My dog Beau always seems to know how to get just what he needs or wants.  He’ll go and stand by the back door until we get the message and open it for him.  Just recently, he’s developed a new habit.  I’ll be lounging on the sofa and feel this cold, wet nose pushing itself under my arm or my hand until I give him the pat on the head he’s asking for.  Other times, he’ll crawl up beside me and just lay his big head right in my lap.  Beau always seems to know exactly what he wants or needs and knows exactly how to ask for it so that he’s sure to get it.  Lately, as my prayer life has been spitting and sputtering like an old lawnmower in bad need of an overhaul, I’ve wondered how it is that my dog is better at asking for what he needs from his master than I am from mine.

Those of you who heard Brennan Manning a week ago Saturday may have found yourself comforted, as did I, when he reminded us that those who struggle with their prayer lives are in good company.  This text should offer more reassurance.  This must have been a terribly embarrassing moment for the disciples.  These guys had been hanging out with Jesus for quite a while.  You’d think that something would have rubbed off on them by accident.  But, when this poor man brought his child possessed by some kind of evil to them for help in getting whatever spirit it was out of him, they were helpless.  Then later, when they asked, “‘Why could we not cast it out?’” Jesus cut to the chase by reminding them of what they had obviously not been doing.  “‘This kind can come out only through prayer,’” Jesus said.

Speaking of Brennan Manning, I know it was difficult to understand everything he said.  A Brooklyn accent at double speed is tough for us slower speaking Texans.  But, one thing in particular stood out.  It was the chronology of his spiritual ups and downs.  He told of starting a new chapter of ministry or getting a book published and then about his subsequent struggle with alcoholism.  The way we are accustomed to hearing testimonies is more along the lines of the all the downs preceding the good.  Moments of failure followed by wonderful spiritual victories with the failures never repeated again.  Yet, what we were hearing last Sunday was the truth. 

We don’t reach points of progressively higher peaks of spiritual goodness from which we can never again tumble into the valleys of spiritual defeat.  Do you remember Moses?  He’s the one who led the children of Israel out of slavery but then didn’t get to cross into the Promised Land because of his disobedience.  There is no such thing as pole-vaulting the valleys to get to the next peak.  We move from victory to defeat and back to victory again and then start the process over.  That is exactly what had happened to the disciples.  The events about which we have read here this morning were preceded by what had to have been one of the highest moments of spiritual victory the disciples ever experienced. 

Jesus had just taken Peter, James and John up to the top of a mountain wherethey witnessed what is known as the transfiguration.  (Mark 9:2-8)  Jesus received some kind of heavenly visitation during which his clothes become brilliantly white and then Elijah and Moses stopped by for a visit.  The three disciples got to see it all.  It was so exhilarating that they wanted to build three places of worship to honor Elijah, Moses and Jesus, up on the mountain so they could just stay there.  And, as if that wasn’t enough, God himself spoke.  “‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’”  (Mark 9:7)

But, they soon discovered that, even in spiritual matters, what goes up must come down.  There was something they needed to learn that they never would up where the air was thin.  So, the same Jesus who had taken them up the  mountain now leads them down it again to face the reality of their own human limitations.  It works like that, doesn’t it?  Our greatest spiritual victories are often followed by some of the greatest personal challenges.  God sweeps us up to heights of spiritual joy and victory and it is wonderful beyond description.  Like the three disciples, we’d be willing to do nearly anything to stay there.  Prayer comes easy.  Worship comes naturally.  Very little struggle.  Eventually, however, we have to come down again to the reality of day-to-day life and struggle in those places where getting what we need from God seems almost impossible.

Now, here is the problem.  Most of the time, we just do what we learned from others without ever stopping to think there might be another way.  Maybe you’ve heard the story of the young newlywed who walked in on his new bride cooking a ham.  He was horrified when he saw her cut off both ends of a beautiful ham before she put it in a roaster to cook.  When he asked her why she was wasting all that good meat she simply told him that she was just cooking the way she’d learned from her mother.  So, the next chance he had, he asked his new mother-in-law why she taught her daughter to cut off both ends of a ham before cooking it.  And, she said, “Because that’s the way my mother taught me to cook.”  So, the very first chance he had, he asked his new bride’s grandmother why she had taught her daughter, his wife’s mother, to cut off both ends of the ham before she cooked it.  The grandmother smiled, almost embarrassed.  “Oh,” she said, “when my husband and I were first getting started it was during the depression.  We only had one small pan to cook with.  So, when I was lucky enough to get a ham, the only way I could make it fit the pan was to cut both ends off first.” 

Most of us do what we do because of what we learned from those who raised us.  Some people use anger to get what they need.  They keep everyone around them intimidated for fear of the next explosion.  Some people use the withdrawal of affection manipulating others with the fear of emotional abandonment.  Others use position, power, money and even sexual prowess.  In the end, we all tend to do what works and usually we learned that from others who taught us.  If prayer and trust in God were not very big parts of your family’s life when you were growing up, you probably find it difficult to make them part of yours now.  You’ve learned other ways of getting what you need or you’ve just learned to do without.  Getting what you need from God will almost certainly mean learning something the disciples learned that day when Jesus cast out a demon that only baffled them.  And, most of what they learned they learned by listening to a broken hearted father who had come to Jesus for help with nothing but his helplessness and desperation with which to bargain.

