"Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, "Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you." - Jesus in Mark 11:23
There were two thoughts that I had when I would read or hear about this verse as I grew up within Christianity. The first was "Come on, Jesus must be speaking figuratively here. The second was, "Perhaps miracles such as this happened in Jesus' time but they sure don't happen anymore! Certainly not in our time!
But I am coming to believe that these are cop-outs and that he wasn't pulling our leg or talking only of his specific time with history when he said these words.
Surely a taking of these words literally could change our lives, indeed our world. Jesus wasn't speaking in riddles, rather he was speaking plainly. There's also the well-known verse that says "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you." - Matthew 7:7 But somehow throughout the years our faith has become weak, or we've added "ifs" or "buts" to this verse and others.
"If it be God's will" is one such "if." "But God may want me to be struggling and suffering right now" is one such "but." Sure, some people can be selfish, I get that, but I would wager to say that the majority of prayers that go out to God are not meant in a selfish way at all. "God, I ask that you would remove cancer from my friend." "God, please help me to find the right and perfect job for me." These are not selfish prayers. "God bring people into my life that I can be in loving relationship with" is another. Still we get caught up in "ifs, buts, and timidity." Are we meant to be timid when we pray? I don't think so.
I think we are meant to be bold when we pray. How do we do this? We not only ask, but begin to expect the outcome as already having come true. We shift our minds from a place of lack and want to a place of expectation and acquisition. The key word in that sentence was our "minds." We can switch from a place of lack to a place of extreme and total faith. We do this by our thoughts. The law of attraction states that those thoughts we harbour in our minds ultimately attract positive or negative things into our lives depending on which way we're persistently thinking. Think about lack, disease, family discord, unemployment day in and day out, and guess what, you're probably going to see these things manifested into your life. The key is to change your way of thinking to an mind focused on faith and trust. The reason that many people were healed by Jesus was not only because he had healing power within him. He repeatedly said to those he healed, "Your faith has made you well." We have a huge part in our own healing and what we see in our lives.
In conclusion, we can have just as powerful of a prayer life as Jesus did. We can see miracles happen, and we can bring them about. Don't believe me? Here's another teaching of Jesus himself:"Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father." - Jesus in John 14:12
Let's learn to have an unshakable faith when we say our prayers, and we will see magnificent things happen.
Blessings,
Mark Andrew
