"Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it forgoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury." (Edwin Hubbell Chapin)
"And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." (Mark 11:22 to 24)
As I read the quote at the beginning, the last two verses in the Gospel of Mark came to mind. And I’ve noticed when various preachers and teachers are speaking, they tend to address either verses 22 to 24, or verses 25 and 26. The reason that I’ve brought them forth together is because I see them as connected. You see, unlike many of us, Jesus didn’t bounce from making one point and then another all in the same breath. When He spoke, the various aspects had a relationship to each other and some lessons to teach. Therefore, others may not see what I’m talking about the same way; but let me show you what the Lord is saying to me through this.
So, above all, if we want to receive anything from God, we have to have faith in Him. There’s something that we have to understand: we have to have an active faith. In other words, as James told us in the second chapter of his letter: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” (James 2:17). We hear it said so often that salvation is by faith alone; but it really isn’t. Yes, it’s faith in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and it’s that alone that is our salvation. But it actually requires the work of us surrendering our will to Him at that time. It’s what James told us. And afterward, our walk should consist of works that demonstrate our faith. Again, that’s the primary thing.
At that point Jesus spoke about something that seemed like an impossibility. He said if we believe in our heart and don’t doubt, we could tell a mountain to be cast into the sea and it would come to pass. He was making the point that whatsoever we desire, if we pray and believe in our heart and don’t doubt, then we’ll receive them. There are a few things that I want to bring out here, though.
First: If we’re honest with ourselves, could we really believe without doubting to the point that we could see a physical mountain cast into the sea at our word? That seems to be just a little bit too impossible. Why? After all, we may speak the word, but it’s God Who would make it happen. Remember Moses and the children of Israel at the Red Sea? And what about Gideon and the three hundred against an estimated couple hundred thousand Midianites and Amalekites? Then there’s Daniel and the lions, as well as the three Hebrew children and the furnace. The Word of God is replete with accounts of the impossible. The fact, however, is that the vast majority of us have a problem believing that we could really see a mountain cast into the sea at our word. Years ago, a friend of mine said he was preaching about how God can heal, and the congregation was, as to be expected, praising God and vocally assenting to everything he was saying. After a length of time, he stopped and told everyone to get their coats on. There was a few minutes of slight confusion and questions, until he told them that, since they were fully persuaded that God could heal, sometimes miraculously, then they were all going to go to the nearby hospital and pray for the patients. Needless to say, the attitudes turned very quickly. In short, do we believe that the Lord is capable of what we claim He is?
Second: There ARE times when we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He’s cap-able of answering our prayers for something that is absolutely impossible in the natural. The thing that stumps us, though, is when, at one time, we believe beyond belief and He grants the answer, while, at another time, we don’t receive what we desired, though we stood in unwavering faith. Do you know why that is? Seriously, neither do I. There’s no way that I would attempt to claim that I have the answer for God’s decisions. Possibly one of the reasons is to teach us to not base our faith in Him upon the outcome of our prayers. As the song says, “the God on the mountain is still God in the valley”.
Third: There can be a downside to believing you’ll receive what you pray for. Far too many Christians adhere to a “name-it-and-claim-it” mentality. Jesus told us to believe undoubtingly in our heart when we pray; but what remained unspoken was the fact that we need to accept whatever He’s decided for us. However, many times, those who speak as fact what the Lord may not have determined is theirs are usually focused upon temporal, natural things that are more for their comfort and ease than for what He intended for their spiritual growth. True: He may very well grant their petitions, but they’ll ultimately find out that they’ll have lost more than they’ll have gained.
And fourth: Why? In other words, why would the Lord grant the prayer of someone to cast a mountain into the sea? You see, whenever we have our prayers come to pass, there are specific purposes for that. He has a good reason behind everything He does. For example, in the apocryphal infancy gospel of Thomas, there’s an account of five-year-old Jesus making birds out of mud and then telling them to fly away. Anyone who has an understanding of the Word of God knows that Jesus did nothing in the way of miracles until after He was baptized by John in the Jordan River when He was thirty years old. So this would be called, in today’s terminology, click bait. It verges on the spectacular, but it’s unequivocally false. There would be no need to make birds from mud, and there would be no need to cast a mountain into the sea. However, the apparent impossibility of expecting success with a mountain leads right into the next portion of what Jesus said.
If you think that praying for a mountain to be cast into the sea and seeing it come to pass is hard, what about forgiving someone when you have something against them? We’d like to believe that the latter would be easier than the first, but, most of the time it’s just the opposite. Whether or not we want to admit it, forgiveness goes against our very nature. We want to manifest the character of God in every situation, but that takes Him to do that; and we fall short far too often in allowing Him the authority that He deserves. You see, there’s only one way that level of forgiveness can happen within us, and that’s through His Spirit. It’s impossible if we try any other way. And, just in case you weren’t aware, forgiveness holds a bit more weight with God than casting a mountain into the ocean.
So, when we stand praying, if we realize that we have something against somebody, we need to pray that the Lord will help us to forgive them. This isn’t an option in His eyes. It may be in ours, but not in His. Jesus said, “if ye have ought against any”. That means, “if you have anything against anybody”. He never mentioned anything about whether what we have against them is justified or not. He just said, “if we have anything against someone”. He knows there could be such times, because He went through such times. Thus, He’s letting us know that there’s His unforgiveness for our unforgiveness. He won’t if we won’t. Consequently, the following portion of Scripture could very easily and correctly read:
There’s something that we need to understand about the forgiveness that the Lord commands: if it’s partial, then it’s not complete. That may sound redundant, so let me explain. Just as His forgiveness of our sins also includes His complete forgetfulness of them, the forgiveness that He requires of us includes the same kind of forgetfulness. You see, to the extent that we remember some aspect of the perceived wrong against is the extent that we haven’t forgiven. So when we stand praying and asking the Lord to help us to forgive, we need to also include forgetfulness in there. That’s because the enemy can dredge up what we haven’t forgotten and bring the offense back to life.
So, remember: our eternity doesn’t rest upon our ability to pray a mountain into the sea.
But it does upon our willingness to forego and forgive.