Good Monday Morning Friends!
Yes, it is another Monday to start our week with promises that only God can perform in your life for you. The only requirement??? Is just BELIEVE, and that is what we are going to discover today.
So, how does faith work? Let’s start in Mark 11:23 “For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.”
Jesus was explaining how His faith worked on the fig tree. Anyone who uses faith the way He did can get the same results. Three times in this verse, Jesus stressed speaking. This is a vital part of faith. We can’t just think faith. It needs to be spoken.
Proverbs 18: 20-21 says, “A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled. Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”
Notice that it’s not only important to speak our faith; it’s also important to whom or what we are speaking. This verse says we are to speak to the mountain. The mountain symbolizes our problem or the thing we want removed. Most people speak to God about their problems. This verse is saying we need to speak to our problems about God. We should say things like “Cancer, be gone” and “Body, you recover.”
This involves the believers taking their authority and commanding the problem to be removed (Isaiah 45:11.)
The Lord didn’t say “Pray for the sick.” He said, “Heal the sick” (Matthew 10:8and Luke 9:2). There is a huge difference between the two.
In Mark 1:42 faith is released by speaking words. Notice that speaking is emphasized three times in this one verse, and the Lord commands us to believe that what we say will come to pass. We are to believe in the power of our words. Failure to believe in the power of words won’t keep this law of God from working. The last part of this verse says, “He shall have whatsoever he saith.” If we receive this instruction and begin to speak words in faith that line up with God’s Word, then we will have the positive results that follow.
But if we refuse this lesson and continue to speak words of doubt, we will eventually believe them too and have the negative things that these words produce. As stated in (Matthew 12:36-37) every word counts. There are no such things as “idle” words that will not work for us or against us.
Death or life are in the power of every word we speak (Proverbs 18:21). Our words can be our most powerful weapon against the devil, or they can become a snare of the devil (Proverbs 6:2). Faith-filled words can move mountains.
The physical mountain that Jesus might have meant or have been pointing to would either be the Mount of Olives or one of the mountains that Jerusalem was built on.
However, Jesus was using the word “mountain” symbolically to refer to any high obstacle that might stand in our way. Jesus said we should speak to the mountain, or the problem. Most people speak to God about their problem, but few follow Jesus’ instructions and speak directly to the “mountain.” God has put certain things under our authority, and we must exercise it. When a problem stands in our way, we must speak to the problem and command it to get out of our way in the name of Jesus.
The born-again spirit of man is not the part that doubts. Doubts come to the mind. Therefore, this is another confirmation that the heart, as the Scriptures use it, refers to the whole inner man: spirit and soul
Prayer – Father thank you for making us beings that can speak and speak with the power to remove mountains in our life. Help us to learn “pure faith” that believes and does not doubt so that we will see your Life in every area we need it.
Remember, you are Loved, you are Righteous and you are His!
(Parts taken from “The Living Commentary” Andrew Wommack.