Mark 11:22-25 The Message
22-25 Jesus was matter-of-fact: “Embrace this God-life. Really embrace it, and nothing will be too much for you. This mountain, for instance: Just say, ‘Go jump in the lake’—no shuffling or hemming and hawing—and it’s as good as done. That’s why I urge you to pray for absolutely everything, ranging from small to large. Include everything as you embrace this God-life, and you’ll get God’s everything. And when you assume the posture of prayer, remember that it’s not all asking. If you have anything against someone, forgive—only then will your heavenly Father be inclined to also wipe your slate clean of sins.”
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Faith has been wonderfully described in and throughout the length of the Bible, used by great people who loved God, would do anything and everything for Him.
Noah, at God’s command, working tirelessly, built a gargantuan ark of gopher wood with his own determined hands in the face of continuous scorn, threats.
Even the obedient at all costs Abraham, the father of faith, had such faith in God to the point setting himself and everything else aside, of sacrificing his only son Isaac (God intervened with a Ram, blessed Abraham as the father of nations).
Faith in the Gospel, which is accepting and trusting the One we cannot ever see, knowing that He came, he lived, died and rose and will come again — that is the faith of salvation in Christ Jesus, through which every single baptized believer who has confessed Christ as their Savior, received redemption for their souls.
Faith, as the gift of the Spirit, is another example of faith we have read and even seen; Paul, and the apostles worked tirelessly, and worked tremendously with this gift of God through the power of the Holy Spirit with great signs following.
We have seen and read of the great miracles that seemed impossible but done by the Holy Spirit through generation after generation after generation of all those great clouds of witnesses, great evangelists of our time, both past and present, because of their steadfast and immovable faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Faith to Move Mountains into the Sea
Mountains come to us in diverse forms, such as obstacles, opposition, sickness, death, difficulty, impossibility, and insurmountable situations.
Zechariah 4:5-7 Amplified Bible
5 Then the angel who was speaking with me answered me, “Do you not know what these are?” And I said, “No, my lord.” 6 Then he said to me, “This [continuous supply of oil] is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel [prince of Judah], saying, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit [of whom the oil is a symbol],’ says the Lord of hosts. 7 ‘What are you, O great mountain [of obstacles]? Before Zerubbabel [who will rebuild the temple] you will become a plain (insignificant)! And he will bring out the capstone [of the new temple] with loud shouts of “Grace, grace to it!”’”
Isaiah 40:3-5 Amplified Bible
3
A voice of one is calling out,
“Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness [remove the obstacles];
Make straight and smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
4
“Every valley shall be raised,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged places a broad valley.
5
“And the glory and majesty and splendor of the Lord will be revealed,
And all humanity shall see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.”
The mountains here are not a literal mountain that we see as we drive through our National Parks, this mountain is a figurative mountain as expressed above.
Steadfast and immovable Faith in our steadfast and immovable God removes them from our way, it makes them plain and they become as nothing before us.
For nothing can stand in the way of a man or woman of faith (Mark 11:23; Matthew 21:21-22 The Message).
21-22 But Jesus was matter-of-fact: “Yes—and if you embrace this kingdom life and don’t doubt God, you’ll not only do minor feats like I did to the fig tree, but also triumph over huge obstacles. This mountain, for instance, you’ll tell, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ and it will jump. Absolutely everything, ranging from small to large, as you make it a part of your believing prayer, gets included as you lay hold of God.”
Jesus was telling the disciples, who were marveled because the fig tree dried up, that even this mount, the Mount of Olives if you say to it be thou cast into the sea, it will quite literally be cast into the sea because you believe it can be done.
Why?
Because we have that degree of obedience as Abraham did, as Noah did, that measure of unshakeable faith, that whatever we say we believe shall be done.
Just as we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus is our personal Savior.
So, therefore, no matter how little our faith is, even if it is as small as a mustard seed, inasmuch as it has the backing of faith as we make our declarations, it will be, only but by the grace and mercy, forgiveness of God, just as we say it should.
That is why reading, study, speaking and praying in faith is important for us as believers, we are not just ordinary people, Christ says whatever you believe it shall be established unto you, the Matthew Henry’s commentary puts it better.
“Whosoever shall say to this mountain, this Mount of Olives, be removed and cast into the sea. If he has but any word of God, general or particular to build his faith upon, and if he shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he said, according to the warrant he has from what God hath said, shall come to pass, he shall have whatever he said through the strength and power of God in Christ Jesus, the greatest difficulty shall be gotten over and the thing shall be effected.”
