When they came down from the mountain transfiguration experience, they found the other disciples with a crowd gathering round them.  Jesus asked what was going on.  A man answered that he’d brought his son who was possessed with a spirit which makes him mute and seizes him and slams him to the ground and causes him to foam at the mouth and grind his teeth and stiffen out.  He added,  “Your disciples couldn’t cast it out.”  Then Jesus said:  “What a generation! No sense of God!  How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this? Bring the boy to me,” (Mark 9:19).  The crowd probably went silent, cringing and blinking and backing away since Jesus was obviously irritated, but listen to what He was saying, “You’re acting like all the power I’ve been demonstrating is just for a BIOGRAPHY instead of a MANUAL, like it’s just about MY performance instead of YOUR training!  You’re treating all this like an OPTION when it is an ESSENTIAL.  Remember the man I told you about who was given one talent and he thought he had the OPTION of ignoring the Master’s priorities and burying his potential? That didn’t work out well, remember. Jesus wanted them to anticipate, to see ahead of time they were to be sons.  (Sixth excerpt from Kathy’s article “Anticipating the Power of the Kingdom”)

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