Prayer Power Key: Faith (1)
THE SECRET OF BELIEVING PRAYER
Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. For most certainly I tell you, whoever may tell this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’and doesn’t doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is happening; he shall have whatever he says.
Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them. Mark 11:22-24
THE promise of answer to prayer is one of the most wonderful in all Scripture. In how many hearts it has raised the question: How ever can I attain the faith that knows that it receives all it asks?
It is this question our Lord would answer today. Before he gave that wonderful promise to His disciples, he spoke another word in which he points out where the faith in the answer to prayer takes its rise and ever finds its strength.
HAVE FAITH IN GOD.
This word precedes ‘Have faith in the promise of an answer to prayer.’ The power to believe a promise depends entirely, and only, on faith in the promiser. Trust in the person begets trust in his word.
It is only where we live and associate with God in personal, loving intercourse, where GOD Himself is all to us, where our whole being is continually opened up and exposed to the mighty influences that are at work, where His Holy Presence is revealed, that the capacity will be developed for believing that He gives whatsoever we ask.
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The value of the promise depends on the promiser: it is on my knowledge of what the promiser is that faith in the promise depends. It is for this reason that Jesus, before He gives that wonderful prayer-promise, first says, ‘HAVE FAITH IN GOD.’ That is, let thine eye be open to the Living God, and gaze on Him, seeing Him who is Invisible.
…I yield myself to the influence of what is before me; I just allow it to enter, to exert its influence, to leave its impression upon my mind. So believing God is just looking to God and what He is, allowing Him to reveal His presence, giving him time and yielding the whole being to take in the full impression of what He is as God, the soul opened up to receive and rejoice in the overshadowing of His love.
Yes, faith is the eye to which God shows what He is and does: through faith the light of His presence and the workings of His mighty power stream into the soul. As that which I see lives in me, so by faith God lives in me too. And even so faith is also the ear through which the voice of God is always heard and intercourse with Him kept up.
It is through the Holy Spirit the Father speaks to us; the Son is the Word, the substance of what God says; the Spirit is the living voice. This the child of God needs to lead and guide him; the secret voice from heaven must teach him, as it taught Jesus, what to say and what to do. An ear opened towards God, that is, a believing heart waiting on Him, to hear what He says, will hear Him speak.
The words of God will not only be the words of a Book, but, proceeding from the month of God, they will be spirit and truth, life and power. They will bring in deed and living experience what are otherwise only thoughts. Through this opened ear the soul tarries under the influence of the life and power of God Himself. As the words I hear enter the mind and dwell and work there, so through faith God enters the heart, and dwells and works there.
