For this reason I say to you, All things whatsoever ye pray for and ask, believe that ye receive it, and it shall come to pass for you.
The Lord speaks these words the morning after He cursed the barren fig tree. Peter had just pointed out that it withered from the roots. The promise that follows is very wide. It makes us ask what believing really means here.
The disciples were a small group. They faced the whole religious establishment. The promise answers that helplessness.
The Lord teaches His disciples the great principle. It lets the weakest believer overcome the hardest difficulty and the cleverest opponent. On the surface, the men who opposed the Lord and His teaching held all the power. How then were a few poor fishermen to stand against the wisdom and power of men in high places? The Lord's answer is, "Have faith in God."
One writer looks past the promise itself to what would happen to Israel as a nation.
We may well see here a hidden promise about Israel. Israel was now only an obstacle in the path of faith, and as a nation it would disappear among the nations. But this promise applies in many ways. It would be quite wrong to limit it, except as the Lord Himself does. He makes His closing promise as full as He can. Nothing will be denied to faith. Yet it is no limit to insist that faith must be real faith.
One writer weighs the two words that make the promise so broad.
"Whoever says … and does not doubt in his heart, but believes … it will be done for him." The whoever and the whatever make this a very sweeping statement. It almost takes our breath away. But it is connected with the prayer described in the next verse. In both these verses everything clearly hinges on the believing.
One writer refuses to set a limit where Scripture sets none. He applies the promise to everyday needs as well as spiritual ones.
I believe this is true of every spiritual blessing we need. And it is not limited to the spiritual. "Whatever you ask" sets no limit, and I refuse to add one where Scripture does not… The Lord often uses our daily needs to teach us. When faith prays to Him about them, we learn to pray and trust Him about the deeper spiritual needs.
Everything turns on the word "believe." So we need to know what belief is.
Belief is faith. Faith is not something we produce ourselves. It is not make-believe or imagination. Verse 24 does not mean that if I can work myself up to imagine I receive what I ask for, then I do receive it… Faith is the God-given power in me that receives God's Word. Faith is the eye of the soul, which receives and appreciates divine light.
One writer points to a confidence God Himself gives about one particular thing. He also warns against testing the promise.
Scripture recognises specific faith about a specific thing… This may be the special kind of faith the Lord means when He says, "whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mark 11:24). Genuine, divinely given faith, not mystical or imagined faith, is what is meant here. Many have tried this promise as an experiment, only to be disappointed… But God does not give His promises and the power of His Spirit for us to experiment with, or to use for our own private ends.
One writer takes the verse as a rule for all prayer, not a blank cheque for our own wishes.
Mark 11:24 gives the principle on which we are to pray in every case… all prayer should be with faith. Praying in the Holy Spirit is now tied to Christ's words staying in us… As a rule, the Holy Spirit will keep those words in our mind, if our hearts are right.
The same writer allows both realities: that God may give a specific assurance, and that our own will can distort a request.
It is always right to bring what we ask to Him, subject to His will… And the answer will be more glorious and blessed than what we asked, even when it is not the answer we wanted. Let us trust His love, and it will not fall short. If He has given us faith to expect a specific answer, let us bless God for it. Only our own will must not come in… But where there is earnest faith, God will hear, though He may guard us against our own will in it.
One writer ties believing prayer to how we hold our feelings towards other people.
If I hold a grudge against anyone, I do not have a good conscience towards God… I must be "without anger" as much as "without doubting" if I want to receive good things from God's hand.
- Faith in God — what counts is who you trust, not how hard you try. "Have faith in God" is the Lord's answer to a handful of fishermen facing an immovable system.
- Faith receives — believing is not working yourself up to imagine an answer. It is the soul taking in what God has said.
- Faith is given — God grants a specific faith about a specific thing. The promise is not there for us to experiment with.
- Faith submits — "whatever" has no limit, but our own will must not come in. Where He assures us of a specific answer, bless Him for it.
- Faith forgives — believing prayer goes with a heart that holds no grudge: without anger, as much as without doubting.
