“And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer”” (Mark 9:29, ESV). So reads the NIV and NASB. The King James Version reads: “And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” (Mark 9:29, AV). Matthew records the same narrative this way: “He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like 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 for you.”” (Matthew 17:20, ESV).
There is a direct connection between faith and prayer. It likely is something like: prayerlessness equates to faithlessness. "Apparently they had taken for granted the power given them or had come to believe that it was inherent in themselves. So they no longer depended prayerfully on God for it, and their failure showed their lack of prayer." (Expositor's Bible Commentary). But the opposite might be true also. Not only with faithlessness produce prayerlessness, but prayerlessness produces faithlessness. But of course the positive is this: even the minute faith of a mustard seed will lead us to pray which in turn stimulates greater faith.
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