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Um that's just so many dumb videos on youtube come, come wash my clothes with me. Um But they do this 321 flash for the thumbnail. It's so stupid. It's this little band and I have a huge head. So my head doesn't fit in the picture. Um I was just sitting here trying to get into writing and um recently as yesterday or something, I was reading um Mark because Mark doesn't get enough love. He was feeling lonely because he's not the first book in the New Testament. And I was reading through and it's, it's been really wonderful, but I want to share some thoughts uh from verse 14 onward, I would share some things that uh I never know what to say. I've been told I've been taught, I've thought about came to me whatever. Um OK, so when he came to his disciples, that's Jesus, he saw a great multitude about them in the scribes questioning with him. So he wasn't there. He came upon the scene and uh from the other gospels, I'm pretty sure that this is connected to him sending people out whether this is the 12 or the 70 I do not know, nor do I care. Um In verse 15 says, and straightway, all the people when they beheld him were greatly amazed and running to him, saluted him. So wherever they learned it from , they knew something about him and um they were excited to see him 16 and he asked the scribes, what questioned you with them. So this is very interesting because he does not address his disciples. He doesn't address the people immediately. What he does is he zeroes in on these scribes who are questioning his disciples in questioning here. It's not um this wasn't like gentle seeking of instruction. These people were um attack is too strong of a word, but they were, they were um striving with his disciples. They were, they were contesting against them and we read why shortly. And one of the multitude answered and said, master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit. So the scribes did not answer Jesus, they did not answer him. It's interesting um when I bust my kids doing something wrong, um there's one in particular who's, it's funny to me who's particularly guilty of this. But anyway , when I bust one of my kids doing something that, that I know what they're doing and they know what they're doing and they know that I know that they know that what they're doing is wrong. I'll say what are you doing? And you just get this, look, like and they won't answer you. All right. So these scribes thought they had because of Jesus pinned to the mat because they were successfully striving with this crowd. Or I'm sorry, these the disciples in front of a crowd, a crowd was forming because the disciples were getting taken behind the woodshed. And why? Because this guy brought his son to the disciples to have him healed and they weren't able to do it. And so now the scribes, so this wasn't the Pharisees. They weren't uh you know, the Pharisees have a mixed tool bag. The scribes were citing scripture and tradition and whatnot to try to say like we told you this was rubbish and all this other stuff . And Jesus went straight to them. He asked them and they wouldn't answer. But this guy said, hey, I brought my son and they couldn't heal him. So let's keep reading. Uh I'll, I'll reread 17. 1 of the multitude answered and said, master, I've brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit and wheresoever he taketh him, he tere him and he foam meth and gnash with his teeth and pine away and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out and they could not. Now that's pretty old English. He, I I'm reading from the King James, but you probably get the gist. But here's some things that we'll get to in a second. Um This is a really intense situation. Right. This isn't like, oh, sometimes he has a tick and he, you know, shouts a cuss word randomly and it's awkward and I'm embarrassed. Right. This is serious stuff. Um So when he has these fits this, this spirit possesses him and tere him and he foth and he gns with his teeth and pine away. And so it's like this super intense thing. And Jesus says, verse 19, he answer him and saith oh faith uh oh faithless generation. How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer? You bring Him unto me. And so here's my question, who was he talking about ? Who was he calling faithless? That's an interesting question that you should think about. I think a lot of people think he was talking to his disciples. I'm just going to continue instead of addressing that. But you should think about it. You should ask God about it. You should research uh I mean, read this, read this and think about it and ask God about it verse 20 they brought him unto him. And when he saw him straightway, the spirit tear him and he fell on the ground and wallowed foaming. So this spirit hit the boy and he had one of his episodes. The second he saw Jesus, this happened. Now this is interesting if you were in the crowd and you were sitting there trying to, you know, you, these scribes who were the recognized authorities and they know the law they're laying into these disciples whose whole claim to fame was, we can work miracles. This is in the eyes of the crowd and yet they can't help this kid, kid, this son, we'll get to whether he was a kid in a minute. They can't help this man's son. And then the scribes are laying in with scriptures and other uh and, and recitation of tradition to try to prove that um this, this religious movement, this faith movement was rubbish. Now Jesus comes and he says, oh, what's all the commotion? And the guy says, the scribes won't talk to him because they, they'll get their butts handed to them and they know this, they were afraid to talk with him because they couldn't conquer his logic, his wisdom, his argumentation and persuasive skills . They couldn't, they couldn't counter it. And so they don't even say anything but the guy who sincerely is trying to help his son, he says, here's the problem. And so now they're all licking their chops because as he's saying this, when Jesus looks at the kid, the kid, the son, when he looks at the sun, all of a sudden the demonic influence comes over him or whatever and he starts having his episode. So why would that happen in that moment? Demons only have one objective? Everything Satanic is to one end and that's misery. There