“Jesus replied to them, ‘Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, “Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, everything you pray and ask for – believe that you have received it and it will be yours.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever watched a really slick Prosperity Gospel preacher deliver his ace sermon? He will take you on a journey. You’ll be laughing one minute, crying the next, and ready to fork over your whole wallet to do your part to sustain the vital ministry the Lord has called him to do so that you can receive the blessings He wants to pour out into your bank account by the end of it. You will feel empowered to name what you want the Lord to give you, and to claim it boldly in prayer. It is a powerful experience, an encouraging experience, a truly religious experience, and a big, fat load of heresy. Verses like this one, though, would seem to disagree. Let’s talk about it.
If you’ll remember, the context of what Jesus says here is just bizarre. As the group was heading into Jerusalem that morning, Jesus saw a fig tree with lots of beautiful foliage, but no fruit. And He was hungry. When He discovered the fruitless tree, He cursed it. Now, as He was heading back out of the city that same afternoon, when the disciples saw the tree, they immediately noticed that it had withered from the roots up and was dead. They were shocked. I mean, they had seen Jesus still storms and walk on water and raise the dead, but they were still shocked. Seeing something truly miraculous happen – even a destructive miracle as this was – doesn’t get old. (Or at least, I would think it wouldn’t get old…it didn’t for the disciples in three years.)
And if you’re reading along in the story, you expect Jesus to explain Himself by explaining the parable of His actions with the tree. I offered you one explanation last week, but really, that was just guessing. Instead, when Jesus explains Himself, He says…this. Huh?
Let’s start with just what He says here. From a straight reading of the text, Jesus seems to be suggesting that if we pray for something and believe fervently we will receive it, we will receive it. There are not any restrictions on what He says here in the text. And His opening example is a person telling a mountain to move from the land into the sea. I once heard a story about a church that wanted to expand its campus, but were landlocked by a mountain. They claimed this verse and began praying the Lord would move the mountain. A few weeks later, a construction company came and asked if they could use the dirt and rock of the mountain for some project they needed to do. They would pay the church for all the material they moved. They wound up taking the whole mountain and funding the building expansion. Boom. Proof.
Of course, the other side of this would also seem to be true. If you pray something and do not receive it, the obvious reason is that you haven’t truly believed. Your faith isn’t big enough or strong enough. You need to trust the Lord more fully and He will give you what you want.
The glaringly obvious conclusion here seems to be that the Prosperity Gospel folks are right. Name it and claim it. That’s basically what Jesus is saying here, isn’t it? “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him'” It’s frankly hard to understand that in any way other than a name it and claim it sort of exchange.
There’s just one problem. This whole thing leaves out what would seem to be a pretty crucial element: God’s sovereignty over His creation. That’s the subtle heresy of the Prosperity Gospel: It assumes God is basically like a vending machine, doling out what we want on demand. The trouble here is that there is not a single shred of evidence across the rest of the Scriptures that this is how God works. God doesn’t operate on our timetable. He doesn’t move at our beck and call. He doesn’t live for us. We live for Him. In Him, as Paul said, we live and move and have our being. If we ask for something that violates His will – or even crosses the line of being sinful in its intent – He’s not going to finally break down and give it to us just because we ask really sincerely. He’s not like a parent who finally gets worn down by a strong-willed child and just gives in rather than getting badgered any longer. He knows better than we do, not the other way around.
But what about what Jesus so clearly says here?
Jesus’ words here are powerful, to be sure. And He’s right too. If we ask God for something, but don’t really believe He’s going to do it for us, we really shouldn’t expect any kind of a positive answer. If I come to you and say, “I’d like you to do this for me, but I don’t really think you’re going to do it,” you are going to be offended and my offensive request is going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if you were possibly going to do it for me, you’re not now because of the offensiveness of my request and the ill-intentioned heart behind it. The same goes with God. If we ask Him for something, but don’t really trust His character or countenance His power, He’s not going to do it just to somehow prove Himself to us. He doesn’t need to prove Himself to us. He doesn’t depend on our approval.
