‘Believing prayer’ Mark 11:20-25

 

Dr. Helen Roseveare was a missionary to Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo) and she tells the following story:

 “A mother at our mission station died after giving birth to a premature baby. We tried to improvise an incubator to keep the infant alive, but the only hot water bottle we had was beyond repair. So we asked the children to pray for the baby and for her sister. One of the girls responded, ‘Dear God, please send a hot water bottle today. Tomorrow will be too late because by then the baby will be dead. And dear Lord, send a doll for the sister so she won’t feel so lonely.’ That afternoon a large package arrived from England. The children watched eagerly as we opened it. Much to their surprise, under some clothing was a hot water bottle! Immediately the girl who had prayed so earnestly started to dig deeper, exclaiming, ‘If God sent that, I’m sure He also sent a doll!’ And she was right! The heavenly Father knew in advance of that child’s sincere requests, and 5 months earlier He had led a ladies’ group to include both of those specific articles.” [1]

This morning’s passage centres on the topic of believing prayer.  In these verses Jesus tells the disciples that God does the seemingly impossible in response to believing prayer.  What a motivation this should be for us to pray!

‘Wow!  That’s amazing!!’ (20-21)

Last week we looked at a sandwich!  For those of you who weren’t here a sandwich is a literary device where one story is surrounded by another.  The parts of the sandwich are related, the fig-tree helped explain the significance of the temple cleansing.  The judgement of the fig-tree pictured the judgement that was coming to the people because of their godless religion.  It was a judgement that would be focused of the centre point of that empty faith, the temple.

We have picked up the story the day after the temple cleansing—the next morning when they come across that fig-tree.  Peter is amazed at what has happened to it in response to Jesus’ words.  This provides Jesus with the opportunity to teach the disciples about what God can do in response to their words.  God can do anything in response to believing prayer!

The art of the impossible-Moving mountains (22-24)

Moving mountains was a Jewish proverb used, like it is today, as a picture of the impossible.[2]  Jesus declared, “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 it will happen, it will be done.  Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’[3]  How amazing a promise!  What a motivation to pray!  When we pray in expectant faith God will do even what seems impossible!

I suspect that as well as being challenged by these verses you may also be a little perplexed.  What about those times when we have prayed in expectant faith and we did not receive the answer that we had hoped for?  What if someone was to pray in expectant faith for something that God knew was not actually the best outcome to a situation?

It is important to realise that theses verses are not the only teaching that Jesus has given on subject of prayer.  I think that Mark assumes that his readers in the church at Rome know the basics of prayer—that they have been taught about the need to pray in line with the will of God.  In a later Gospel, John, we can read of how Jesus taught the disciples about asking ‘in my name’.  To ask for something in someone’s name involves asking for what that person wants.  If I go into a chemist and ask for something in your name I should only be given it if you want me to receive it.[4] 

Of course Jesus is not promising that God will answer our prayers in a way that is contrary to his will—no matter how sincere those prayers are.  Jesus will later teach the disciples this and Mark takes it as given.  However, Jesus does promise that if what we pray for is in line with God’s will and we pray for it in expectant faith, then what we pray for will happen, even when our prayer seems to be asking for the impossible.

What about when our faith is weak?  In chapter 9 we saw a man who was conscious that his faith far from perfect.  He asked Jesus to help his son and Jesus said to him, ‘All things are possible to him who believes.’  The man relied, ‘I believe, help me overcome my unbelief.’

Clearly faith matters!  Jesus speaks of not doubting in our hearts, believing that it will happen, and believing that you have received it.  He teaches here that God has graciously committed himself to answering such believing prayer.  Where our faith is weak we should pray ‘help me overcome my unbelief.’  Ultimately, of course, the answer to our prayer is not dependant on our faith but on the God who responds to that faith.

