I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it, and it will be yours.
Mark 11:24
"How does one develop a faith like that? The matter is not helped by the way in which the disciples have just seen Jesus cause a fig tree to wither and been told that faith can move mountains. How can these things be - even if it be granted that the saying is metaphorical and hyperbolical? Our concern is not usually with moving mountains! Far more often it is about doing things that are a great deal more ordinary by comparison." *
Until I read that earlier today, it had never before occurred to me that it might be possible to over-expect in our prayer life. I mean, in all of my years growing up in the church I never hear this. . .in fact, I was always given the understanding that we do not expect enough when we pray. In all actuality, I believe that both (mis)approaches go hand in hand.
It becomes apparent that our spirituality becomes so focused on grandiose religious ideals that we live out more pie-in-the-sky worldviews than real life faith. And then there is the tendency to look for mountains which we can run out and move and never notice daily situations because we quickly dismiss them as molehills. Even when those molehills are the highest of mountains to those who struggle to cross over them.
And while we are looking for summits to reconfigure, using our prayers as dynamite we miss out on all that God has waiting for us that is within our reach. Because we think of them as less-significant we assume that God will not bother in dealing with them either. Which leads us to underestimate and underexpect his activity.
One question, though: when YHWH acts, can it ever be considered more or less significant?
* I. Howard Marshall, "Jesus - Example and Teacher of Prayer in the Synoptic Gospels" in Into God's Presence: Prayer in the New Testament. Richard N. Longenecker, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 121.
2 comments:
i like that question: "when YHWH acts, can it ever be considered more or less significant?" This is totally something I find myself steeped in lately, but I wonder if each "small" answer to prayer is a peice of something much much larger. Like each small answer this is a step closer to the top of the moutian. I heard once that God is a Journey God, not a Destination God. Maybe the huge things we expect come along the journey, but we are too anxious and impatient to stop and see all the road signs along the way.
perhaps
but the larger question becomes: if this god should act on our behalf - the one whose name is left unsaid - who brought forth creation and sits enthroned above the circle of the earth (Is. 40). . .if we see this supreme being act, is it ever considered minor?
no matter what, my belief is that the biblical portrait does not consider anything to be a minor act (regardless of its place in a larger scheme). . .for this god has no reason to be mindful of us (Ps. 19)
good comment, Heidi
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