Initmacy before fruit

I was reading the story in Mark 9 about Jesus healing the boy with an evil spirit. It is when the disciples could not drive it out, and it was manifesting violently with seizures etc. And Jesus calls them an unbelieving generation and then tells the doubtfully believing father, that ‘everything is possible for him who believes’ and then later tells the inquiring disciples that ‘this kind comes out only by prayer and fasting’

I have wondered about that story before, why say ‘only by prayer’ when Jesus clearly just rebuked it like many other times… And as God has set me on this course for intimacy with him, as he has begun to show me over and over again that ‘fruit comes from intimacy’ and I see that Jesus over and over said “ I do and say only what my father is doing or saying’ I see that his ministry flowed only and always out of intimacy with the father. And I believe that when he answered his disciples who had been lacking in faith to believe they had authority over this particular evil spirit, as he said ‘ this kind comes out only by prayer and fasting’ I believe he was referring to intimacy with the father. Intimacy produces that faith. Greater authority comes from greater intimacy. The more time we spend with the King, in his Kingdom and in his palace rooms, the more we believe that we indeed are sons and the more faith we have in his bigness and in our authority as his sons.

So yes, my quest is for more authority against evil, for more power to set the captives free and to break the yoke of injustice and to see His love come to people in desperate situations. But really my quest is for Him, more and more of him. He is changing my focus from fruit, to intimacy. From wondering how people can/will come to drink living water, to coming to get more and more saturated in the stream of living water myself. And then maybe I can just step back as a soggy sponge and let him spill out of me onto others and then I’m heading right back into the stream.

Home Again??

What is home really? All the time God is challenging me to redefine "home". I am back in Lubbock Texas now. and once again, God is saying, "no, home is not a place. Home is me. Don't be content to call a certain person or group of people or a certain place home. Come to me for home. I am the only home you have. And you are more than welcome all the time. Don't be a wanderer, don't be a vagrant or remain uncomforted. You don't need to search any further for comfort or peace or love or home. Come to me. I am everything you need and long for. And I am waiting."

As I find myself having difficult days and frustrations in faith, I keep turning in desperation for answers, and I keep opening up this small journal to a verse God showed me on a very desperate, nervous breakdown type of day about a week ago, and he keeps reminding me of it as I keep trying to struggle in frustration.
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." Romans 15:13

'Yes God, I will trust you. I will continue to look to you. I am desperate for your joy, your peace, your hope. I want to overflow again and again with hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit. I can't not have you, I must have you. I can't stay thirsty, you are the living water and I come to you today and I'll come to you tomorrow to get a drink.'

I am beginning to think that Jesus was a bit misleading in saying, that he is the living water and that if we come to him we will never thirst again, because in my experience I find that he is more like an addicting drug, which makes you more and more desperate for more, and the more you get, the more you want. And to the point of doing crazier and crazier and more desperate and even ridiculous things to have him. And that I simply cannot be satisfied by any substitute. Yet I try to use substitutes and over and over again, I am not satisfied and I am forced to return to him and only him to be satisfied.

Then on the other hand maybe it is fair to call himself the living water.