When I worked as a lay assistant on the Dungannon circuit I knew a woman whose husband was died of a brain tumour.  When he was ill she had been visited by people who prayed for him.  They seemed to imply that if he did not recover it would be because her faith was not strong enough.  They were insensitive and wrong!  Perhaps they had taken a passage like this and failed to place alongside all the Bible says about God and all that Jesus teaches about prayer.  For example it is not always God’s will that people should be healed—indeed it is his will that, unless he returns first, all of us will one day get ill and die.  We pray ‘Father I know you can heal this person’—that is faith, but we know that this might not be God’s will.  We also remember that God is merciful and compassionate, and that he cares for his children—in his mercy he often responds to prayer that is far from perfect.     

While I don’t want you to have an unbalanced view of prayer like those people who prayed with my friend in Dungannon seemed to have I do want us to take the promise of these verses seriously.  I want us to seek the mind of Christ and then pray knowing that our prayers matter.  I want us to have expectant faith, knowing that if something is God’s will and we pray with believing, then God has promised that in his grace it will happen—even if the thing that we prayed for seems impossible.  I want us to pray great things for the witness of this fellowship, believing that God will do many wonderful things in us and through us.  James reminds his readers that Elijah was a man just like us.  He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.  Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops (James 5:17-18).

Praying in Fellowship (25)

We are to pray in faith, we are also to pray in fellowship.  And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive your sins.  The only reason we can pray is because of grace.  God delights to listen to us because he has forgiven us our sins and accepted us as dearly loved children.  Right throughout the New Testament the implication of being forgiven by God is that we have a responsibility to forgive others.  We see this in the Lord’s Prayer when we pray ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’  As one preacher said, ‘Without being in a right relationship with God and right relationship with men—forgiven by God, forgiving your fellow men—then you will not get answers to your prayer.  We need to pray in fellowship!’[5]

I remember reading the story (I hope I can remember it right) of a church that longed for great things in their fellowship but they were stagnant.  Until one person said along the lines of ‘there will be no revival here until I am reconciled with so and so’.  At that time many relationships were healed.  Then God did move in a might way through them. 

Conclusion

Having read these verses are you going to drive down to Newcastle and say to the Mournes ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea.’  Of course your not!  Why not?  Well partly because we know that prayer wouldn’t be answered.  Not because God could not do it but because he won’t.  He won’t because he would know that we are merely asking to test him.  He won’t because it is not his will to do such a random, pointless thing.     

So the question becomes ‘what is God’s will’ on the issue that we want to pray about.  We seek to pray in line with God’s will.  Then we pray knowing that if something is God’s will, and we pray it, it will happen—even something so seemingly impossible as moving a mountain into the sea.[6]

Bobby has been preaching about our vision as a congregation.  When it comes to praying about that vision are we going to pray small prayers because we don’t believe that anything great can happen in and through us or are we going to pray great prayers because we believe in a God who can do what might seem impossible?  When it came to praying for baby Cameron, who was so seriously ill, we prayed knowing that God’s will is best (even if that it was that he would not recover) but we also prayed knowing that our prayers mattered, and that God could heal him.  When it comes to praying for our own spiritual growth, and for the growth of others, we know that God can do great things in our lives—that as we depend on him he can move in us so that we can will and act according to his good purpose (Phil. 2:13), that old patterns of sin can be broken and that new patterns of service can be developed.  God can move mountains, he will do the seemingly impossible, as we call out to him in prayer! 

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[1] Illustration found on Bible.org. who had taken it from Daily Bread. 

[2] Adapted from Richard Inwood - preaching at All Soul’s, Langham Place.

[3] An allusion may be intended to Zech. 14:4.  ‘In the eschatological day described there the Mount of Olives is to be split in two and when the Lord assumes his kingship “the whole land shall be turned into a plain” (Zech. 14:10). Lane, (1974) The Gospel of Mark, Eerdmans, p. 410

[4] The illustration of asking in the chemist is adapted from Richard Inwood.

[5] Richard Inwood.

[6] I was helped in these two paragraphs by my friend Peter Orr who passed on knowledge gained from a lecture given by Peter Jenson.