There are those times when we come up against something that is outside of the realm of previous experience. It can leave us reeling and uncertain. A challenge. A decision. An impasse in ministry. Demonic resistance. An unexpected turn of events.

Mark 9:14-26 captures such a moment in the Gospel narrative. Jesus' disciples (other than Peter, James and John who have been on a mountain top with Jesus witnessing what we know as the Transfiguration of Christ) have up to this point been on a royal tear. It's as if they can't do anything that doesn't work. People are being healed. Everywhere they go - favour.

Until now.

There's a boy suffering from epileptic seizures. It's quite a dramatic case actually. He is often thrown to the ground accompanied by foaming at the mouth, teeth gnashing and a form of paralysis.

And the disciples can't seem to do a thing about it. Everything that has worked until now just won't do the trick. As a large crowd presses in all around them, the local religious authorities chide them in an accusatory and argumentative tone. And then, to make matters even more embarrassing, up walks Jesus with Peter, James and John who just quite literally had the "mountain top" experience of their lives.

The air is filled with unbelief, which seems to irritate Jesus.

"You unbelieving generation," Jesus replied, "how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me."

Perhaps Jesus' frustration is actually about the anxiety and contention that erupts around the inability to help this child in need. The voyeurism of the crowd. The stressed disciples. The argumentative religious critics. All attention and care for the boy himself seems to have dissipated.

The focus is now on them.

The crowd wants to witness another miracle. The teachers of the law have some bone to pick as to what is happening here. The disciples have succumbed to the disappointment of the child's father and the rhetoric of the religious protocols. They simply just don't know what to do.

"Everything is possible for one who believes." Jesus states in response to the father's cry for help, and he replies in turn, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

The father does not say, "I believe, I have doubts, but I am going to try all the harder to believe." "Help my unbelief" is not an announcement of what he is going to do; it is a prayer. We cannot find our way to hope just by taking some giant "leap of faith" nor relying on the empty bravado of faith declarations; we need to be carried. Luther writes of this father, "Giving up all other hope, despairing of himself, he comes to hope exclusively in the grace of God and clings to it without ceasing."

Help my unbelief.

The Apostle Paul would reflect in his writings to the Roman church that we do not "know how to pray as we should." There are moments when all we have is dependance. John Wimber used to say that the core cry of most prayers is simply this. "Help."

Jesus does heal the boy. He doesn't chastise the father for a lack of faith nor compel him to try harder. He has compassion on the child. He hears the desperate cry of the father. And he heals. He drives out the tormenting demon that was the source of this particular ailment.

Later, alone with the disciples, Jesus is queried, "Why couldn't we drive it out?" He replied, "This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting."

Just as he had with the boy's father, Jesus does not call for a "trying harder". Nor was the answer that, well they had missed the "Transfiguration meeting" and so they didn't have what they needed. No. They had come up against something different. A "kind" of thing they had not encountered before. When facing such obstacles or inability to engage in ministry, pray. Fast.

"All Jesus will say, by way of explanation, is that this kind takes prayer (presumably prayer was always part of the operation; this must mean special prayer, a particularly focused spiritual effort). We are, perhaps, meant to assume that Jesus' time on the mountain was, for him, a time of particularly intense prayer, giving him on his return particularly heightened power."

Wright, T. (2004). Mark for Everyone (p. 119). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

An intentional posture of dependance. Prayer. An intentional disengagement from distraction and the regular rhythms of life of which the ceasing of taking regular meals can be a part. Fasting.

This turn in the story of the disciples of Jesus, alerts us to the fact that things can get hard. There will be "kinds" of things that we run up against that we just cannot discern clearly in the moment. Even demonic resistance. We just don't know what to do or how to engage.

Will we lean into the kind of dependence that the prayer of "help" requires? Are we willing to embrace a practice of fasting to align ourselves with the work of the Father and the presence of Spirit to guide us in the way of Jesus before us?

We do believe, now Jesus, help our unbelief.