So then, the Prosperity Gospel folks are right? No. No, because you can’t read any part of the Scriptures independently of the rest of it. The Bible is a unified whole. It gradually reveals the character of God from start to finish. If one part seems to be out of sync with the rest, go back and read the one part through the lens of the rest and it will probably start to make more sense. The rest should serve as the interpretive lens for the one part. In this case, the perspective of the rest is that God is sovereign and He will not give us something that is not consistent with His will. No amount of wishing – or believing – on our part will make it so. Anyone who tells you different is lying to you and is not supported by the whole of the Scriptures. It’s easy to find stray verses, take them out of context, and make them say what you want. We don’t get that option, however, if we are going to receive God’s word as He intended for it to be received. Prayer is powerful and God answers prayers. He answers prayers that are backed up by faith in Him. But He’s not a vending machine. Let’s not treat Him like it.
The Nexus 
Taking stray verses and making a point with them…way too much of that these days
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Got that right.
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I totally understand that we should pray with a faith that assumes God can do something. But I feel like verse 24 isn’t just implying we need to trust God’s ability, but also that He WILL answer the prayer. Isn’t that presumptuous? When I pray for healing, of course I believe God can do it, but I don’t assume He will or assume I will receive my request. But doesn’t that contradict “believe that you have received it and it will be yours”? You also wrote “If we ask God for something, but don’t really believe He’s going to do it for us, we really shouldn’t expect any kind of a positive answer.” So does this imply that when I pray I need to have faith God will absolutely answer my prayer?
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This is a great set of questions. Thanks for engaging with me. It does indeed sound presumptuous if you read the passage without the context of the Scriptures as a whole as I said. The whole thing has to be understood from the context of God’s sovereignty. God is not beholden to our demands. When we want what God wants and trust that He’ll give it, He will. If our desires diverge from His, though, we don’t stand a chance. Even if we want what He wants, though, if we don’t really trust that He’ll give it, He may not. I don’t think we need to have faith that God will “absolutely” answer our prayers, but rather in His ability and willingness more generally. He can still say, “No,” if in His wisdom He knows that is best, but if we don’t have His character right and treat Him as someone other than He is, we shouldn’t expect to get much from Him. If we don’t get His character right, it may be that we are praying to the wrong god, but calling this other god by His name. It would be like if I wanted something from you, but kept calling you by the name of the person next to you who was looking the other way and totally deaf. You’re not going to do anything for me in that case. Now, again, God is still sovereign and wise and good. He may still come and help us. But we’re not in a position to assume on such a thing unless our faith is in Him and our desires are aligned with His.
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Ah, I just read your comment through again, and missed some stuff.
“I don’t think we need to have faith that God will “absolutely” answer our prayers, but rather in His ability and willingness more generally.” I personally feel like this makes sense and I agree, but the passage in Mark 11:22-24 does seem to imply it’s not just a belief in God’s ability/character but in the receiving part.
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It’s a tricky passage to be sure. The question is what the proper object of the faith in question is. Are we to have faith in the gift, or in the giver. Grammatically, having faith in the giver makes the most sense. Theologically in light of the Scriptures as a whole, that makes more sense too. Thanks again for the great questions!
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Does God want all to be healed? If so shouldn’t we believe fully and move from faith in praying for them. Sometimes we pray and doubt at the same time. What did James say? We should pray God’s will through faith in the Name of Jesus and not doubt. I’m not talking about being out of the will of God. We need to know Him and hear His leading. I would love and response for thought.
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Thanks for a great question, Dave! The tension we face here is between what God ultimately wants and the path He understands He has to guide us on to get things to where He wants them to be.
Does God want everyone to be healed? Yes and no. If we believe that upon the final resurrection of the saints when Jesus returns, we all get new bodies that will be like the one Jesus prototyped after His resurrection (see 1 Cor 15 for more on this), then physical healing in this world diminishes greatly in importance as compared with the kind of spiritual healing that only Jesus can do and which makes us fit for God’s eternal kingdom.
