17 And one of the crowd answered him: “Teacher, I brought my son to you because he has a speechless spirit.+ 18 Wherever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground, and he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and loses his strength. I asked your disciples to expel it, but they were not able to do so.” 19 In response he said to them: “O faithless generation,+ how long must I continue with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him to me.”+ 20 So they brought the boy to him, but at the sight of him, the spirit at once threw the child into convulsions. After falling on the ground, he kept rolling about, foaming at the mouth. 21 Then Jesus asked the father: “How long has this been happening to him?” He said: “From childhood on, 22 and often it would throw him into the fire and also into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.” 23 Jesus said to him: “That expression, ‘If you can’! Why, all things are possible for the one who has faith.”+ 24 Immediately the child’s father cried out and said: “I have faith! Help me out where I need faith!”+

25 Jesus, now noticing that a crowd was rushing toward them, rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it: “You speechless and deaf spirit, I order you, get out of him and do not enter into him again!”+ 26 After crying out and going through many convulsions, it came out, and the child seemed to be dead, so that most of the people were saying: “He is dead!” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him up, and he stood up. 28 So after he entered into a house, his disciples asked him privately: “Why could we not expel it?”+ 29 He said to them: “This kind can come out only by prayer.”