are a lot of way points to that. And in this case, the greatest damage they could do. They're strategic, they are limited in their understanding just like everyone is, but they're strategic in how they operate. And their strategy was. Um I need to make Jesus look as bad as possible because that is what will be the greatest um contribution to the cause. They're always thinking about the cause and they do that a lot better than most Christians do by the way. So he starts having this episode and uh Jesus in verse 21 what does he do? Does he say, hey, get out of him. He does not? Why not? You should always ask these questions. Why does he do what he does? Why doesn't he do anything else? Everything Jesus does is optimized. It's the best. So you have to understand the situation and model his behavior. You need to think about why he does what he does and know what he does, which obviously you can't do if you don't read the stories in the first place. So instead of saying, get out of him, this is what he says. He asked his father, how long is it ago since this came unto him? So there's an element of poise here because I think most people would be at least a little unnerved by this and Jesus isn't, he just keeps his cool and just turns to the father. He doesn't even address the son. It's like he doesn't even care. He turns right to the father and he says, how long has this been happening? And that's really interesting because this, this son is having this violent episode and he's just like, how long has this been happening? This reminds me a lot of, um, well, I could cite a lot of specific things here but they're all involving emergency situations, like military stuff or whatever with kids or dogs. We've, we have, um, dogs and they get hurt on stuff. Sometimes we live in the, in the middle of nowhere, there's barbed wire and like rusty metal and random things in random places. And um it's funny to see how, how everyone reacts to these things, right? Um And, but, but if you care about the person that's hurt, you cannot go into an emotionally possessive state. Do you, do you understand what I mean by that? You, you have to um, sorry, I don't know, this is this not, I don't do live things very much and I, I don't even know if chat is on for this. I think one person is watching this now. So good morning. Um It's much too late to say good night, so good morning to you. Um uh to stay calm in a situation and level headed. I, I don't like that, that description stay calm in a, in an emergency situation because um you have to be intense, your intensity has to rise to the circumstance, however, intensity does not require uh being possessed by emotions. You, you need to make sure your rational mind is in control and when your emotions take over it, it blocks that. It bypasses that and corrupts it. That's very important for so many things uh that are directly related to the Kingdom of God, but that's for another day. So just keeping that light to keep on topic here, he just coolly turns to the father and said, how says, how long has this been going on? He assesses the situation when a doctor gets on a scene and they say, are there any doctors on the plane? And I raise my hand because I have a phd in computer science. Um, and they ever asked another question? No, just kidding. So, um, and the, and the medical doctor raises his or her hand and they go over, they don't, they don't freak out. They have to stay calm and just do their job and it's not because they don't care. It's precisely because they do care. And you might say, well, I'm not a physician. If your kid gets hurt, the worst thing you can do is freak out because when you get emotionally unhinged, it's going to make your child get emotionally unhinged even more than they're probably screaming. If something bad happens, you have to be calm so that you can help them even if what you're doing is trying to calm them or reduce their pain or minimize their suffering. Hopefully, those are things you want to do. If you love them, you have to stay calm, but you might have to be intense. So you're not gonna like cry and scream and freak out even though you're probably feeling more pain than they are to see someone you love suffer. There's more pain. Jesus loves everyone but he didn't even address this child. He turned right to the father. Why? Because he's the doctor and he's fixing the situation, right? We make a mistake when we confuse emotional intensity with love. That's not, those aren't the same thing. Love is what benefits sometimes emotional intensity benefits and sometimes it harms you have to have the the wisdom to discern between those and the honesty to constrain yourself to focus on the higher information channels like your reason. So he says, how long ago since this came unto him? And the father said of a child, why did Jesus ask him that? Why was his first interaction with this father and son? How long has this been going on? We'll come back to that. In verse 22. The father continues and ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him. But if thou canst do anything have compassion on us and help us, why was that important to know? You see everything that God does is according to law, his law, everything He does is according to pairings of cause and effect. When you read the account of a miracle. You are reading a recipe. God is impartial. He works by the same rules with all people. If you can figure out the rules that regulate miracles. In specific cases, you have unlocked the power of how to do them in those specific cases. This is a tremendous secret and I'm just popping it out there. So Felicidad is, it's a really, really, really big deal. Why did Jesus ask this man, how long this child, his son had been dealing with this? And the, the guy said, since he was really little, why did so I said we come back to this. This was not a little kid, this was not a little kid. A little kid would not have off times of life to be cast into fire and into water. Plus if a baby gets cast into water, it's gonna die, it's gonna drown, right? Um Or, and it's not gonna come out of fire. What am I? It's not funny. I'm sorry. He's gonna watch this. My kids watch this stuff. One of my kids as I was floored by it, I was, it was actually, it was really sad. I was very sad that my other kids let this happen. Um