The Word To Live By:3-13-26
Phil Waggoner
Therefore, I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted to you. Mark 11:24
The Word To Live By: Ephesians 6:18 says, “With all manner of prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.” In context, Paul is saying here after you put on the defensive armor of God, take up the offensive weapons which are the Sword of the Spirit (the Word of God) and praying in the Spirit with perseverance for those in the family of God. (There’s your faith scripture to pray for your family and neighbors that ties into 1 John 5:14-15.) What I want you to see here though is all manner or types of prayer. We are discussing the prayer of faith, which is a prayer of declaration on our part (when you say what you believe about the direction you want to go and the things you intend to do). The example we see in Mark 11 is Jesus cursing the fig tree and telling His disciples that what they say with their mouth and believe in their heart will come to pass, even if they are commanding a mountain to move into the sea (which nobody I know or ever heard of has that strong of faith other than Jesus). So we stick to the mountains of problems that attack our lives in keeping to the will of God so that it will be done on earth as it is in heaven. John 5:14-15, along with Ephesians 6:18, and Hebrews 6:11-12 (“And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”) tell us that we need to keep believing the Word of God regardless of if we can see the promise manifested or not. Someone once said, “If you are going through something, keep going until you are through it.” We can be patient and persevere with endurance, not because we’re hoping for the promise of God to come to pass, because in our heart, we know it already has. It’s just a matter of seeing it around the next corner. One time, I was hiking in the mountains and as I was driving to the starting point, from the highway several miles away, I could see the peak of the mountain I was going to. From the parking lot, I could see the peak. When I got to the base of the mountain, I looked up and thought I was looking at the peak. It was a hard climb and when I got to what I thought was the top, I realized I still had another five hundred yards to go. It was there all along, I could see it all along, but I didn’t possess it until I endured to the top. If I had ever quit believing the peak was there, I would have quit and not made it happen. Believe you have received the answer to your faith prayer and you will see it. There’s one more huge key to the prayer of faith and we will look at it tomorrow.
Read through the Bible in a year: Matthew 14:22-36; Leviticus 22-23; Proverbs 31;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 13, Mark 8:19-38, 2 Corinthians 12
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160