they had failed to pray.

Like the disciples, as believers in Jesus we’re sometimes guilty of self-sufficiency due to our abilities, knowledge, skill, and past successes. But it’s extremely dangerous to do God’s work without His power. To experience the power of God in our lives and spiritual efforts, we must not see prayer as optional, but as an absolute necessity. Let’s depend on God—not on our technique and skill.