One of the younger ones was with some of the older ones and they were playing around um a hillside and they discovered that there was a yellow jacket nest and long story short, the big kids ran away and left the littlest kids standing there and he got stung a couple of times because he didn't know what to do. He just stood there so little kids, they don't get out of things that big kids will get out of. And so this was not some little toddler. This was a grown individual. Ok. I'm not saying he was 50 or something but you know, he wasn't three. Um, why did Jesus want to know how long this had been going on? It comes back to you faithless generation. How long do I need to suffer you? So um first off, can we just clear the elephant in the room that Jesus says, mean things all the time, all the time, the scriptures are plain that he is. What's that exact phrase? He's meek to the meek and he's proud to the proud news flash. Almost everyone is proud, almost everyone is proud. And so when you actually read the scriptures, instead of leaving your understanding of God to people, what people have told you people who have never met him, um You are going to have this whitewashed version of him. And that's a big problem because then when people come around you that are more like Him than you are, instead of learning from their example, you will be offended and say this person has nothing to do with God because they're so offensive to me. You don't realize that if Jesus were there, you'd find him even worse, much worse. So he said, o faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? That's intense. Ok. So how was this father faithless? And if so how, and what was the remedy? Well, by finding out how long this had been going on, Jesus had a measure of this man's faith. How, so if you were in a situation, let's just erase the child component . Ok? You personally had some problem and it was a big problem and it was an unsolved problem and it was life threatening. What would be appropriate, an appropriate intensity level for you to try to solve that problem. If it's life-threatening everything up to your life is warranted, right? When people get terminal cancer, all of a sudden how much money they have doesn't matter. They will spend everything they have, they will contract hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to try to get rid of that cancer. The rest of their health doesn't even matter. They'll willingly go through chemotherapy and basically kill themselves so that they can get rid of this tumor and maybe squeeze out another year or two of life. They take experimental drugs which, who knows what they're gonna do? They might totally destroy your liver or whatever make you grow an extra arm. They take it anyway. They're willing to experiment on things that have very little probability of working very high likelihood of harmful effects. And known high cost. Why? Because that makes sense. If you're gonna die and you don't wanna die, right? You'll put all these things ahead of that in priority. If you really believe that the gospel is what it purports to be and all you do about it is go to church for an hour or two every Sunday or maybe every so often. You are not acting with intensity that matches what you say you believe that's completely disconnected. Someone wrote me an email recently and said you've been talking a lot about value lately. Yes. And I'm going to talk a heck of a lot more about it because you, if God took the corner of the sticker off and took it, took peeled it off and you saw more of the actual truth, the big picture of what is and what will be of what is inside of you and what's inside of God and the difference between it, it would shock you what that entails because it's not what you think it is. And there are reasons for that. So don't take it lightly. A compass points north. And when you put it in your hand, it will only point to the top of the compass. If you're facing north, if you're facing a different direction, it's gonna point in a weird way that you don't, that doesn't look right. It's not pointing up right. You have to turn. So you're facing north for the compass to point straight ahead and that's how it is with God's servants, pay attention to what they tell you because they are, they have a perspective that is clearer and more accurate. They know more about how things are. And so when they lay things out, pay attention only within the limits of reason, don't, don't, um, don't go beyond what you have good reasons to believe ever. However, that's the thing and that's what I wrote about in my book through faith. Um The, the, the particular idea that faith is not believing more than you have reason to believe. Jesus didn't call these people the faithless generation because you know, they didn't believe in magic. He called them a faithless generation because they weren't doing what made sense to do when the man born blind, he has nothing to lose. He can't see he's a beggar, he can't do anything to support himself in that culture. He just stands around and waits for people to give him money when Jesus says go out to the pool outside of the city and wash your eyes and he smears nasty stuff all over his eyes. Sure. What else am I gonna do? Right. The only thing I have to lose is the walk. What else am I gonna do with my time? You know. So he allowed Jesus to smear disgusting muck on his eyes cause you know, animals and humans, all the waste was just in the street. I'm not saying he grabbed a, a pile of poop and smeared it on this guy's face like in Nacho Libre. But, um, it was nasty stuff, right. And he let him do it in his grit. He let him do it. And yes, that was some belief, some implicit belief, but even that he, he had reason to believe this guy could heal people from word of mouth, from other people, testimony, living testimony. It wasn't just some random person just sneaking up on him. And right. So that's faithlessness. It's not, it's an unwillingness to do what is justified. That's it. And it's an amazing thing to unlock. We don't lose our way from God. We don't come off the path because we're not willing to do exploits. You get, you get out of the way because you're not willing to do what makes sense. That's it. That's it. All you have to worry about is what makes sense. Just do what is justified and you'll get