Fighting Satan's Strongholds Through Prayer and Fasting (Part 1-A)

Praying Through the Bible #136

TEXT: Matthew 17:14-21

Have you ever faced a problem so difficult that, no matter what you did on your own, you could not resolve it? Have you ever been in a situation which made you feel as though you were helpless to do anything to fix it? If so, then you know something of what the father and the disciples felt in this passage. As we look at the context, we see that Jesus had just come down from a high mountain with his inner circle of disciples -- Peter, James, and John. Up in the mountain, these three disciples experienced the transfiguration -- they saw Jesus Christ in His glorified form along with Moses and Elijah. Coming off of this mountain-top experience, Jesus and the three disciples are confronted with a man who is facing a Satanic stronghold -- he has a demon-possessed epileptic son, and Jesus' disciples could neither cast out the demon nor cure the epilepsy.
 
Matthew Henry describes the condition of the child this way: "The nature of this child's disease was very sad; He was lunatic and sore vexed. A lunatic is properly one whose distemper lies in the brain. The devil, by the divine permission, either caused this distemper, or at least concurred with it, to heighten and aggravate it. The child had the falling-sickness, and the hand of Satan was in it; by it he tormented then, and made it much more grievous than ordinarily it is. Those whom Satan got possession of, he afflicted by those diseases of the body which do most affect the mind; for it is the soul that he aims to do mischief to… The effects of the disease were very deplorable; He oft falls into the fire, and into the water. If the force of the disease made him to fall, the malice of the devil made him to fall into the fire or water; so mischievous is he where he gains possession and power in any soul. He seeks to devour."
 
...