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The Friend on the Road and Other Studies in the Gospels: Chapter 23 - The Dynamics of Expulsion

By John Henry Jowett


      "This kind goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting."--Mark ix. 29.

      THE evil spirit was still enthroned. The disciples had been unable to cast it out. The victim remained in his awful servitude. In some way or other the divine, liberating energies had been impeded, and did not flow in emancipating strength. The disciples commanded, but there was no expulsion. Their word did not issue as a work. The words which they spake were not spirit, they were not life. There was something wrong. The ministers were not equal to their task. Their power was inadequate. The current was defective, and in these relationships a defective current always means there is something wanting in the wires. We are not straitened in God, we are not straitened in ourselves. "Why could not we cast him out?"

      In answer to their puzzled inquiry, the Lord gives a twofold explanation of their defeat. First, He traces their lack of power to a deficiency of prayer, which always implies imperfect spiritual communion. And with this primary lack he names the neglect of fasting, which has resulted in the physical imprisonment and oppression of the spirit. The body had been allowed too much licence, and the spirit was given too little freedom. The body had trespassed beyond its appointed boundaries, and the spirit had not entered into its purposed inheritance. And because of this double negligence they had limited the Holy One to Israel. The dislodging powers of His Spirit were hindered, and they could not work in the ministry of a strong and gracious expulsion. The bodies and souls of His ministers were not fully surrendered, and because of this defective consecration they could not receive the needful strength. They had the form of words, but they lacked the power.

      Now these two causes are operative in our own day, and because of these negligences evil tyrannies are still upon their thrones. We neglect our bodies. We allow them to be masters when they are intended to be servants. We pamper them. We are afraid to confront them with a stern denial. We shrink from assigning seasons of healthy abstinence. Often the very last thing we are prepared to do is to curb our appetites, and hold our passions under chains like hungry hounds. And the pampered always means a fettered spirit. "Take heed," said the Master, "lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting."

      The obtrusiveness of the body always disinherits the soul. For when the body usurps dominion the freedom of the spirit is impaired. The soul is like an eagle which is confined to the barn-yard when he was made to wing his flight through vast reaches in the upper air. The soul is imprisoned in the inch instead of journeying in the infinite. The spiritual powers, which were intended to explore the secrets of God, move on the surface of things. And so it comes to pass that, being straitened in ourselves, the grace of God is straitened. God has no large, open medium through which to pour His holy power. And because of lack of power we cannot hurl iniquities from their thrones. We see the evil tyranny, but we cannot move it! We command it to go, but it laughs in our faces "This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."

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See Also:
   Chapter 1 - Critics and Surgeons
   Chapter 2 - The Challenge of the Closed Door
   Chapter 3 - How the Best Things Become Ours
   Chapter 4 - Sixpennyworth of Miracle
   Chapter 5 - The Peace of the Larger Life
   Chapter 6 - Education by Contagion
   Chapter 7 - The Tares Among the Wheat
   Chapter 8 - Things New and Old
   Chapter 9 - The Buoyancy of Faith
   Chapter 10 - Sound the Great Recall
   Chapter 11 - The Bright Cloud
   Chapter 12 - Mercy and Obligation
   Chapter 13 - The Simplification of Life
   Chapter 14 - Life's Perilous Heats
   Chapter 15 - Feverishness
   Chapter 16 - The Truly Sensational Life
   Chapter 17 - The Dominant Passion
   Chapter 18 - Doing the Impossible
   Chapter 19 - The Life I Should Live
   Chapter 20 - The Blessing and Discipline of Retirement
   Chapter 21 - Endless Possibilities
   Chapter 22 - The Price of Liberty
   Chapter 23 - The Dynamics of Expulsion
   Chapter 24 - Evils That Never Arrive
   Chapter 25 - Returning in Power
   Chapter 26 - The Old Tackle and the New Presence
   Chapter 27 - The Noble Dissatisfaction
   Chapter 28 - The Malady of Not Wanting
   Chapter 29 - Sentimentaltsm
   Chapter 30 - The Pedantic Conscience
   Chapter 31 - A Receiver of Wrecks
   Chapter 32 - The Supreme Test
   Chapter 33 - Fainting
   Chapter 34 - Doing the Impossible
   Chapter 35 - Divine Visitations
   Chapter 36 - Self-Possession
   Chapter 37 - The Treacherous Kiss
   Chapter 38 - The Friend on the Road
   Chapter 39 - Dull Scholars
   Chapter 40 - The Unknown Christ
   Chapter 41 - The Worst and the Best
   Chapter 42 - Increase and Decrease
   Chapter 43 - Hating the Light
   Chapter 44 - Heroic Goodness
   Chapter 45 - Living Words
   Chapter 46 - The Last Bridge
   Chapter 47 - The Ministry of Infusion
   Chapter 48 - Breaking the Awful Silence
   Chapter 49 - Preparing for the Miracle
   Chapter 50 - The Inner Door
   Chapter 51 - The Revelation in the After Days
   Chapter 52 - The Troubled Heart
   Chapter 53 - The Gift of Peace
   Chapter 54 - Settling Down in Christ
   Chapter 55 - The Joy of the Lord
   Chapter 56 - The Joy of Christian Life
   Chapter 57 - The Sense of Mission
   Chapter 58 - Living at Second Hand
   Chapter 59 - The Great Act of Receiving

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