right in the path now you'll find yourself doing exploits . But that's because he will give you the reasons and here is the reason. Um that's a secret. You'll find it out when he becomes your reason. You do, you do incredible things that other people. It, it doesn't make sense to them, but that's because they don't know him. Yeah. So he asked his father, how long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said of a child? And he told him it's been a long haul buddy. Verse 23 Jesus said unto him and I can just see Jesus just he said unto him if thou canst believe all things are possible to him that believeth. Now when you see this in the movies, I hate gospel movies. When you see this in the movies, it's this like, oh kindergarten teacher, Jesus, if you can believe all things are possible to him that believeth and I don't mean to be flippant about this. There's a time and a place to take things lightly. Um I'm not trying to do that. I'm, I'm trying to emphasize the importance of reading things in different perspectives to get the whole picture. What if he was laying into this guy? What if so a good question to ask God is Lord, how would you write this in modern English in my current understanding of things? How would you say this if, if, if you wanted to explain this to somebody, how would you rewrite it in modern times? And what if, what if it was something like um what if it was something like the key to anything happening is understanding what causes it to happen. The key to understanding why something has not happened is to figure out how it deviates from what needs to be for it to happen. Um That's not what he would say. Um This is really crude. So forgive me, I'm just poking in this direction um life. But thinking about things like that can, can you can make a lot of progress. So Straightway, the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord , I believe, help thou mine unbelief. Now, this one, the movie seemed to get pretty correctly. However, there's some subtleties here that are lost in a quick read. And again, the key is always to formulate questions. Straightway, the father of the child. Straightway means right away. OK. Now you gotta read between the lines. This dude had sat on his butt the entire life of his child while his child grew up routinely experiencing insane little episodes that were so intense that he almost died pretty much every time. And if he didn't die from the intensity, it's, he almost died because the thing threw him into the fire or into water. And let's just let's just uh call attention to the fact that in the first place, there was a thing throwing him into the fire and into the water. This is not a light thing. This isn't like every once in a while I drop my cereal bowl on the ground in milk spills, right ? And the dad didn't do a dang thing about it. Then he hears that there are these um this religious cult going around. Um but they can actually heal people which his religion could not do. The Jews at this time, did not do miracles. No one was being healed they had heard about that long ago. But, you know, it's like, uh, uh, you walk into any church today, almost any church. Let's pray for Sister Jones because she was just in a car accident and she'll never walk again. Let's pray for, um, little teddy. He just got, um, lymphoma and the doctors gave him three weeks to live and you pray for all these people and nothing happens. Don't mock God if there's a problem, find the solution. And if you don't have a willingness to engage in the intensity that matches the problem, don't address it. Don't fake address the problem, right? Don't go through the motions and mock God as if you were doing what you should be doing. If you're accepting that it's the will of God and in the person's in his divine optimization for sis, what were these names? Sister Jones to never walk again? Or little timmy to get lymphoma great. But praise God for his wisdom and his willingness to let us suffer in order to have greater joy. But don't stand in the middle of those two. Does God want this person healed or does he not? And if he does, what are you willing to do about it? Because if you're not willing to sit in sackcloth and ashes, fasting for days and days and weeks and weeks, if that's what it takes, because if it were your life, you'd go through chemotherapy if it were your kid you'd sell your house to have the money. But when it's Sister Jones, you don't care, you pretend to care, but you care to the amount of going to church and sitting on your butt in the pew, not even kneeling and giving this fake prayer. Yes , Jesus, please help Sister Jones. It's a mockery and this man was living in a mockery and Jesus caught him in it and he said, if it hasn't happened, if it hasn't happened, it's because you're not actually engaging in this with the intensity that it merits. You have not asked, you have not sought. God can do anything for anyone if they will seek him until He tells them how to do it and then follow the recipe, whatever he said. And however he said it, I promise you, it did not come off the same way it does when we read, if thou canst believe all things are possible to him that believeth whatever Jesus said there caused this man to immediately snap out of his complacency and his fake concern for his son. Now I say fake, I should say insufficient concern for his son. He cared enough to talk to the disciples. He sought them out. Maybe he was going to buy bread though. And these dudes just stroll by and he's like, I'm out anyway, I may as well ask them to heal my son. And if that's your attitude with God don't even bother because it's not gonna work and then you're just gonna harm other people giving. Yet another example of fake Christianity. You contribute more to the cause of God. I said the demons are strategic. You contribute more to the cause of God by doing nothing. In that case, bury your talent in the earth instead of uh wasting it in a house of prostitution. And that's basically what you're doing when you go through the fake motions. So and thus we see why I don't go to normal churches. How could I do that? Right? Because I'm going to say this stuff and no one wants to hear it, but I have to stand as a witness to Jesus at all times and in all places and if they're too dull to hear his voice and know these