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.