Jesus Our Savior Says, “Bring Him To Me”

by Kevin Burton

   You look on in despair as your children, your friends, your neighbors, rage through a Christless, graceless life, headed to the edge of a spiritual abyss.

   You feel helpless, but you are not.

   You want to shake some Biblical sense into your unsaved loved ones, but you can’t. You want to scream at the top of your lungs, preempt the world and its message, to stop the presses as it were, for breaking news, good breaking gospel news.

   Well maybe you can do a little bit here and there along those lines. But here is a better idea.

   Through the privilege of prayer, you may bring these people to Jesus.

   The story in Mark chapter 9 is a little different in that there is a physical element to the bringing, but takes us to the same place.

   A man desperate to see his son delivered from demon possession is deeply disappointed when the disciples of Jesus could not heal him. Jesus, who had been away for a time, returns to his disciples and is told about the father and his son.

     “Then one of the crowd answered and said, ‘Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.” He answered him and said, ‘O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me” (Mark 9:17-19 NKJV).

   Our current generation is at least as faithless, as the one Jesus was speaking to. But Jesus is still saying, to you and me, “bring him to me.”

   Intercessory prayer is the theme of a recent message from Alistair Begg, speaker on the Truth For Life radio ministry. Begg writes about the Mark 9 passage.

   “Despairingly the poor, disappointed father turned away from the disciples to their Master. His son was in the worst possible condition, and all means had failed, but the miserable child was soon delivered from the evil one when the parent in faith obeyed the Lord Jesus’ word, “Bring him to me.”

   “Children are a precious gift from God, but much anxiety comes along with them. They may be a great joy or a great bitterness to their parents; they may be filled with the Spirit of God or possessed with the spirit of evil. In all cases, the Word of God gives us one prescription for the cure of all their ills: “Bring him to me,” Begg writes.

   “We need to engage in agonizing prayer on their behalf while they are still babies! Sin is there; so let our prayers begin to attack it. Our cries for our offspring should precede those cries that herald their arrival into a world of sin,” Begg writes. “In the days of their youth we will see sad evidences of that dumb and deaf spirit that will neither pray properly, nor hear the voice of God in the soul, but Jesus still commands, ‘Bring him to me.’ When they are grown up, they may wallow in sin and foam with enmity against God; then when our hearts are breaking we should remember the Great Physician’s words, ‘Bring him to me.’”
   “We must never cease to pray until they cease to breathe. No case is hopeless while Jesus lives.

   “The Lord sometimes allows His people to be driven into a corner that they may learn how necessary He is to them. Ungodly children, when they show us our own powerlessness against the depravity of their hearts, drive us to the Strong One for strength, and this is a great blessing to us,” Begg writes.

   And before we leave Mark 9, let’s take note of one of the best, most intelligent prayers in all of scripture.

   Jesus is speaking to the father of the child:

   “Jesus said unto him, ‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’ And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!’(Mark 9: 23-24 KJV).

   We as believers have a measure of strength, of belief. Let us never fail to ask the Savior to take our best intentions and turn them into true healing, for our children and for others.

   And let us not grow weary in praying. Their souls are on the line.