things, then I have to say them and that's a great way to be asked to never come back again. Um All right. So when, when he, when Jesus says this to him, whatever he said in verse 23 immediately, the father cried out, he didn't cry out before you see in a lot of these miracle stories, there's a blind person or something and they're crying out to him. They can't even get close to him for various reasons and they cry out to him, they bridge the distance with their intensity. So he cries out and he said, with tears and tears, they can mean different things in different situations. But these were sincere tears. These were understanding tears. Cause in this moment, this father wasn't just carrying the burden of concern for his son. He realized he realized that a portion of his son's suffering was actually his fault. And he said, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. Now again, that's all poetic and pretty. What does that mean? Well, whatever he said, part of the meaning of what he said was I understand where I went wrong and now I need to understand what to do, right? So now he was in search of what he had been missing. The effectual key to helping his son. Now, one thing we have not talked about is why disciples could not heal him. But I'll say that till the end. Um So the father says all this. And then in 25 it says, when Jesus saw not the father like God, the father of the, the son that uh had this issue. When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit saying unto him, thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee come out of him and enter no more into him. Now, I'm gonna skip over the timing of when the people came running together um both for time and also because that that's a long thing in and of itself. So then he rebuked the foul spirit and said, thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee come out of him and enter no more into him . So that's all important. Those words. Here's my question. Is that different than what the disciples said when they tried to do it and failed? No, that is what the disciples said when they tried to do it and failed. What's the difference? The difference is what Jesus did in between. So the father came to the disciples asked for the healing or whatever you want to call this exorcism, whatever it doesn't matter actually for our purposes anyway, it doesn't matter. Hey, Mark, good morning. Um So um what was missing was all that interaction with the father. The disciples didn't understand that the reason this child was still in his situation was because of the father. They went right to the kid and tried to fix the kid. But the problem is that the father's unbelief was the enabling factor for the continuation of the problem. Jesus knew this right away or at least at a, at a minimum he knew is possible . And that's why he asked the question. Now, this is opening up a giant can of worms. Why or how? Because OK, I'm just debating whether to get into this or not. So sorry for the pause. There is a huge difference between receiving something from God as a gift and receiving something from God through the gift of becoming. What do I mean by that? This is a huge, huge, huge thing. Well, we talked about the Pentecost a while back the Pentecost. Oh, do I wanna sorry. There's a person here who might see this and I'm sorry, I shouldn't have broached this um without a conversation first but, oh, well, too late the Pentecost. Um when the, when the holy ghost came upon the disciples, um there was fire and there was cloven tongues and then they spoke in tongues and did all these miracles. Those were gifts. Those were not the result of becoming God's greatest blessing is never a gift. It's the gift of becoming and why am I calling becoming a gift? Because isn't that confusing? I'm talking about gifts and the gift of becoming is different things. If someone hands you a recipe and shows you a cake and let you taste the cake. Have they given you a gift? Depends on how nice the cake tastes. Uh But if it's good , then yes, they have. How's that different than just giving you the cake? How's the taste of the cake in a recipe different than the cake? What if they give you a taste of the cake, the recipe and all the ingredients and an oven? Is that a gift? It sure is, but it's not the cake. The thing with God is when He gives you the cake, you can't have the ingredients or the recipe and you can't have the blessing of making it yourself. Now, if your choices are such that you would not have made the cake had he given you the recipe and the ingredients, you're still a billion times better off with a whole cake than just a taste. Do you see, I'll explain much more about this at a later time. So Jesus, when he sent out the 12 and the 70 you can read what he says to them. He says you have power to do this, you have power to do that. Now, what's interesting is he told them they have power to cast out unclean spirits, et cetera. Yet those same people were unable to do that here. Why is that? That's an important question. It has an answer. It has to do with what I'm telling you about gifts and becoming Jesus became good morning. He was, he was given the recipe and the ingredients and the taste of the cake and he became, and so he could make as many cakes as he wanted. He can make big cakes. He can make little cakes. You can make sweet cakes you can make. Are there any cakes that aren't sweet these days? I don't know but he could make anything related to it because he had the generative model. He wasn't given the product, he was given the recipe and the ingredients. People read the scriptures looking for the gift and then they get upset when they can't find the gift and they think what do I need to do to get the gift? Worry about what you need to do to become the gift. The gift is Jesus. He's the real gift. Everything else just comes from him. It's lower than him. It's some piece of it. It's just a taste of the cake. He's the gift. So they couldn't do it because they didn't understand the principles upon which the blessings came. And if they had, they would have been able to do this because when you have the keys, you can do much more. That's a good, interesting. That's an interesting thing to say, Rob. Why? Because I made a presentation about this a long time ago about keys. You can find it on the