Mark 11:22-24 (NKJV) 22So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. 23“For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. 24“Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
In our last post we looked at the fact that Jesus prayed from the perspective of faith in God alone. He did not pray expecting man to do anything. God uses people, and sometimes they will be the vehicle through which he will bring the answer to our prayer, but we must pray expecting God to hear and answer. We must remember that faith in prayer is always based on his will and his Word is his will.
1 John 5:14 (NKJV) 14Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
Today I want to look at some of the things Jesus taught in the Gospels concerning praying in faith. 1 John 5 above says that our confidence is based in the assurance that what we ask according to his will, is guaranteed to happen. How it happens, through what channels it happens and when it happens must be left in his hands. That is part of praying in faith. However, if we do not choose to believe that he is working, we will either delay the manifestation or block it altogether. This is not because God does not want to move, but we have our part to play and one aspect of that is to resist our adversary the devil (James 4:7.)
Many times, we hear the phrase, “I’m hoping and praying.” Hope is an important part of the faith equation. Hebrews 11:1 tells us faith is the substance of things hoped for. Hope exists because we believe something is possible. We must believe that God can do something. However, hope is always future. The second part of the faith equation is that faith is the evidence of things we cannot see. If we have evidence, we have determined that a thing exists. Our evidence is the Word of God.
Once we accept that God can do something about our situation, we must determine what his will is. How can we do that? We find out by reading what he says he will do in his Word. 2 Corinthians 1:20 tells us that all the promises of God are yes and Amen in Christ. I am in Christ so anything in the Bible that can be understood as a promise to me is the will of God for me.
If I am going to pray in faith I cannot just hope and pray. I must have hope, but when I pray, I must believe. What must I believe? I must believe that God will do what he says and the best way to know that, is to have a promise that you can look at and declare to yourself, the devil and the circumstance. That becomes your evidence that God will do what you have asked him to do.
Today’s verse is the story of the fig tree Jesus cursed in Mark 11.
The disciples were astounded that the words Jesus had spoken that morning had come to pass by the evening. The fig tree was dried up from the roots. He says to them, “Have faith in God.” He does not say, “Well, I have faith in God so I can do that sort of thing.” He tells them that they have the same capacity to believe God that he does. Then he puts this into the context of prayer. “Whatever things you ask for when you pray, believe that you receive and you shall have them.” The Amplified Bible says it this way.
Matthew 21:22 (AMP) 22And whatever you ask for in prayer, having faith and [really] believing, you will receive.
The only qualifications in either of these verses are the desire of the one who prays and that he or she believes. If we know what the promise of God says, we can ask whatever we desire and, if we really believe God will do what he says, we will receive. I know, this seems like it could not be that simple, but I did not say it, and you did not say it, Jesus said it. To not accept what he said is true would at best be a mistake and at worst pride.
Let us look at a few other places Jesus connected prayer and faith.
Matthew 7:7-8 (NKJV) 7“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8“For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
Look at the assurance in what Jesus says here. He does not say, “If it is God’s will…..” He simply says that asking, seeking, and knocking will produce predicted results. In the rest of this section of scripture, he says that even natural fathers will not give bad things to their children when they ask for good. Jesus wants us to understand that God is a better Father than any human and he will not fail to give us what we ask for, as long as we ask according to his will, which we find in his Word. Although faith is not mentioned here it is certainly implied
Matthew 18:19-20 (NKJV) 19“Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. 20“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”
Once again, we see absolute assurance that praying moves God. It is understood that to gather in Jesus’ name is to gather in faith. When two or more believers come into agreement in prayer, the promise is that whatever they ask will be done for them. The idea of agreement here is not that we debate until we come to a consensus. We agree on what the Bible says about the situation and we agree that God is faithful to do what he says. If we can do that, what we ask will be done. End of discussion.
John 14:12-14 (NKJV) 12“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. 13“And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14“If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.
Here, Jesus is speaking regarding the great commission. We are called to the same works he did and even greater works. To assure us that this is possible, he reminds us that whatever we ask in his name, he will do it so that the Father may be glorified. He repeats this with and even more open-ended promise. “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” Once again, I find this statement hard to believe, but Jesus said it, so I must accept it.
John 15:7 (NKJV) 7“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
If we abide in him, we can ask what we desire and it will be done for us. What does it mean to abide? Where you abide is where you live. It is the main place you experience life. It is the place where you are most at home and comfortable and we are in control of what happens there. When we abide in him, he is our home. When his Word abides in us, it has complete control over our lives. Not by force but naturally.
(NKJV) 26“In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; 27“for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.
Finally, in the day to come, the day we live in now, we will not even have to ask him. We can ask the Father in his name and the Father himself will hear us. From all that Jesus has said to this point, we can only conclude that he will do what he hears us ask. We need to pray in the same faith that Jesus prayed and we will see things change in our world.
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