Daily devotion – when trauma strikes!
Mark 9: 25 When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” 26 Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.
28 And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”
29 So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”
Things can go from ‘cruising to trauma’ in our lives so rapidly. It just takes a text, a phone call, an accident, and all of a sudden, our lives are changed dramatically.
Too often people only react when situations happen to them. They are caught off guard and unprepared.
The disciples found themselves in a predicament, they were unable to deliver a boy from demonic control, and the scribes were now taunting them because of their failure to do so.
Why had the disciples failed? Because they had been careless in their personal spiritual walk and had neglected prayer and fasting!
The authority Jesus had granted them was only effective if exercised by faith, but faith must be cultivated through spiritual discipline and devotion. Thus today we find so many Church attendees scrambling when a sudden change for the worse hits them broadside.
How prepared are you with your world? How prepared are you for your marriage relationship, or a serious matter with your children? Too many people when a sudden change comes panic.
When their unprepared, ‘unprayed up’ lives hit a speed bump the incident reveals what the true content of their walk with God is in reality. You don’t want this to happen in your life and find you come up short!
Remember Job who each day offered up prayers and sacrifices for his family – and this was during the ‘good times’ prior to the Devil laying siege to him and his walk with God.
Job 1:5 So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed[fn] God in their hearts.” This Job did regularly.
Be ready….