channel. Um, but people use keys to talk about gifts, but those aren't keys. The keys unlock something and once it's unlocked, everyone has access to it, the keys aren't the gifts. The keys are the understanding the mechanism of the outcomes, its laws of cause and effect. And that's what, remember what I said about the compass. So many people have that compass in front of them and they're saying, all right, um, do I have a compass around here? I don't, I have everything. Every other little piece of junk around me except a compass. But, um, the, there's a comp, there's a, it's called the index line. It's the line that points straight ahead on the compass. It doesn't move it points wherever you point the compass. It's just a painted line. If you have a fancy compass, it's something other than paint points forward. And then there's a disk with the North seeking arrow and that one turns as U turn. And so they're holding their compass and they're saying, why is the arrow pointing off to the right instead of straight ahead? Because you're not facing north. If you face the Lord, the arrow will line up with the index line. The index line doesn't tell you where north is. It just tells you where you're pointing. You have to turn to match the disk because the disk is facing the magnetic field. God's servants face God. You need to turn to match where they're facing. If you want to face God, if you just look at the indexing line, that doesn't tell you where God is, it just tells you where you are, where you're facing specifically, not actually where you are if you have to look at the map for that. Anyway, big value in this. So um when you get the gift, it's like somebody comes along and points you in the right direction, but you don't have a compass if you don't understand how it works, even if they hand one to you, you, you're just gonna be like, thanks for this thing. I don't know what to do with it or you think it's something else like uh in the Little Mermaid, the real one. I disavow any dizzy remakes. Um and Star Wars Sequels just to get the record straight. Uh I went into a business not too long ago to get a computer fixed is a small business, a one man shop and he had posters on the wall of the three original. I call them the canonical Star Wars movies and nothing else. No other movie posters, no sequel posters. And I said this, this is a man I can do business with. Um anyway, sorry for the side note. So um I'm dangerous early in the morning. Um All right. So the disciples got the, got the compass, but they acted like Ariel in the little mermaid when she has all the stuff from the surface. And she thinks a fork is a comb, right? That's how common Christians are. They have the scriptures and they have all the recipes right there in their hands. They have all the recipes and they, they , they think like, why is this compass such a bad hammer? Because it's not a hammer. It's a compass, right? And then people in the world say, well, if all you have is a hammer, I've got one of those and it's a real hammer. It's better than your compass as a hammer. Well, that's not what we're selling folks. Of course, it's a terrible hammer. Of course, the world has better hammers. We're in the business of compasses. Ok. Let's keep going. I'm trying to find where I left off. Ok. So he rebukes the spirit and uh verse 26. Now we're into even more important things. Um and not, not more important than what we've talked about, but additional important things and the spirit cried and rent him sore. And that, that doesn't mean rented out his body or something. Rent as in torn. He, he got jacked up when the spirit came out, it came out of him and he was as one dead inasmuch. As many said he is dead. Now , this is also funky old English. How would you rewrite this to explain the same idea today? You say something like he seemed dead to the point where everyone there would have testified in court that he was dead. Now, why would someone be so emphatic about that? Because when you are writing things inspired by the spirit of the Lord, you know how people are going to react to them. It's as if they're standing there in the room speaking to you as you're writing, someone told me once they're reading one of my books and he was like, you know, I'd have a, an argument against something you were saying. And then the very next line, you gave a conclusive counter argument that squashed my argument. That's what the spirit does. And if I do it well, it's just because of the spirit and if I do it well or unwell, that's me. If I mess it up, I take all credit for that. Um So uh he died, the guy was dead. That's what that means. He was dead and it was Wizard of Oz. He re he's really, really, really dead, right? The toes curled up, he's dead. And Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. Now, there are many layers of importance to this. The disciples could not fix this guy's problem. Jesus chastised him for being faithless. Why not? Because he didn't mark the miracle and not because he wasn't willing to respond to or go to. We're not sure which the disciples to fix the problem. Although he waited a really long time to do so now they were only around for a little, you know, a few years and this had been going on for a long time. But I'm saying, what did he do in the meantime? Right? Not enough. So chastised him for all of that. But um the the the vital pattern here is that Jesus wants us to pay attention to problems. There are many spokes on the wheel of God's way and what he's trying to do with all of this creation is give us sufficient reason to seek him and sufficient reason to do so as intensely as it requires to be successful. And in addition to those two things, he's trying to give us sufficient orientation to show us the way. So it's the way, the intensity, the reasons to believe all of that. And it's also ah there was one more thing I was gonna say and I forgot the way, the intensity, the reasons to believe. And in this, OK, there are levels, I can't get too much into this right now, but think of them as latter rungs. But it's not just one thing like one ladder. It's like a playground . Have you ever seen one of those jungle gyms where it's like, um, sometimes there's circles there, spheres, I mean, and sometimes they're some kind of cone or something conical and they have like a