Everybody knows that Jesus said and did lots of incredible things. To me one of his most remarkable and mysterious statements is the following passage:
Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Mk 11,23-24
Can you imagine that? Mountains are known to be quite sturdy. If we set eyes on a mountain that actually has moved (what is usually connected to some volcanic activity) we are simply awestruck. To think of a mountain to be thrown into the sea seems incomprehensible – at least to me. But nevertheless this is what Jesus talks of. And the source of the movement is not some tectonic force emerging from the earth‘s crust – it is your prayer.
That is a powerful statement. Jesus insists that a prayer can have unlimited power. Which keeps me thinking: How does this powerful prayer look like? It obviously has something to do with faith, for Jesus makes the restriction of believing. But how‘s that actually achieved?
On the other hand it seems a bit outrageous to me that I could think of anything and only be means of faithful prayer make it happen. That sounds a bit like changing the world according to my ideas and wishes and I doubt that this is what Jesus had in mind.
Nonetheless this verse could challenge the way we think about prayer. Oftentimes our prayer is like a polite request. We don‘t want to mess with God‘s perfect way, so all we do is making some kind of proposal which God in his wisdom might accept or not. Which is fine, because there are a lot of situations where we definetly are better off with God‘s way and not with our way. But that‘s absolutely not the kind of prayer Jesus talks about here and it would be foolish if we reduced our view on prayer like that.
Jesus‘ assurance on the power of prayer is an invitation to be more insistent. It is a refusal of the thinking that praying is only some muttering that you do when you are christian. It is the announcement that prayer actually changes things
– if you believe.
Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Mk 11,23-24
Can you imagine that? Mountains are known to be quite sturdy. If we set eyes on a mountain that actually has moved (what is usually connected to some volcanic activity) we are simply awestruck. To think of a mountain to be thrown into the sea seems incomprehensible – at least to me. But nevertheless this is what Jesus talks of. And the source of the movement is not some tectonic force emerging from the earth‘s crust – it is your prayer.
That is a powerful statement. Jesus insists that a prayer can have unlimited power. Which keeps me thinking: How does this powerful prayer look like? It obviously has something to do with faith, for Jesus makes the restriction of believing. But how‘s that actually achieved?
On the other hand it seems a bit outrageous to me that I could think of anything and only be means of faithful prayer make it happen. That sounds a bit like changing the world according to my ideas and wishes and I doubt that this is what Jesus had in mind.
Nonetheless this verse could challenge the way we think about prayer. Oftentimes our prayer is like a polite request. We don‘t want to mess with God‘s perfect way, so all we do is making some kind of proposal which God in his wisdom might accept or not. Which is fine, because there are a lot of situations where we definetly are better off with God‘s way and not with our way. But that‘s absolutely not the kind of prayer Jesus talks about here and it would be foolish if we reduced our view on prayer like that.
Jesus‘ assurance on the power of prayer is an invitation to be more insistent. It is a refusal of the thinking that praying is only some muttering that you do when you are christian. It is the announcement that prayer actually changes things
– if you believe.
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