And when ye stand praying, forgive if ye have anything against any one, that your Father also who is in the heavens may forgive you your offences.
Jesus had cursed a fruitless fig tree the day before. The next morning Peter pointed out that it had withered, and the Lord turned the moment into a lesson on faith and prayer. Before He tells the disciples what prayer can move, He names what must move in them first: anything they hold against someone else.
The withered tree pictured a religious system that had failed, and the "mountain" the disciples were told they could move stood for the nation that looked immovable to them. One writer traces how the Lord's promise about faith runs straight into a second requirement:
The fig tree symbolized the people in their religious pretensions, now clearly empty, and so judged by Him whose right it was and is. So "this mountain" seems to mean rather their "place and nation," which in their unbelief they worked hard to keep under Roman protection... Strong as it stood in Jewish eyes, before the faith of the disciples it was doomed, and soon to be violently uprooted and lost in the sea of Gentiles. Such is the declared power of faith. But one more thing is needed, and faith itself would produce it: the spirit of gracious forgiveness toward anyone who might have wronged or otherwise offended us.
The Lord ties two things together in one sentence, and one writer takes the pair into the prayer meeting:
Two things are necessary if our prayers are to be heard and answered: faith towards God and forgiveness towards all others. The Lord Himself has joined them together in these memorable words, and we must not separate what He has joined together... Two brothers kneel in the same prayer meeting. Their being there shows that they have some faith in God. But they have hard and unforgiving thoughts towards each other, and their prayers are empty words.
The promise about faith comes with a moral condition, and one writer names what it costs to ignore it:
He assures His disciples that whatever they asked in faith would be done. But to make sure of this they must walk and act in grace, if they would enjoy this privilege. If you pray for something to be done, there must be forgiveness "if you have anything against anyone." I have no doubt why we so often get no answers to our prayers. Our hearts are not right before God in this respect. We keep up some old grudge instead of dismissing it for ever.
The verse says "your Father who is in heaven." The Lord is speaking to people already in that relationship. So the forgiveness here is a father's dealing with his children, not the settling of eternal guilt:
In the heavenly Father's holy government of His children, the unforgiving spirit comes under His discipline. If someone commits an offence against us and we refuse to forgive, we will miss God's governmental forgiveness. This is not a question of forgiveness for eternity. Those He was speaking to were disciples, and for them that great matter was already settled.
So what is lost is nearness to God, and a second writer shows how deep that loss goes:
If we do not forgive, we are not forgiven as children. Communion with God our Father is put on hold. His Spirit within us is grieved. To go on as though all were right is presumption; it is insincerity and displeasing to God. True prayer is communion with God. It is speaking to Him with the confidence of a heart that does not condemn us.
"Anyone" leaves no one out, and a forgiving heart is not the same as pretending wrong never happened:
Whoever it may be that we have anything against, we must have a thoroughly forgiving spirit toward them. This does not mean that God's assembly should restore them to fellowship while they continue in sinful disobedience. But our personal attitude must be one of willingness to forgive. If it is not so, how can we expect God to forgive our own trespasses and answer our prayers favourably?
The posture in the verse is simply the ordinary one of the people the Lord was speaking to:
Standing was, and remains, the usual posture of Jews in prayer... The scriptural postures are either standing (Abraham, in Gen. 18:22; compare Jer. 15:1, of Moses and Samuel), or kneeling (Solomon, Daniel, our Lord in Luke 22:41, Stephen, Peter, Paul).
- Faith first. Mountain-moving prayer rests on faith in God, and that same faith produces a spirit that forgives.
- Forgiveness with it. The Lord joined believing prayer and a forgiving heart; we are not free to separate them.
- Father, not Judge. The forgiveness at stake is a father's dealing with his children. The eternal question is already settled for those who believe.
- Communion is the cost. An unforgiving heart puts fellowship with the Father on hold. Praying on as if all were well is insincerity.
- No exceptions. "Anyone" means anyone. The willingness to forgive must be personal, whoever the offender is.