lattice of metal or whatever wood, wood and rope. But you can climb to the top. There are multiple ways to get up there, but they all go in the same direction and lead to the same destination. Creation's multifaceted in this way and he puts problems out there to help us develop um the intensity we need to climb to the top and understanding of the way to get there and it all works together. So it all works together. Sounds good. Right. That sounds like a good thing. And it is. But the downside of that is if you're only doing it in one of the ways you can't keep going no matter how hard you try on all the other ways. So if your thing is I take care of poor people, that's great. But if you don't work on being more intelligent, then you can only go so far into the presence of God on that spoke. It's, it all has to happen at once and a lot of these spokes will surprise people. I just mentioned intelligence. You probably didn't think that had anything to do with drawing closer to God. It does, it does . There are many things on that wheel. OK. Um So the thing about going up in layers is you will, I didn't actually say this when you, if you have a problem, the solution to it is never in your present layer. That's what defines the layer. That's what defines the layer. The solution is never in your present state. You have to grow to find it. There are many ways you could say this that will, that will give you breadcrumbs to expanding on these ideas. For example, all good comes from above. What does that mean? So when you encounter the solution to a problem, you are going to also encounter more problems . Let me give you an example of this because I'm telling you this pattern is inescapable anywhere you look, you're seeing it, you just don't know it yet. But I'm I'm giving you the key. I'm giving you the recipe, a taste of the cake and the recipe. But I'm also like throwing the pie in your face at the same time. So um when you ask God a question, that's a problem right now. What happens when He gives you the solution? The last time God gave you revelation that you asked for, you asked him a question. You said, I don't understand why this is, or what did you mean by that? Um When He told you, whatever He told you probably gave you 100 new questions, didnt it? That happened to Moses when he came into the presence of God and God asked him questions. And then at the end of the experience, he said, I have many things to ask Him because when God answers your question, you will have 100 more questions to ask. And that is overwhelming for people who haven't learned how to overcome overwhelm yet. And the answer to every question is the same. It's Jesus. Jesus is the key to overcoming overwhelm um specifics withheld, of course. OK. So when these, this father was seeking to have his son fixed, when Jesus fixed his son, which the disciples could not do because they were still solving the problem at their level with a gift that had come down from the higher level, the disciples did not become, they took the gift that had come down and they were applying it to their level and they were healing a bunch of people. They were doing tons of stuff. There are people out there, Christians who are miraculously healing people. And there are many, many, many, many times when it does not work, right? And they get in a lot of trouble just like these scribes attacked these disciples, people attack them and say, oh well, that's nice. You're publishing the ones that worked on youtube. But that was one out of 100 or something. Or maybe your hit rate is 50% whatever it is, they will focus on the times you failed and say therefore this isn't God because God wouldn't fail. Well, that's really sad because I think 50% healing is still a really great thing and we should have more of that. Right? But there is an answer as to why those other 50% did not get healed. And the answer is that the preacher, the minister, the man or the woman, whoever that was, did not ascend to where that solution is found. They did not become more like Jesus in the way required to do what Jesus would have done in their position because they didn't know what he would have done. All they did was say, well, I'm assuming that he would just say these same words that I've been saying all along and it worked, but it didn't work this time. So what's up? And then there was a light. Um So uh so when you ascend, there are new problems and what was the new problem here when, when the whole experience ascended? The son died? That's not supposed to happen, you know. And the scribes are probably sitting there thinking well, yeah, great. You cast out this , the spirit and the kid died. So, what the heck, right? Not exactly a victory. There's a lot to say about this that includes ideas. II, I think I connected to the idea of God's prosperity. Um There are a lot of people out there like job's friends and a lot of prosperity gospel people who think that your temporal well being sorry, I God just showed me a lot of people who are suffering right now from this, from for not understanding what I'm about to tell you that your temporal well being that doesn't show you how you stand with God. And I'm, I'm gonna talk a lot more about that and even though I want to, more than anything, I, not more than anything more than almost anything, I can't help you with that right now. Beyond just saying is that's not it, that's not it. If you find yourself suffering temporarily, don't assume that means that you're out of the way with God. It could be the case and you better figure that out, right? But don't assume a therefore b it's not true, not in this case. And I'm gonna lay that all out. Um But it's just, it's gonna take me more time. Um So this, this kid died and Jesus didn't say, oh, shoot what happened? Wrong spell. You know, that wasn't that wasn't it right? Um Again, demons are strategic. So if you wanna know why this happened, all you have to do is ask, how did this hurt the situation? How could it have hurt the situation more than anything else? Well, it's gonna make Jesus look like an idiot. Right. At, at a minimum, I'm pretty sure the guy would be pretty mad at him and all the townspeople would probably run him out with pitchforks, say go away like they did when a very similar thing happened. And for very similar reasons, he told the demons