The uncomfortable truth here is that while God certainly doesn’t want anyone to suffer physically in this world, He understands that sometimes His allowing someone to persist in a physically broken state will be the catalyst that leads not only them, but many others to the kind of spiritual healing that matters infinitely more in the long run.
Consider the ministry of Joni Erickson Tada. God never healed her paralysis – something she prayed for a great deal and with great faith as she herself has attested many times. What He has accomplished instead through her physically broken state has resulted in vastly more people coming to follow Him and receive the kind of spiritual healing that matters most in the long run than He would likely have been able to do if He answered her (and others’) prayers for physical healing. He entered into her brokenness with her, redeemed it, made it beautiful, and has accomplished incredible Gospel good through her testimony and ministry.
Yes, we should absolutely pray in Jesus’ name for the physical healing of people who are physically broken in our lives. And we should believe with all our heart that God is capable of healing. But we should be fully aware of the fact that physical healing may not be in God’s plans for a particular person. Instead, He may intend to use their suffering to advance a much greater good both for them and through them for the benefit of the people around them.
If this world is all there is, then physical healing is of course the only thing that matters. But if there is another world after this one that will last forever, and for which we will receive brand new bodies that are designed to last for all eternity, then physical healing in the here and now becomes far less significant a thing as our continuing to serve Him faithfully and well no matter the physical condition we are in.
Thanks again for your thoughts and your insightful question!
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(the author) say is very good sense and logic, BUT it is simply not what Jesus says in this passage. That is what I struggle with. He says “everything you pray and ask for – believe that you ahve received it and it will be yours.” No qualifications or cautions. I totally agree with you that that does not make sense in light of the rest of the Bible, or even in light of common sense, since people often ask for things that aren’t good for them and/or two people ask for opposite things, but the thing I struggle with is, if this isn’t so (and it really couldn’t be), then why did Jesus say it? How am I to know which of the things he says are so, and which don’t mean what they seem plainly to mean?
Your example of Joni Tada’s not being healed is again so reasonable and so sensible and so everything except what this passage plainly says. It is also notable in the gospels that there is not one single time that Jesus refuses to heal someone because it would be better for them or better for the world if they weren’t healed, so what changed? And how can I have faith to pray “believing I have received” if sometimes God answer is no? I’m not really questioning why sometimes God’s answer is no, although there are times when a “no” answer seems horrifically cruel (the Holocaust comes to mind….). Rather why, since God’s answer sometimes needs to be no, in this passage and others in the gospels does Jesus seem to say differently…
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts here, Nancy. One of the great challenges of engaging with the Scriptures is that sometimes what the words seem to clearly say to us may not be precisely what author or speaker meant when they were first written or spoken. One of the basic principles of sound Biblical interpretation is that the Scriptures never contradict themselves. If they seem to at one point, then the problem is with our understanding of the relevant passage and not the text itself. In these instances, a careful study of the context often gives us a clue as to our error. Sometimes the directing context is immediate to the verse in question, but other times we need to look more broadly than that.
In this particular case, the context of the Scriptures as a whole make abundantly clear that God doesn’t ever give us a blank check to ask for anything we want. Because of that, this one saying from Jesus that seems to contradict that larger context cannot mean what it seems to plainly mean. Jesus would have assumed an understanding of God and the kinds of things that are appropriate to ask of Him in making this statement.
What’s more, regarding the question of “unanswered” prayer, there are multiple examples of this in the Scriptures including two especially notable examples from the lives of Jesus and Paul. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed that His Father would “take this cup away from me.” That is, He wanted for God open up a different avenue for achieving our salvation than the cross. But there was no other avenue, so Jesus got a no. In Paul’s life, he prayed three times for God to take away his “thorn of the flesh” whatever that happened to be. God told him no. Was there a lack of faith on the part of these two supplicants? Perhaps you can make such an argument about Paul, but surely not about Jesus.
This saying is hard, there’s just no avoiding that. Wrestling with it is okay. But we’ll find the most success and positive understanding when we do that wrestling safely within the context of the broader witness of the Scriptures.
Thanks again for wrestling through this with me, Nancy.
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