After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive (the demon) out?” He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.” Mark 9:28,29

Let’s start with some context. Jesus has just returned with John, James and Peter from the Transfiguration experience. While they were gone, the rest of the disciples were asked to heal and cast out a demon from a boy. They tried but were unsuccessful. So the boy’s father approached Jesus and explained the situation, asking for His help. Jesus healed the boy and cast out the demon.

What about the 9 disciples that awaited Jesus’ return? Why couldn’t they perform the job? Why couldn’t they do what they had been trained to do? What they had been given power to do? What they had already done successfully many times before? Before we try to answer that, let’s look at what they didn’t do:

First, they didn’t concoct some cheap theology to explain away the non-answer—to help God save face (or to help themselves save face). That would be to cheapen the love and power of God, Himself. Too often, we see that done today when we don’t get what we ask for in prayer. We strive to make unanswered prayers acceptable, even the norm. It makes us comfortable.

Second, they didn’t blame the boy or his family. They didn’t blame it on the parent’s sin. Nor did they blame one of their own. They didn’t commence a “witch hunt” to figure out which of them might have sin in their lives that somehow made the prayers of the rest of them powerless.

Third, they didn’t conclude that they must have “got the formula wrong” and work on refining the healing procedure. Often Christians run to James 4:2,3 where it says “You do not have because you do not ask God. And when you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

Of course, that happens some of the time (and God sometimes answers some pretty selfish prayers). And sometimes we don’t pray, it’s true. But what about when our prayers could fill volumes and they are not fleshly…they’re not about looking to be honored or to feel good about ourselves. What if personal significance has nothing to do with our request, and we know we’re praying in God’s will because the Bible assures us we are?

Instead of all those possible ways to deal with unanswered prayer, look at what the disciples did: They asked Jesus why. They cast their perplexity at Jesus’ feet. The pressed in. They sought Him. They knew that He was ultimately the only one with the answer.

Many of us reading this account today might think Jesus’ answer wasn’t really an answer (as often is the case when people asked Jesus questions. His answers are often so much bigger than their questions.) “This one only comes out by prayer.” People trained in deliverance, who had observed Jesus in action delivering hundreds of people from demons—they had seen it all, up close.  They probably had prayed for the boy’s deliverance. In fact, when Jesus dismissed the demon, even He didn’t pray (or fast—an addition from a later manuscript).

Jesus obviously isn’t talking about a prayer offered in connection with the casting out of this demon. He is not talking about a situational prayer, but a life saturated in prayer. Prayer is the life of our Jesus-encounter. It is through prayer that we connect with Him every moment. Without this ongoing prayer connection, our spiritual lives slowly wither.

Paul taught, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thes 5:17). That seems to be closer to what Jesus is saying here and closer to what the 9 disciples needed in order to prevail in real-time prayer to accomplish anything in that particular moment.