‘Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them’. Mark 11:VS 2
“I’ll believe it when I see it!.” That’s probably a phrase you’ve heard before or you might have found yourself saying it at times. It’s normally when we have doubts concerning someone’s words actually matching up to their actions! We don’t have confidence in what they have said due to their past record or our past experience! When it comes to Jesus, however, we should not have these same struggles. There is a complete consistency when it comes to the words Jesus speaks and the things that come to pass. Jesus is reliable 100% of the time. He never exaggerates or manipulates a situation to make things appear to be so. If he says it he will do it. We should have great confidence today when we read these words that Jesus spoke to his disciples. And yet for most of us we do struggle with them as we have had experiences that seem to contradict what Jesus is telling us. Our lives tend to be dominated by our senses, we are trained to respond primarily to what we can see / taste / hear/ touch and we see this as being “REAL.” So when we pray and things appear not to change, what is going on? Or maybe the question we are asking is at what point does God release his power – when you see it manifest or before that?
The story of Jesus and the fig tree helps us with this. In Mark 11 after Jesus had explained these things about prayer to his disciples he came across the fig tree. When he sees that it is not fruitful he curses it. Now the question we need to consider is this: At what point did the tree die? Was it instantaneous? You see, Matthew's account of this story says that the tree died immediately. “Immediately the tree withered.”( Matthew 21:19) , but Mark's account explains it in more depth telling us “In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots.” So what can we conclude from this? Are the 2 accounts a contradiction? NO! What Jesus demonstrates here is that when He spoke to the tree, it died immediately, but from the roots up! It took 12 hours for the manifestation of that to be seen by the disciples but it died whenever Jesus spoke to it and cursed it. This helps us to understand what vs 24 means more clearly : Believe now and you will see. It may be in 1 sec / 1 min/ 1 day or 1 year. The principle is that we are to believe that we receive from God when we pray. Without any hindrance it will happen straight away but we need to recognise that the manifestation of it might not be apparent immediately to our eyes. When God moves, He moves in the spirit, that is the new creation part of you, perfect and complete! The Spiritual world is as real as the natural world. In fact it is the parent force. But because we are so driven by our senses and everything that we encounter in the carnal, temporal realm, we need to train ourselves to be mindful of the fact that we are living in two realities and the Spiritual realm is the greater force.
Some people approach this with the attitude which says: “I act like it is so when it is not so, in the hope that it will become so.” This is not what the Lord is asking us to do, it is not about pretending! So why did Jesus say believe when you pray? Why is that so important? Faith in what God has done is key here. It is a bridge between seeing what God has done in the spiritual realm being manifest in the physical! Hebrew 11 vs 1, ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ The word “faith” here is ‘PISTIS’, it is a firm persuasion, assurance and conviction, “substance” is “hypostasis” a substructure or foundation, and “the evidence of things not seen” is “elehogos’ meaning proof or that by which a thing is proved.
FAITH therefore is a conviction of truth that will prove what is not seen acting as a bridge between the natural and supernatural! Today allow what you know of the consistency and the character of Jesus to bring you the assurance and firm persuasion that whatever you have asked of him he will give to you!
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Unshakeable Hope Series – Exchange Church Belfast 2021