“All things are possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23).

Preaching through Mark 9 this past Sunday on the issue of faith raised some very practical questions for myself and for others. I received an email that expresses questions that I think many of us wrestle with regarding prayer and our faith. This person wrote: “I have NO problem believing and saying the statement, ‘Nothing is impossible with God, He CAN do anything.’  The thing is; I just don't know if he WILL do it. He isn't predictable.  I don't know when he'll answer a prayer and when he won't (in the way that I hope he will).  Is that not having faith?  Or is that just being realistic? This comes into play in prayer a lot. Sometimes I don't ask, not because I don't think he can or is incapable of doing it, but because I just don't think he will.  Or the things I have been praying for that haven't happened (like my mom's health, for example) have further confirmed these thoughts that while, yes, God can heal her, he just isn't.  I’m not sure if that is weak faith or not.”

While I realize this is a very difficult question, it is legimitate to ask and important to wrestle with. I have to admit that I have had very similar feelings regarding prayer and what exactly I am supposed to believe in. At times I have seen myself slip into a fatalistic mindset of thinking that God will do whatever he is going to do whether I pray or not. After clearly confessing these misunderstandings, I need to bring my complex and skeptical thoughts back to Scripture to see the simple, clear commands.

The parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18:1-8 teaches us to be absolutely persistent, to the point of being obnoxious in our asking. It was after the woman repeatedly asked that the Judge granted her requests. James says in James 4:2 that “you have not because you ask not.” Because Scripture is so clear about the fact that we are to ask no matter what, we cannot allow ourselves to begin disobeying Scripture by not asking!

We often get confused into thinking that we have to believe a certain way for our prayers to be effective, but let me tell you that I think the faith that we are to have is not faith in ourselves or faith in our ability to believe, but in God himself. Jesus taught us in the Garden of Gethsemane that our faith isn’t to be in HOW we pray, but in WHO we pray to. He prayed for God’s will to be done. That is faith - faith in God’s sovereignty, wisdom, justice, goodness, and providence! Personally I find a lot of freedom in knowing that I am to trust in WHO God is and not WHO I am and how I believe!

When we pray in faith, we tell God that we believe that he can do all things. To most of us, that isn’t where we have difficulty. That’s why in some ways the exercising of faith happens more after we ask than before! We exercise faith when we see God answer our prayers in ways that we wouldn’t necessarily prefer! The question we wrestle with then is this: Do we have the faith to just ask?!

Pastor Greg