Faith For, Not Just Faith In

The foundation for believing prayer is faith IN God. It’s God-centered. In the context, it’s about fruitfulness for the glory of God.

²⁰ In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. ²¹ Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!” ²² “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. ²³ “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. ²⁴ Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.  Mark 11:20–24 (NIV)

In this context Jesus says: 

• Believe that what you say will happen
• Believe that you have received it

We often dismiss having faith for particular answers to prayer. I’ve even heard people say, “Prayer doesn’t change things, but it does change you.” That’s a false choice. Prayer changes you, and it does indeed change things. Expect change! Raise your expectations! 

Why do we hesitate to believe that our prayers will actually change circumstances? One is that we have prayed and not received what we asked for. We become disillusioned and discouraged about prayer. In the parable of the persistent widow, though, Jesus teaches us to pray and not give up. Prayer is not something we just try once and then give up on if it doesn’t work when and how we like. John Wimber said: “I would rather pray for 1,000 people, even if only one gets healed, than not to pray for any and none gets healed.” In one of his books, Wimber tells of his attempts at prayer for healing. He was convinced from Scripture that we should pray for healing, and he started praying for people to get healed—and none did! On one occasion he prayed for healing, then started explaining why sometimes it doesn’t happen as we would like. Before he could finish, the woman exclaimed, “I’m healed!” That provided faith to pray for even more healings! 

Confidence in God

Another reason we hesitate to believe for specific things is that we’re not confident God really wants to do it for us. Some of that is based on bad theology; we have a bad view of God. We don’t really believe that God is the kind of Father who wants to do good things for his children, as Jesus said he does.  

Also, many of us are very concerned about being selfish in our prayers–James tells us that won’t work at all. God is not obligated to answer selfish prayers. But if we are the kind of people who put God first in our lives, we live to glorify God, we desire to bear fruit for the glory of God, we walk in grace and forgiveness toward others, the context of Mark 11, then God is going to bless us. According to Philippians 2:13 God will start shaping our will, our desires, our actions, to fit his will. Then 1 John kicks in and we step into a new level of confidence for specific answers to prayer: 

¹⁴ This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.  1 John 5:14–15 (NIV)

Remind ourselves of Mark 11:24: Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 

I know that we don’t always get what we pray for when and how we want it. And we as pastors want to help you remain people of faith even in the face of unanswered prayer. It’s tough. I listened to a sermon on healing by a famous pastor, and by the time it was over, I had less faith for healing than when I began! He was so concerned about answering the questions people have when God doesn’t heal in the way we would like, that he focused almost entirely on that. His heart was right, but his message didn’t raise expectations. We need to be ready for delays, but we also need to be ready for God to do the extraordinary. Raise your expectations!  

Our church had a member who was scheduled for surgery to remove a tumor, and I planned to get to the hospital before surgery to pray with the patient. Early in the morning before the surgery, while it was still dark, I was suddenly awakened in my bed and this thought came immediately to mind, as though God were speaking to me: “Don’t ask me to guide the hand of the doctor. Ask for a miracle.” I then went back to sleep, got up a couple of hours later, and headed to the hospital. As I walked into the room, the hospital personnel were just starting to wheel our church member out of the room to surgery. I asked the nurse if I could pray first, and she said, “Make it quick.” I remembered Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:7 that our prayers aren’t answered because of our many words. So I simply prayed this, “God, I’m not asking you to guide the hand of the doctor; I’m asking you for a miracle. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” That’s it. I stayed with the family in the surgery waiting room, and about an hour later, a doctor came out and said, “Surgery is cancelled. We couldn’t find the tumor.” I believe it was the miracle God led me to pray for. Let this story encourage you that we don’t need elaborate prayers to see powerful results.

Raise your expectations.