Intimacy with God: Our Need & Desire

Peter, James, and John were left scratching their heads. What they had

just witnessed was amazing–a young boy who had been tormented by demons his entire life delivered right in front of them. And while they were excited about what they had just seen, they wondered what was wrong with them.

They rebuked the demon, attempting to cast it out for the boy’s father.

But they failed. Jesus, however, just asked the man if he believed before commanding the demon to come out of the boy. The boy was delivered yet the disciples were ashamed at their failure.

So, they decided to ask Jesus why they couldn’t perform the same miracle. Jesus replied, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29).

Jesus didn’t rebuke His disciples. He didn’t tell them what a poor excuse they were for followers. He didn’t blast them for their unbelief. But Hewas planting seeds of hunger in them. From Jesus’ answer, are we to believe that the disciples didn’t pray?

Surely, they prayed. They had been around Jesus enough to know that even He–God’s Son–prayed to the heavenly Father. But it’s not as if they were going to argue with Jesus, exclaiming, “Master, we did so pray!” However, that’s what we want to do sometimes.

When some biblical principle doesn’t work for us, we question God. We want to know why He isn’t doing what He said He would do. We rarely stop to question ourselves. Do we truly understand this principle or that concept?

The disciples mulled over what they should do. And in the end, they concluded that even though they had prayed, they weren’t doing something right.

So, they gave us the perfect example of what we should do as we desire to go deeper in our relationship with the Lord: “It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples’” (Luke 11:1).

They saw the need to know how to pray. They recognized the power in prayer that Jesus had. This created a desire in them to know how to pray in the same manner. They were hungry for this knowledge. They were hungry to know God intimately through prayer like Jesus did.

Isn’t that what need and desire does in our own lives? When we see we need something, we desire it. And when we truly desire it for ourselves, we grow hungry–hungry for more of God.

Instead of God just revealing all of Himself to us at once (we all know we couldn’t handle it if He did), He shows us what we need and what we should desire. And if we truly desire to go deeper in our relationship with Him, we begin to hunger after more of Him.

Jesus had this to say about the hungry: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6).

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