Conforming (phase 2), Who is Jesus? What quality do I long and pray for? - AtaDc (step19), session 4c

Got busy with visiting grandchildren last night and didn't complete this session then. Here 'tis:

This session's reading, Mt 17:1-18, seems to cover three events, and I've thus far reflected on the first two. But makes more sense to me to conclude the third with verse 20.

And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and kneeling before him said, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; for often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him." 

And Jesus answered, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me." And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. 

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?" 

He said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, `Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you." - Mt 17, 14-20

This portion seems to belong in the previous step as much as in the current one, as it deals with a healing. It seems as if Jesus is being unusually harsh with his disciples, but his efforts to instill greater faith in them make sense in the light of his impending Passion and their response to it. Jesus himself doesn't appear to have physically rearranged any mountains during his life on earth, though I'm sure he would have if it would have contributed to our faith. Presumably, this distressed father approached the disciples while Jesus had Peter, James and John with him for his transfiguration.

We're too refined to bother with demons today. The thing is, I suspect they're not finished bothering with us. I love the Unbound approach to deliverance ministry, in which the believer is led to renounce the things that he himself has accepted and embraced: ideas, actions and spiritual influences that he has allowed or even encouraged to influence his life. It is usually not so dramatic as Jesus' approach to them, but then we are not often blessed with the level of Spirit-guided knowledge that Jesus possessed.

But even this model draws heavily on the gift of faith that Jesus bestows on each of us. If we do not believe in our hearts that Jesus has won this victory for us, how can we bring it to bear its full power to transform our lives?