Few means of grace are so well known and yet so misunderstood as the “prayer of faith” or the act of “praying by faith.” Countless Christians have hopefully (and even perhaps judgmentally) told their friends, “If you have the faith of a mustard seed then… your church will grow, you will get that promotion, you will find a spouse, you will have a kid, and you will overcome your cerebral palsy.”
Though such claims appear to confuse the Lord of the universe with a genie in a bottle, they possess some scriptural backing. Jesus declares in Luke 17:6: “If you had faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.’” Jesus expresses similar sentiments in Matthew 17:20-21, telling his disciples that if they had the faith of a mustard seed they too could move mountains because “nothing will be impossible for you.”
To make sense of Jesus’ teaching and to determine if our suffering can be attributed to some deficiency in our prayer life, we need to locate Jesus’ statements within their biblical context and within the greater biblical narrative, paying special note to the prayers of King David in 2 Samuel 12 and 15. In so doing, we will see that prayers of faith consist of asking God for his revealed promises and in taking our needs to him because we know that he will hear us.
A Quick Tutorial in God’s Two Wills
God’s revealed will concerns those things plainly stated in the Bible. For example, God tells Christians not to steal. The man contemplating whether to defraud his employer does not need to pray for guidance. The Lord tells him what to do in Ephesians 4:28: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” The man knows God’s will for his life. The same can be said about his sexuality, his parenting, and any other thing that God’s word has addressed.
But the Lord has not revealed whether the man’s mother will die from cancer. He does not know whether his mother will respond to the drugs. Though God has already determined the day of her death, he has not revealed that information to the man. As Moses notes in Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God.”
The two wills of God profoundly shape how we should pray. Prayer requests that concern God’s revealed will should be prayed with expectant confidence. To borrow language from another sector of Christendom, Christians should name-it-and-claim-it when asking God for the grace needed to stop complaining, to stop being rude, and to stop lusting. To quote 1 John 5:14-15: “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” As Spurgeon concludes, “Our heavenly Banker is delighted to cash His own promissory notes…He is more ready to hear than you are to ask (Jan 15).”
Conversely, Christians have no such confidence when asking for healing, new jobs, or spouses. They may receive the desired outcome of their prayers. Then again, they may not.
So Mustard Seeds and Mountains?
Though many assume that Jesus’ statements on praying with faith relate to God’s hidden will, the opposite is true. Jesus’ instructions on prayers of faith are tied to God’s revealed will. In Luke 17:6, Jesus locates the moving of the mulberry trees after his teaching on the need to forgive sins. In this passage, prayers of faith do not address miraculous healings tied to God’s secret will but to miraculous expressions of forgiveness that align with God’s revealed will. Similarly, Jesus promises his disciples that they can cast out demons and move mountains in Matthew 17:20 and Mark 9:29 through prayer. Once again, these promises align with Jesus’ earlier teachings in Matthew 10:1 and Mark 6:7. The passages reveal that Jesus had already promised the twelve disciples, “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out” that the were to pray for in Matthew 17 and Mark 9.
And when Jesus curses a barren fig tree for its lack of fruit and then promises his disciples that “whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith (Matt 21:22)” he does so against the backdrop of specific promises contained in his revealed will. Namely, Jesus curses the barren fig tree because all who are attached to him can and will bear fruit by faith. Those who do not bear the fruit of repentance are accursed – outside the kingdom of God. As the parallel passage in Mark 11 notes forgiving other people’s sins is one of these miraculous fruits. This passage on prayer relates to God’s revealed will.
When God encourages his people to have the faith that move mountains, the pinnacles in question are not miraculous healings or projections of financial independence (things that pertain to God’s secret will). Rather the promises concern the supernatural grace needed to confront the rude guy in our small group, to forgive the angry child screaming in our home, and to overlook the unkind mother-in-law who comments on every picture. In other words, to offer prayers of faith in the context of God’s revealed will is to pray expecting God to keep his promises to us.
Prayers and God’s Secret Will
Though prayers should always address elements of God’s revealed will – laying claim to his promises, they should also address concerns related to his secret will. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread (Matt 6:11).” In other words, Christians should ask God for spouses, healings, and jobs. But to do so in faith, they need only to trust that Jesus’ hears their prayers. Faith as it relates to God’s secret will consists in the asking and not the results we receive.
In 2 Samuel 12:15-23, David pleads with Lord to save his son with such earnestness and zeal that his servants feared that King David would commit suicide when God refused to grant his request. The author of 2 Samuel writes, “David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground (2 Sam 12:16).” But when the child dies, David does not become suicidal. He gets up, eats, and continues with life. He offered the following explanation to his servants, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me (2 Sam 12:22-23).” Despite his great emotion and sincerity, the Lord refused David’s request.
A few years later – fearing for his life and the lives of his closest friends while on the run from Absalom’s insurrection, David once again turns to the Lord. With tears and groanings, he prays, “O Lord, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness (2 Sam 15:31).” Almost immediately, the Lord grants David’s request. God connects the weary king with Hushi, a trusted political advisor, who is then used by God to undo Absalom’s revolution with bad counsel.
In both instances, David offered prayers filled with great emotion and sincerity derived from his faith that concerned God’s secret will. One prayer met with rejection and the other with approval. Through David, the Lord reveals that the measure of one’s faith consists not in the Lord’s granting of our request but in the prayer itself. To pray faithfully within the realm of God’s secret will is to believe that the God of the Bible hears our prayers. To quote, John Calvin, “Calling on God like this does not refer to a simple knowledge of his existence but rather that we must be thoroughly convinced that our requests will not fall to the ground, but be receive by him.” When Christians pray in faith, they do not pray to some universal force or to an unknown god. They pray as Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “to the living, personal God who thinks, who acts, who sees us, who knows all about us, who can answer our prayer and is ready to do so .” In other words, to ask God for relief from the flu, or to pass your exams, or to find a new job because you know God hears your requests is to offer a prayer of faith. In so doing, we confess that our hope lies not in our intelligence or efforts but in God’s merciful providence. With regards to God’ secret will, prayers of faith consist in the praying of the prayer to the God who hears.
Final Thoughts
Without question, believers are called to move mountains and mulberry bushes by faith. But such prayers consist not in gaining new homes or in the healing of terminal cancer. They consist in laying claim to God’s revealed will. These prayers move the mountains of bitterness that sit atop our furrowed brows through confession and repentance. What proves even greater and more exceptional than physical earthly blessing is the spiritual transformation that God has promised his children. Whoever asks for spiritual miracles in faith will see mountains move.
And, Christians should also ask God in faith for things covered by his secret will. But when they do so, they must realize that faith in this setting consists not in getting what they asked for but in the asking. Those who believe that their creator and savior hear their prayers have prayed in faith for things related to God’s secret will.
May we all pray more and may the Lord bless our prayers.
Witkowski Blog 