that they could go into the herd of pigs and the pigs all ran into the water and killed themselves. And everyone's like, can you go, please? Because we kind of, I mean, those were, our pigs would just rather you not be here. Um So, uh, since we're there, Jews weren't supposed to have pigs. They were unclean animals. And so, um, I don't want to go too deep into this, but that's the key, a key to that story if you want to understand it. Um People who are offended at the loss of their sins are not clean people, they're not, they're not inclined towards God. If they were holy, they would have rejoiced that Jesus came and cleaned up the town. And if they were not the pig herders, they would have been really happy that those pigs were gone even if it hurt their economy because it gets into the, you know, if a certain church went out of business, Utah's economy would go down the tubes because it would cease to have billions and billions of dollars that come from all other parts of the world. Um, and build and build in that state. Uh through investments and such. But if you are holy and you had a problem with that church, you'd be happy to see it go away. Even if it meant that your property value cut in half or your um the unemployment rate went up through the roof because all these employees now didn't have jobs anyway. So he lifts up this, this son by the hand. So what do we see here? Because the disciples were not raising people from the dead. Jesus did that. They did not, they did later but not during his life. Why? Because they weren't at that level. So the casting out the spirit was at this level , the solution was up here. But when you did the solution, it just exposed another problem. No, in this case, where do the problems come from? The demons? The demons killed the kid. Was there an end to this chain? There was Jesus healed the kid. The end. The demons didn't do anything after that. Why ? Because they couldn't you remember when the priests were sparring with Moses, which uh I always think of as a dance off. Uh Moses had moves that the priest couldn't match, right? But it doesn't start like that. When you're in a weightlifting competition, you don't start with the highest weight. Well , maybe you do. I, my whole experience with this is at 1/4 of July party every year which is coming up and hopefully I win. But um knock on wood. Um, but we start at a low weight and we get up to the high weights, which is great. I like that because I'm old and I need to warm up. But, um, uh, you have to go through the levels, right. And so Moses was sparring through the levels and Jesus was sparring through the levels. Here. You see this with his interactions with Satan in the wilderness and, um, you go through the levels, but whoever is greater has access to higher levels because they're on a higher level and this is how it works. So a lot of times when it seems like things are going south, they're not, they're just going up and God prospers his people through what the world will interpret as affliction. That's how it works. But if you trust God, you see things as they are and like Jesus, you remain serene, even if you have to be intense, you remain serene. So that's weird if you saw him whipping the people and flipping tables, um you might assume that he would only be doing that for the reasons you would or in the way you would do it and you'd be wrong in both ways because he did it for different reasons. And even though the outside looked the same, the inside was very different while he was doing it, his attitude in doing that would be the same as when you're in the most reverent prayer or when you're sharing the deepest spiritual experience you've ever had because he was glorifying his father and he was helping those people. So maybe another way of thinking about it is like surgeons aren't supposed to operate on family members because they are too invested. They just need to be cold and surgical when they're doing their thing. But if you were a surgeon operating on your own family member and you really love them and you're trying to help them, you're trying to save them. That's what he was doing while he was whipping these people. We'll leave that at that. Ok? So we're almost to the end. This is taking way longer than I thought it would, which is good for you because I wouldn't have done it otherwise. Um We're in verse 28 and when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, why could we not cast him out? Now, that was some discretion on their part. They didn't say that in the crowd, they waited until they were in private. My kids think they're pulling a fast one . I don't know where they got this but they had these little things they do. It's like their, their culture. Um I guess it's like this in every family. Um But they have this thing where they'll, I hear them say to my wife, mom, can I talk to you in private? And I know what they're going to do is ask her or tell her something they don't want me to hear, uh, which I'm laughing. It's actually really sad to me. Um, but that's, uh, that's hopefully they'll grow out of that and they'll realize the best thing that could possibly happen is for me to hear it. So they waited until they were in private. They said, Jesus, can we talk to you in private? And then they said, why couldn't we do this? And that was discreet on their part because saying it in public would have potentially discredited uh the ministry, right? Maybe, or maybe it just would have glorified Jesus and taught those people, but maybe it was beyond what they could understand, who knows. Um Now here's Jesus's answer. He said, unto them, this kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting. And that's the end of the story. Now, what in the world did anything we just talked about have to do with prayer and fasting. So Jesus neither while he could have been praying in his heart, but he didn't fast. He didn't say, hey guy, that wants me to fix his son. Give me two weeks, let me fast about this a couple of times or once for two weeks because it's that serious and I'll get back to you. So, what did he mean by that? Uh since this is already 73 minutes long and since I've given you quite a bit to think about, maybe I'll let you think about that one on your own and uh feel free to have a conversation in the comments on this. So take care.