Faith and Prayer

Luke 9:37-43

How often do you pray?  How often do you spend time in the word, reading the words and lessons of Jesus?  How often throughout the day do you think about God?  If you are like me, when things are going good it is very easy to neglect these things.  It's very easy to wake up in the morning and start your day without a thought in the world of your faith, of your relationship with God.  It's easy to reach for the phone and read the latest facebook posts, play your lives in the latest game you're playing, check your emails and then realize you barely have time to take a shower and jump in the car to make it to work or school on time.  You get to your destination and you immediately jump into the busyness of the day and so the story goes.  Many times it's not until something stops us in our tracks that we remember to pray, that we remember to seek God (who by the way never leaves us, we shouldn't have to seek very far.)

Today our journey takes us to the beginning of a series of stories of the disciples messing up and Jesus continuing to teach them the lessons of life they need to know and embrace before he departs from them.  This story occurs right after they come down from the mountain.  A man with a sick child (demon possessed we are told) comes to Jesus and says I asked your disciples to do this but they couldn't.  Jesus becomes angry with the disciples and says: “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied,“how long shall I stay with you and put up with you? " (vs. 41 NIV)  If we read Matthew and Mark's version of this stories we learn that after Jesus healed the boy and is back in private with the disciples they ask him why they were unable to cast out the demon.  Jesus tells them because they didn't believe they could and because they didn't pray.  

We can not do this thing called life on our own.  We particularly can't follow Christ and do the things disciples of Christ should be about the business of doing without faith and without prayer.  During this Lenten Season make a point to start a habit of prayer and a habit of seeking God.  Next time you wake up and reach for your phone first thing to check facebook, play a game or check email how about checking in with God first.  As my Uncle Dwight used to say when teaching my 8th grade Sunday school class:  "When I point to you, I have four fingers pointing back to myself."