Buttressing on this, Jesus went further in Mark 11:24
{24 For this reason I am telling you, whatever things you ask for in prayer [in accordance with God’s will], believe [with confident trust] that you have received them, and they will be given to you.}
telling them of the importance of believing while making a request in prayer,
and Hebrews 11:1-2 tells of how men and women of old used faith to move obstacles seen and unseen.
The Triumphs of Faith
11 Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses]. 2 For by this [kind of] faith the [a]men of old gained [divine] approval.
Seemingly Unmovable Mountains
We have been able to discuss faith as it applies to salvation and also as the gift of the spirit; we have also seen how faith no matter how small can move mountains, figurative mountains or literal mountains.
How then does our faith move mountains?
Having identified your mountain (mountains in the form of difficulty, failure, and sickness, etc.).
Anything we can think of that serves as an obstacle to enjoying the best life God has for us, how then can we exercise our immovable faith in moving them?
Matthew 17:14-21 New King James Version
A Boy Is Healed
14 And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying, 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is [a]an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.”
17 Then Jesus answered and said, “O [b]faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”
20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your [c]unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. 21 [d]However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
Using Matthew 17:14-21, the disciples could not cast out the demon, and then Jesus pointed out some factors that hindered them:
- Unbelief; lack of faith
- Payers
- Fasting
- *And I add, to be deeply rooted in the Word
Having these we can move any form of the mountains, which was buttressed in Matthew 17:21 because most times, as recorded in 2 Corinthians 10:4, the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world.
They have divine power to demolish strongholds.
Most of the time our unbelief restricts the manifest power of God in our lives, it is because of our unbelief that we bring little to pass if you have but a grain of true faith, though little as mustard seeds, you shall speak and it shall stand.
Note, an active faith can remove mountains, not of itself, but in the form of a divine power engaged by a divine promise (Word of God), both of which faith fastens upon.
Jesus, in all his teachings, always taught his disciples the importance of faith and why they needed to be in faith, any time his disciples fell short of this, he would ask, “Where is your faith? You faithless generation?” (Luke 8:25; Mark 9:19; Mark 4:40; Matthew 14:31).
But to anyone who shows his or her faith, he would commend, like the woman with the issue of blood (Matthew 15:28), the Centurion (Luke 7:1-10), etc.
This shows that when we truly apply our faith to our difficulties, God is always pleased because this shows we trust in him to make all impossibilities possible.
What Does This Mean?
There’s power in our words.
When we speak words of faith, awesome things can happen.
But how do we begin speaking faith-filled words?
How can we speak faith over a situation that seems hopeless or over something that seems dead?
We do it by beginning to dream.
Begin by dreaming and imagining what we’d like our situation to be like.
As we do, we’ll find that we begin to have faith to see these things come to pass.
When that happens, it’s easier to speak faith-filled words.
As we speak faith and life over our situations, we begin to see God gifted results.
For example, let’s say doing well at school has always been hard for you.
Maybe you have anxiety about taking tests.
To overcome this, you’d want to begin to dream and begin to imagine yourself successfully taking tests.
Maybe you’d imagine yourself getting a good grade, or a better grade or being really more confident the next time when it became time to taking another test.
Once we see something in your mind’s eye, it’s a lot easier to speak faith over it.
So if we can begin to imagine it happening, by faith, can speak it into existence.
Descending, falling, into the snares of fear, doubt, unbelief, and prayerlessness hinders the working wonders of faith in our lives, whenever we show the above, we are essentially communicating, “God, this situation is bigger than you, you just cannot solve this,” carelessly forgetting God is the God of all possibilities.
Matthew 19:26 Amplified Bible
26 But Jesus looked at them and said, “With people [as far as it depends on them] it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Steadfastly, immovably, genuinely trusting in God is leaving all to Him in faith, knowing that, by God’s grace alone, everything will work out just fine for you.
Romans 8:26-28 The Message
26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
But that does not mean we should not do our own part, for faith without labor, faith without “our getting both of our hands and feet in the mud,” works is dead.
Jesus did a spectacular miracle in withering the fig tree with his command (Mark 11:12-14, 20-21).
Now, Jesus wants his followers to understand that they can do amazing things too, if they will truly steadfastly labor to overcome their unbelief – to believe.
Bottom line: Jesus wants us to pursue his will without thought of limitations and without fear of asking too much.
“Have faith!” our Lord tells us, “and ask without doubt.” Let’s do these things!
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
O Father, today I want to ask you for something that does not seem possible. I know this cannot be accomplished without your power and blessing. So I ask this of you in the name of Jesus my Lord … (Please heartily and fervently share with the Father your areas of acute and chronic “unbelief,” give Him all thy personal faith requests.) By the grace of God and In Jesus’ exalted name, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 