Faith, Prayer and Forgiveness - Mark 11:22-25

Mark 11:22-25

Temple should have been a temple of prayer and of faith, but it was a temple of robbers. So Jesus had to tear it down. 

Today's message is about faith, prayer and forgiveness...

v22...

Jesus isn't asking us to have faith-- he's commanding it. Trust in God, even regarding things unseen! Trust Jesus, trust his words, trust his promises. As a Christian, you must be a person of faith! Habakkuk 2:4: the righteous shall live by faith. Hebrews 11:6: without faith, it's impossible to please him! To doubt him is to question whether he's a liar.

Faith is trusting God even when things look bad. This requires endurance! Where he goes, we go. We trust his promises because we trust his character.

Do you believe in your heart that Jesus's death and resurrection have saved you? Lack of assurance is often borne out of guilt and shame. The Holy Spirit convicts our heart, and shows us the holiness of God. We think, "compared to that, there's no way he's letting me in!"

Conviction is indeed of God, but it's wrong to doubt the power of the cross, the power of God unto salvation! Do your sins have more power than God's redemptive grace? You are never beyond the power of his grace! To consider yourself unredeemable is to make an idol out of your sinfulness. Christ reigns supreme over all of it!

We're going to sing for all eternity because we won't be able to believe we made it in! Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord; no one in Heaven thinks they earned it!

Trust and believe in the power of the cross unto salvation.

v23... Have faith, and trust in God in really big things! This power is available to those who trust him. 

v24... the Church should be a people of prayer! This verse can be used as a guilt trip, and it's true you can never pray enough. You should pray in private, with the church, even sometimes in public. We should be in communion with our Father frequently! And not just when we're desperate. We should be the kind of people whom people come to for prayer!

Pray and believe it will be answered. But Jesus prayed for the Father to spare him the crucifixion if he was willing, and he did not. Faith and prayers are inseparable; don't pray without faith that God can answer. Pray ready to receive! Nothing is impossible for God.

But when you pray, remember what Jesus said: "Thy will be done!" The prayer of faith moves on God's will. If we got everything WE wanted, we'd be monsters! 1 John 5:14: ask anything according to his will, and he hears us. My prayer won't force God to bend to my will...

...so why pray? 

a. He tells us to. It's a sign of submission to God; we understand we're not in control!

b. Prayer is communion with God. We can meet with God Almighty personally! What a gift!

c. God has designed prayers to conform us to his will. If you're bitter towards someone, pray for him, and the bitterness begins to leave. It renews our nature, and our will begins to align with his! He gives us peace, and guards our hearts and minds.

d. James 4:2: we have not because we ask not! Some things he waits to give us until we ask.

Why does he want us to pray? If he gave us everything without asking, we'd become selfish monsters, and rob him of the glory he deserves! He uses prayer to get you home!

v25... The church must be a people of forgiveness! Forgiveness here means a lifting and carrying away, a pardon, a sending away, like releasing a bird. We should not hold wrong against someone. 1 Corinthians 13... love is not resentful! "Resentful" here is a bookkeeping term, relating to holding onto an account of someone's wrongdoings. We are to keep no mental ledgers of offenses against us! We must not hold it over the person.

Why should we forgive, though? It's from the very character of God! It's evidence of God's thumbprint in your life. Christians are people who forgive. The forgiven of God must also forgive others, even when it's hard to do so.

Matthew 18: the parable of the unforgiving servant... the servant was forgiven by his master for a huge debt; then the servant refused to forgive someone who owed a much smaller debt to him. His master then revoked his forgiveness! God promises if we forgive a person, we'll be forgiven.

When we refuse to forgive, it's direct evidence that we've never felt the weight of our own need for forgiveness! It may even mean the Gospel is in our head, but not yet our heart.

Matthew 6, the Lord's Prayer... if you forgive others, God will also forgive you! If you don't, he won't.

If we're going to represent God, we must be a people of faith, a people of prayer, a people who forgive! Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of the sin of the world. His is a mission of forgiveness!

We can only begin to represent him once we learn to forgive as we have been forgiven.

Jesus is calling attention to forgiveness! It reflects God's nature. We must carry a cross as he did, and forgive those who are rotten to us. So that others may see our good works and glorify God! He's designed forgiveness as a means of spreading the Gospel, and a picture of his own forgiveness freely given to us.