Effectual "Mountain Moving" Prayer

Rocciamalone by Roby Ferrari

Musings on Mark 11:20-25

Jesus teaches that as his followers you through prayer in a similar way will be able to realize the effectual power of God in your lives and in your service for his kingdom.  We can be as effective in our prayers as Jesus was in cursing the fig tree.  He promises us that as we meet these two conditions of faith and forgiveness we too can know the power of God in, over, around and through our lives. 

This is what He means when in response to Peter He says – “Truly I say to you that whoever should say to this mountain ‘be lifted up and be thrown into the sea’, and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will come to pass it will be done for him.  Therefore I say to you whatever you ask in prayer believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”

Jesus is teaching in metaphor and we must not take his words literally.  Praying that a mountain would be lifted up and cast into the sea is a figure of speech for difficulties that exceed our strength and ability to meet. 

I would argue that we are to understand the mountain analogy as not just representing the troubles and challenges that inconvenience or even threaten our lives and welfare.  Rather these mountains are anything that would impede us from following Jesus as his obedient disciples.  They are not physical objects per se but the difficulties, trails, and temptations we face that would overwhelm us and negatively impact our walk as Christians. 

I. The first condition for “effectual mountain moving prayer” is faith in God.    

Jesus commands us to have faith in God.  Faith in God is not just bare confidence in God or the certainty that God will do for you whatever you want or fancy.  Faith in God entails knowledge of God.  Faith in God entails a growing communion and intimacy with God. 

How well do you really know God – the Triune God?  How familiar are you with God.  Knowing God entails knowing his character and will as both are revealed to us in the Scriptures. 

I would say that this is the mountain that most of us need to wrestle in prayer with God to cast from us – unfamiliarity with God in a deep and intimate sense.  It was for just such “knowledge” that Paul prays for his readers.

I have not stopped making mention of you in my prayers – I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, might give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of him; having the eyes of your heart illumined so that you might know what is the hope of his calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints and his overflowing great power for us who believe according to the working of the might of his strength.  Ephesians 1:16-19

This is where we need to begin to pray – for this kind of intimacy so that we will be so much in touch with God that we will know better what to pray for and will have increasing confidence that since our prayer comports with God’s will then we already have what we have asked him for. 

This is reflected in Paul’s prayer for the Colossians where he asks “that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in your knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.” Colossians 1:9-11

What kind of impact would such intimate experiential knowledge of God have on your confidence in God?  Such knowledge would mean that you would know God in such a way that your perspective would be shaped by his character.  You would have deeper insight into his ways; so that you would have a better sense of how to pray when you face those mountains. 

Prayer is more than a shopping list because true prayer enters into the very heart of God.  Prayer entails humble cooperation with the purposes of God in the world. Prayer enables us to see God’s purposes more clearly and so enables us to pray “mountain moving prayers” because we really are connecting with the mind of God – the eyes of our hearts are becoming opened.  

II. The second condition we must realize if we are to experience ‘mountain moving prayer” is forgiving those who have sinned against us. 

Alan Cole wrote: “We have no inherent right to be heard by God, all is His grace and undeserved favor. But unless we forgive our fellows freely, it shows that we have no consciousness of the grace that we ourselves have received and need, and so it shows that we are expecting to be heard on our own merits, which we cannot.”

To embrace the gospel of free forgiveness and acceptance with God means that we recognize our huge need for forgiveness and that we have no basis in ourselves to stand before God.  This opens grace to us and becomes and operative perspective in our dealings with others.

We cannot expect God to answer our prayers if we do not forgive those who have sinned against us.  Such unwillingness shows that we fail to see our need for forgiveness.  We fail to see our transgressions against God to be more severe that anyone's transgressions against us. 

Donald English writes: The culture of prayer is the forgiving spirit.  Since God’s forgiveness of us is the essential ground over which we approach him in prayer, a lack of a forgiving spirit on our part destroys the atmosphere in which prayer is offered and answered.”

So it behooves us to truly forgive those who have offended us and sinned against us.  Lack of forgiveness gravely impacts our communion with our Father.  We cannot expect answers to prayer if we are unwilling to forgive others since the whole basis of our approach to and relationship with God is His gracious forgiveness of us through the offering up of his Son as the sacrifice of atonement for our sins.

We can only meet these conditions by God’s grace.  If we find ourselves failing in these two areas the solution is not despair but a turning to God in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.  God alone can give us faith and the humble capacity to forgive others.  Yet we must have faith in God and forgiveness toward others if we are to pray effectually and find his power to face the mountains that stand in the way of our following Christ’ faithfully and serving him obediently for his honor and glory.