What We Say And Pray

Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more.  You can even say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen.  You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it.” [Matthew 21.21-22]

Real faith shows up in what we say and what we pray.  Jesus said that genuine faith not only makes believing requests in prayer, but also makes supernatural verbal declarations.

Wouldn't the verbal declarations be the natural result of having prayed in faith?  I would think so.

So, did Jesus ask God in a prayer at some earlier time for the fig tree to die?  Or, did He just "speak it" without having first prayed?

I know the 'name-it/claim-it' movement received a lot of attention some years ago, and, some of the negative attention was rightly deserved.  However, if a person genuinely attempts to act upon the things Jesus taught during His tenure on earth, that person will, in fact, name and claim and few things!

I fear that faith is so watered down nowadays that the enemy feels quite comfortable that he has nothing by which to be alarmed.  No faith equals no pleasing God - which means all the religious exercise in the world is absolutely hollow and meaningless without faith because nothing outside of faith pleases God.

What's worse, is that the religious community has made faithlessness the goal by discouraging the kind of faith demonstrated and encouraged by Jesus.  Whose side are they on anyway?

I believe we are better off to have believed and failed than to have never attempted to believe at all.

Father, please help our unbelief!