Have you ever wondered to yourself, why don't I see God working more in my life or through me to help others? It seems like Christianity is so powerless in so many ways. Well, Jesus' disciples had a very similar question and Jesus had a great answer for them. There's one occasion when Jesus' disciples, who had cast out demons, what a wonderful power they exhibited. They had cast out demons in the past, but they encountered a particular demon-possessed individual, and the demon wouldn't budge. They were powerless, it seemed, and they were puzzled by that. And so Jesus cast the demon out, and then the disciples said, why couldn't we do that? And Jesus had this very simple answer to them, and we find it in Mark's Gospel, chapter 9. verse 29, this kind can come out only by prayer. So there are things in life that just aren't going to happen for us unless we are a praying people. We need to be praying for God to work through us, to give us the opportunity to minister to our neighbors, to be an encouragement to our friends, even to encourage our own hearts when we're down. These things only happen through prayer. When we try to do things in our own power or rely too much on ourselves, we know that we're going to fall short, but Jesus promises us that we're going to be able to accomplish great things through prayer. So we need to be careful to maintain our prayer life well. We need to be praying regularly and in our private times with God, as well as throughout the day as we have conversational prayer with God. And when we come up against difficult situations in our lives, we need to pray specifically about those for ourselves and for others. Because as Jesus says, these kind don't change. These don't come out without prayer. Let's commit ourselves again to being a praying people. Thanks for taking time to join me for this pastoral visit.