Twice in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus made such startling promises about prayer we wonder if He really meant them:
“…truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20).
He also said,
“Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and…say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matt. 21:21-22).
As a maxim, “Pray in faith” always sounds inspiring when it’s embedded in a sermon. Possibilities begin to present themselves. The trusting soul who hears the preacher teach these verses, then goes out and tries to “move a mountain.” While at the car lot, she “tells” a corvette to move from the dealership to her driveway. It doesn’t.
On a more serious note, we “tell” chronic pain to go away, but if it subsides, it only does so with Vicodin. We “tell” a marriage plagued with bickering to get better, yet the volume increases. We “tell” a child to end a years-long prodigal lifestyle, only to see it turn even more malignant.
After a few painful disappointments, it looks like prayer is one of those sputtering, unreliable concepts that might pay out as advertised. When it doesn’t, whoever recommended the concept will look like a snake oil salesman. Somebody tried to sell you something that probably doesn’t even work for him.
But a preacher didn’t originate those promises about prayer and faith. The Lord did. The way I figure, He created a universe. That qualifies Him to make any audacious guarantees He wants.
Yet the stone cold fact is, prayers—a lot of them—go unanswered (unless you call the silence of “no” an answer, which would mean every prayer actually gets a response). For the sake of argument, we’ll define an effective answer as things turning out the way you wanted, when you wanted. Using that definition, there are probably millions of prayers that go unanswered every day.
After decades of active Christian living, I have a number of these petitions still floating around my life, stalled at ceiling level, like old helium balloons. They never really went anywhere. With the benefit of many years’ hindsight, I can now guess with reasonable certainty why God allowed a number of these petitions to pass in silence. I can also be thankful He didn’t answer them in the affirmative.
But for the rest, I go back to the words of Jesus, looking for clues.
First, how about faith? From the passages under consideration, Jesus said certain things wouldn’t happen without faith. Thankfully though, we only need a little. He said, “Faith as a mustard seed,” not “Faith as a mack truck.” Plenty of people, after exhausting every other recourse, have decided, “What the heck, I’ll try prayer. There’s nothing to lose, anyway.” And predictably, nothing happens. This is like a man who lived in the shadow of a mountain. After listening to a sermon on Matthew 17:20, he stepped out on his porch and commanded the mountain to move so it wouldn’t continue to block his view of sunsets. It didn’t budge. He shrugged his shoulders and said to himself, “Yeh, I didn’t think it would.”
Of course this man’s approach was wrong on a number of levels. Set aside for a minute his literal employment of the mountain example Jesus used, and the casual self-interest expressed in his prayer. Those problems are obvious. A more subtle hindrance lurked deeper, and that was what He actually believed in. Was it prayer, or in the One who answers prayer? To him, God hardly existed as any known quantity. There was no preceding faith relationship.
A faith relationship with Jesus makes you want to tell Him everything–to share a concern with Him, to air out a frustration, to ask and then bathe in hope. No poetic speeches count here, much less incantations, or chants, just a relational dynamic between you and the Lord, where anything becomes possible.
One of the easiest ways to enlarge a faith relationship with Christ is by regularly going to the Bible and filling up your heart with the living knowledge of God, the One to whom we pray. I found that slowly reading out loud helped me, because “Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the Word of God” (Rom. 10:16). Obviously when you read the Word of God aloud, you are the first person to hear it. Prayer flows naturally in the wake of this straightforward exercise, as you use the very words you have read in the Bible as part of your conversation with God.¹ Over time, we will find our faith is in Him, not in a spiritual practice of some sort.
How about context? In the surrounding context of prayer passages like Matthew 17:20, or Matthew 21:21-22, the disciples weren’t hoping to receive swimming pools or jet planes or summer homes. Today, I think we’ve all seen these verses co-opted for such crass material pursuits. Instead, the disciples were hoping to advance the kingdom of God.
Of course, this is not to say we shouldn’t ask for personal needs (As Jesus instructed us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”). But we should be warned that our agendas can outrageously conflict with God’s values.
Jesus indicated that sometimes a mountain needs to be moved, which is a lot more important than using faith to build a cabin and hot tub on it. Nor will God allow us to misuse faith for the sake of moving a mountain on top of someone we don’t like.
A return to the context of Jesus’ words will help us understand what He meant when He makes promises concerning prayer. Be aware of the need for possible heart level adjustments.
How about timing? You can move a mountain several different ways. One is to suddenly blast it into oblivion. The other is to erode it. Everybody likes the rapidity of the first one (which sometimes happens). Nobody likes the plodding second one (which mostly happens). Erosion naturally takes time.
When you want a mountain-sized answer to prayer, remember that it potentially affects a lot of other people, places, and things. At times you are also likely asking to receive something beyond your own current ability to handle (though you think you can). Time is needed, and of course, patient endurance.
How about mystery? When it comes to unanswered prayer, there’s nothing wrong with settling with the explanation of “I don’t know.” Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “the secret things belong to the LORD our God.” Most of us don’t like mystery as the final answer to anything. We think it’s a cop-out. But mystery can be humbling and force a walk in faith we’ve actually resisted cultivating.
Anybody who feels they have the prayer matrix all figured out needs to be honest. It doesn’t work with the predictability of computer software. We’re asking and relating to a Person, not tapping into mathematical code. We exercise the faith to move the mountain. God decides how and when it moves.
1. I have written at length on the devotional use of Scripture and prayer in my book, Alive on the Inside: Cultivating Your Inner Life.