This isn’t an unbelievable story at all, by the way.  Some in this room might say they don’t even believe in demon possession as a modern phenomenon.  Others allow for it but confess they’ve never witnessed it.  Some say that what the early Christians called demon possession we would classify as something like epilepsy.  Whichever way you go, you can’t deny the heart-rending elements of this story.  Here is a father heartbroken over his son in the grasp of evil.  Who in this room hasn’t been a part of a family with those dynamics or at least witnessed them first-hand?  And, the most significant thing is that this father got what he needed because he had just enough faith to know that, what he needed, only God could give.  “Have pity on us and help us,” he cried.  Getting what you need from God starts, first, with confessing that, what you need, only God can supply.

Now, we either come to know that and start the journey toward fulfillment or we don’t.  Perhaps you’ve heard about the Baptist who was discovered after being stranded on a desert island for decades.  Thirty years, all alone, until a passing ship happened upon him.  As the captain rowed to shore to rescue the man he saw three small huts and couldn’t help but ask the stranded Baptist what they were.  The crusty, weather-beaten old man said, “That first hut is my house and the second hut is where I go to church.”  “And, what’s the third hut?” the captain wanted to know.  “Oh,” said the Baptist, “that’s where I used to go to church.” 

We’re like that, aren’t we?  We bounce from one church to the next or one job to the next or one marriage to the next or just from one unmarried bed to the next unmarried bed trying to get what we need.  And, often, we end up stranded and alone, on some self-imposed island of despair, because we never seem to realize that we’re so miserable and so disappointed because we’re looking in all the wrong places and we’re expecting of people what only God has to give.  A little over a decade ago, Harville Hendrix published a book for married couples, Getting the Love You Want.  The whole premise of the book is that just getting married doesn’t get you love.  And, what undoes most marriages that fail is the fact that two people get married expecting something of the other neither can give.  Or, what can also undo a marriage is when two people don’t know how to ask each other for what they need and then they get angry when the other person doesn’t deliver what was, in their mate’s mind, never asked for.

This poor father at least had one thing in his favor.  His needs were more than obvious.  When this evil spirit would dominate his son it would “cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him.”  His needs were more than self-evident.  Nothing to hide.  If your life is falling apart right now for all to see, that’s not all bad.  One benefit is that you don’t have to spend one ounce of energy hiding anything.  So often, what we really need is buried beneath a façade, well rehearsed, that keeps everyone fooled. 

This past couple of weeks it seemed like everything was breaking down at once at the Schmucker house.  The air-conditioner went first, for the third time in as many weeks.  The garage door opener was next.  Then, once that was fixed one of the cars broke down in the garage so that it didn’t matter whether the door worked anymore or not.  And, to top it off, one of the toilets decided to cash it in.  We could have used a revolving door to handle all the repairmen coming and going.  But, if you had just driven by our house at any given moment you would have never been able to tell that, behind those brick walls, everything was falling apart.  It is true, isn’t it?  Most of us do a pretty good job of keeping up walls of pretense so that no one will know what’s really going on behind our closed doors.  In our case, had we not, literally, called out for help, we’d still be stranded.  We had to admit to someone that something was broken and we didn’t have what it took to fix it. 

“This kind can come out only through prayer,” Jesus said.  Either we cry out to God, as had this man in bringing his son to Jesus, or we do without.  Whatever else prayer is, it is our acknowledgment that, what we need, only God has.  As we enter this prayer campaign for Rebirth, that must the first step we take toward getting what we need from God.  Either God will give it or we will do without.  We must confess our needs to God.  And, the second step is like unto it.  We must confess ourselves, as well.  Jesus reminded this father, “All things can be done for the one who believes.”  This man wasn’t asking for all things.  He just wanted one thing.  But, as every parent knows who has every languished over a hurting child, that one thing can be everything.  So, he did the only thing he could.  He just told Jesus the truth.  “I believe,” he said, “help my unbelief.”

If you have been struggling with getting what you need from God and your prayer life is going nowhere try going before God as who you are.  Don’t go pretending to believe what you really don’t.  And, don’t go prescribing to God how he has to respond.  Listen to the man’s prayer again.  “If you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us,” he said.  But, go believing, too, that, “Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.  The Lord

protects the simple.”  (Psalm 116:5-6)  As one woman who lost her husband in the Wedgewood tragedy said this past week, “God is close to the brokenhearted.”  (Dallas Morning News, “‘God is close to the brokenhearted,’” 37A, 40A)

When Beau puts his head in my lap or shoves his cold, wet nose under my hand, I’m amazed at his simple trust in my good care.  He knows I have a big soft spot in my heart for him and he takes full advantage.  And, then, I’m reminded of the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount.  “Ask, and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.  Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?  Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”  (Matthew 7:7-11)