Day 11 in the School of Prayer: Believe It!

“I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:23-24

“Whatever you ask.” Does our faith extend this far in our prayers? Has the Holy Spirit so fully enveloped our thought and permeated our soul such that we have absolute confidence that whatever we pray we will receive? Our pulpit speech reveals otherwise. Many Christians have heard the litany of justifications and cautions that seek to soften this proclamation of our Lord. The qualifications of this promise include its expediency and whether or not it is according to God’s will.

As we diminish the expansiveness of ‘whatever’ into smaller and smaller categories the depth of our faith and trust in Christ’s promises follows. We pray small things and hope rather than praying for the world and trusting. We claim to believe the Bible, every word, and yet we look at the promises of the Lord and somehow can’t bring ourselves to fully believe them.

Our prayers must emanate from a belief that we have already received what we ask. This is a demonstration of complete confidence in the promise of God. Though a delay may occur in reality before the event of receipt, your assurance that what God promises He does completes the prayer. In this mindset we find how little we have availed ourselves of this privilege, how small our faith has become, how much disbelief has crept into our hearts.

Trust, pray, believe!