Rooted In God: Mark 9:16-18
Our strength is always rooted in God. He is the source of everything that is good and glorious. He is the reason we have life, much less find any success at what we are doing. In our moments of struggle or weakness, we should turn to Him and He will lift us up.
Jesus does what any mentor should do upon seeing His disciples cornered by their adversaries. Jesus asks what’s going on. In doing so, He starts to take control of the situation. Jesus pulls the pressure to Him.
The religious elite don’t engage with Jesus. In fact, reading ahead shows the religious elite don’t engage with Jesus for the rest of this episode. Either they don’t want to take on Jesus at this time or they realize that once Jesus casts out the spirit He has the crowd behind Him and they will lose face with he crowd. Either way, it doesn’t appear that the religious elite are seeking out the truth.
The man who brought his son to the disciples answers. He informs Jesus that his son has a spirit and the disciples were unable to cast it out. I can only imagine his relief to find Jesus after coming and looking for Jesus and being unable to find Him!
In the end, the disciples are unable to cast out this spirit. We’ll talk about why in a few days when we get to the end of this episode. Remember, though, the disciples had experience with this sort of thing. Prior to the feeding of the five-thousand, Jesus sent out the disciples and they came back having experienced great success. This isn’t a situation where inexperienced people are given a task and are unable to succeed; it is a case where the disciples felt knowledgeable and could come up with a game plan. They even had each for strength and encouragement.
This is a great point to ponder when it comes to being a follower of Christ. As we grow in Christ, we gain experience. We get better at reading God’s Word, understanding the deeper points, and fielding questions and thoughts about what we read. As we talk to others, we get better at mentoring people along, challenging them to grow, and using our own experience – both successes and failures – to encourage them in their walk. We get bolder and more confident. This is all quite natural and good!
Even as we grow, though, it is important to remember that we are not God. We cannot do everything. We still need to rely upon Him. In fact, the deeper we grow in faith the more susceptible we are to taking Him for granted and forgetting we need to rely upon Him. With God, all things are possible. Through God, we can do all things. When we become experienced enough to take our relationship with God for granted and forget to rely upon Him and His understanding, we fail. Our strength is always rooted in God.
