Mark 9:28-36

²⁸Later, when Jesus and his disciples were alone in a house, one of them asked him, “Why were we not able to expel the evil spirit?”

²⁹He said to them, “You can expel this kind of evil spirit only by your praying that God will give you the power to do it. There is no other way that you can expel them.”

³⁰After Jesus and his disciples left that district , they traveled through Galilee district . Jesus did not want anyone else to know that he was in their area ; he did not want

³¹anyone to interrupt him as he taught his disciples. He was telling them, “ Some day my enemies SYN will seize MTY me, the one who came from heaven, and I will be handed over to other men. Those men will kill me. But on the third day after I am killed {after they kill me}, I will become alive again!”

³²But they did not understand what he was telling them. Also, they were afraid to ask him about what he had said.

³³Jesus and his disciples returned to Capernaum town. When they were in the house, he asked them, “What were you discussing while we were traveling on the road?”

³⁴But they did not reply. They were ashamed to reply because, while they were traveling, they had been arguing with each other about which one of them would be the most important when Jesus became king.

³⁵He sat down, he summoned the twelve disciples to come close to him, and then he said to them, “If anyone wants God to consider him to be the most important person of all, he must consider himself to be the least important person of all, and he must serve everyone else.”

³⁶Then he took a child and placed him among them. He took the child in his arms and then he said to them,