Christianity is slowly dying, if not being changed in negative ways. We have forgotten the origin and the alternative lifestyle it presents and instead, look more to some magic than the truth it offers. The faith is often used as a club, and if you don't believe the way I do, you are wrong and are not Christian.
Just look at how we use prayer. We use prayer as if it is a cure-all to everything. All one needs to do is pray hard enough to get God to move, and everything will be OK.
God takes care of the gun problem, the poverty problem, and the injustice problem. I have things to do and places to go that are more important. Besides, I don't want to get involved; that is your problem, not mine. Is it any wonder that we always hear, "Our prayers and thoughts go out to you after a mass shooting?" And that is it. God cares for those people; I have places and things to do for myself. I can't be distracted from work, family, or political parties unless it involves me or my family, which, if we don't offer more than prayers and thoughts, it will soon.
When Jesus came down from the mountains and the epileptic boy was thrown down and hurting himself, the Father came up to Jesus and said, “Master, I brought my son to you because he has a dumb spirit. Wherever he is, it gets hold of him, throws him down on the ground, and there he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth. It’s simply wearing him out. I did speak to your disciples to get them to drive it out, but they hadn’t the power to do it.”
“Nothing can drive out this kind of thing except prayer,” replied Jesus. (Mk 9:17-18, 29) Did he mean the disciples were not praying correctly?
They got their requests in too soon before the praise song, didn't use the right words in the correct form, or their grammar was off; surely God will not listen to a poorly constructed sentence. After all, didn't God create the English language?
I have places to go and things to do, but I have sent you some happy thoughts. Maybe Jesus knew about the secret. Just think positive thoughts, and everything will work out for the best. Focus your energy on what you want to be changed, and it will happen if you focus enough. That is the power of positive thinking prevalent in our churches today, especially from the TV preachers and charlatans who stand and proclaim anything but the mystery before us. Don't worry, be happy, as the song goes.
If that worked, Jesus would not have any problems. Indeed, he was a positive person, and we always see him happy welcoming the children, always with clean robes and clean feet. Yet the supposed positiveness did not stop the death threats and eventual execution. So, what did he mean this can only be cast out by prayer?
Perhaps Jesus wasn't discussing how our prayers and thoughts can change others. It appears that Jesus was talking to his disciples and saying that they had not changed enough, you have not spent enough time listening to God, they have avoided the change that God wanted from them, and for them to be able to handle this difficult situation. Jesus was irritated with his disciples for thinking that magic would care for the boy. What was needed was the energy within the disciples to develop enough to let the power of God flow through them, to get involved, to participate in life, and to forget about the other places and things they needed to do.
We keep saying we send our prayers and thoughts to others, and we need to pray and send thoughts to ourselves about what we need to do to participate in the kingdom moving in our midst.
Oswald Chambers(was an early-twentieth-century Scottish Baptist evangelist and teacher. He is best known for the daily devotional Utmost for His Highest.”, said it this way: “To say that 'prayer changes things' is not as close to the truth as saying, 'prayer changes me, and then I change things.' God has established things so that prayer is the basis of redemption, changing how a person looks at things.”
Or, as C.S. Lewis said, "I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me."
May our prayers and thoughts change us, for our children’s sake, for the vulnerable sake, for our sake, for God's sake.
