Mark 11:22-26 has always been one of those Words that won’t leave me alone. I mean leave me alone in the sense that were times, I have wanted it to leave me alone! “Jesus answered saying to them, ‘Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it shall be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they shall be granted you.”
I’m quite sure that many honest people have looked at these words of Jesus and secretly thought, “What the heck was He thinking when He wrote that blank check!?” Like I said in the above paragraph, I’ve winced at these Words, in part because when people try these outrageous promises and nothing happens, they run to me, as a pastor and demand satisfaction. Somehow, I’m often chosen as the customer service representative for God when these things require some kind of unlimited warranty.
In my earliest days of faith in Christ, I was given a Bible with the Words of Jesus printed in red. I didn’t know how that worked or even why some of the Words were in red, so, in my simplicity, I decided that those were the most important Words. The absolute first Bible passage that jumped out at me was Mark 11:22-26. In those days, I was a customer and not a customer service agent; just a teenage kid. This passage transfixed me! I read it every morning and every night. I left my Bible open to that passage in my bedroom. I was amazed, intrigued, curious and not the least bit eager to try this promise on “for size”.
I’ve walked a million spiritual miles since then and today, that verse isn’t just printed in red, its red-hot! Today, I know that if the Kingdom of God, God’s transcendent supremacy, is large and in charge inside me, if I sneeze right, entrenched arrogant externalities that mock me are blasted aside. Today, I know that the insuperable prowess of Christ the King is looking for opportunities, through my obedient faith to vaporize inferior material realities. A mountain climber will say that they climb the mountain, “…because its there.” Believers need to learn to move mountains for the same reason.
“But I tried that and failed.” Then try again. If you fail again, don’t cry, don’t whine, don’t marginalize the promise and don’t call customer service! Suck it up, wipe your nose, check your motives, be an overcomer and out of the faith that says, “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God”, give your mountain directions to the nearest ocean to sink into.
If you speak to 99 mountains or if you have to speak to one mountain 99 times, and on the 100th attempt the earth shakes, boulders roll and the mountain moves, wouldn’t it be worth it all?
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