Jesus' Lesson On Faith

Mark 11:22-24

22 So Jesus answered and said to them, "Have faith in God.
23 For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.
24 Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
NKJV

My Comments:

2012 is drawing to an end, and I felt that there's no better way to close it out than to do a series of posts on our faith in God, what it is and isn't, and how we walk by faith.

Mark 11:22-24 gives the fundamental lesson on faith, as taught by the Lord Himself. In the context of the passage above, this happened after the disciples saw a fig tree that was cursed to its roots previously by Jesus before they entered Jerusalem. When leaving Jerusalem, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.

Jesus immediately used this as an example to teach them, and us, that we could do the same thing that He did! There are three things in His lesson to consider:

1. "Have faith in God"

Notice that Jesus said to have faith in God. In the Greek, the word 'faith' is translated as the word 'pistis' and that it comes with the idea of having a definite trust in God and His ability.

It appears almost 239 times in the New Testament and almost always comes with the implication of having faith in God. It is not faith in ourselves, or faith in our words, but faith in God that He is more than able and willing to act on our behalf!

2. "whoever says, those things he says, whatever he says"

Faith is not mental assent! Note that after telling the disciples to have faith in God, Jesus immediately went into teaching them on talking! This implies that faith is exercised through the words spoken. Faith is not silent! It has a voice!

We act on our faith through our words that are spoken. When we put our faith in God, it would naturally come out in the way we talk. Our speech would line up with what we believe.

For example, if we had a particular sickness and we believed that God was able and willing to heal us, we would not be talking about how God gave us that sickness, that He's not willing to heal us. Rather, we should be talking about God and that we're believing Him for healing, that He's more than able to heal, etc.

3. "does not doubt in his heart"

The Greek word for doubt is the word 'diakrino' which in its context would mean to oppose, to hesitate, to stagger or waver. It's made out of two words, 'dia', where one of its meanings is 'to avoid' and 'krino', which has a possible meaning of 'conclude'.

If we put the two words together and take its literal meaning, we could revise the phrase 'does not doubt in his heart' to 'does not avoid making a conclusion in his heart'. We have to make a decision, a conclusion as to the truthfulness of God's Word in our lives and stick to that decision rather than avoid making a conclusion and sit on the fence on whether God's Word is true. Either it is true or it is not true. There is no in-between!