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Acts 19:11-22
And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. 13 Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” 14 Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. 15 But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” 16 And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. 17 And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. 18 Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. 19 And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. 20 So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.
21 Now after these events Paul resolved in the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.” 22 And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.
She sat in my office – many years ago – as one who had lost hope. She had struggled in her marriage and now it seemed completely hopeless. She had prayed. She had tried to make things better between her and her husband. But he was having none of it. He was done. She was sure there was nothing she could do. And she had given up on God. At that time she was not only without hope. She was without faith.
I did something in that moment and told her that I would believe for her. She didn’t believe in God’s power to change things. She didn’t believe prayer would do any good. But I did believe. I had seen God answer prayers. I was convinced that there was hope and a future for her and her husband. I told her, “You may not believe, but I do. I am going to believe for you.”
To some extent that cannot be done. God has no grandchildren, they say. In other words, we are children of God by faith, but not by ancestry. Just because your mom believed, you cannot claim her faith. That’s what the sons of Sceva were trying to do. They thought they could invoke Jesus by means of Paul’s faith – not their own. Did they learn a lesson! Wounded and bleeding they learned it.
Sometimes Jesus recognized a person’s faith which triggered his act of healing. But I think of the little girl who was laying dead on her bed. Jesus raised her, and there is never a commendation of her faith. But the faith of the father…that’s another issue. He certainly believed Jesus could help. But when it comes to the widow of Nain, there is no indication of faith on her part, and Jesus raised her son from the dead!
Faith finds the grace of God already there. Faith does not cause God’s grace. So when I believed for that struggling wife, or the father of the little girl believed for the sake of his daughter, we looked for something that was already there.
Soon after I spoke and prayed with the struggling wife that day, I took a long drive to meet a fellow pastor for study and prayer. During that drive I prayed. I mean I prayed fervently. I couldn’t wait to hear the next day how things were. So when I called her and asked, she said, “You wouldn’t believe…” There had been a miraculous turnaround that very afternoon we spoke. I didn’t cause that. I was simply convinced that God was going to act to save that marriage. And he did.
Not so much for the faith-borrowing hubris of the sons of Sceva. They wanted the glory that didn’t belong to them. It simply didn’t work.
David Bahn - Reflections 
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