Mark 11:22-23 “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.”
In this section we want to look at just how to apply faith in our daily lives, and more specifically in this section we want to see how our words play a role in the working of our faith. In the passage of scripture quoted above Jesus taught us that it is possible for anyone to have whatever they say, for Jesus said “whoever”. Whoever means exactly that, “whoever” or anyone, which means that this teaching that Jesus gave on faith is for every child of God. In this short statement that Jesus made He taught us some very clear principles on just how faith works. And so those individuals who are prepared to take these principles and apply them in their lives will experience the outcome that Jesus said would happen, “they will have whatever they say”. When our Lord Jesus said that these individuals would have whatever they say He was not teaching principles of “positive confession”, for if you read the context of this passage our Lord Jesus had just cursed a fig tree and that fig tree had literally withered up and died. No amount of positive confession will have any impact on a fig tree. You can stand in front of a fig tree for the rest of your life and make “positive confessions” over it every day and nothing will happen. In this passage Jesus used the example of a mountain being picked up and being cast into the sea as a result of a person’s words spoken in faith. Someone foolishly said that Jesus wasn’t talking about a literal mountain in this passage, forgetting that it was His cursing of a literal fig tree that prompted Him to teach on the subject of faith in the first place. And so no amount of “positive confession” will pick up a mountain and cast it into the sea. It takes supernatural power to cause a fig tree to wither up and die overnight, and it takes supernatural power to pick up an entire mountain and have it cast into the sea, and that supernatural power is the power of the Almighty God. And so the first principle of faith that Jesus taught us in this passage of scripture is in His opening statement, for He opens with the following words, “Have faith in God”. Jesus was teaching us to have faith in God our Father and His power, for it is only the power of Almighty God that can pick up a mountain and cast it into the sea and it is only the power of Almighty God that causes a fig tree to wither up and die overnight.
Michael E.B. Maher
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