Think about this with me.  We all have learned by living in this fallen world, that many people and many things are not worthy of our trust.  When you are burned by someone, you back off– this is human nature.  The problem comes when we back off and decide that we will only trust others a little, and will make it our agenda to protect ourselves.  Self protection always becomes self trust.  I understand where it comes from, but self protection is always counter-productive, because you aren’t able to completely protect yourself.  Besides this, when you are trusting self, you are not trusting in the Lord your Creator, who is able to protect and care for you.  All of this deeply affects authentic faith.  The way to be used by God to dramatically affect our world is through believing prayer, but the things we have just mentioned mitigate against believing prayer!  How then do we regain trust, complete confidence in our Lord and His work on our behalf?
This morning, we are still talking about who we are called to be as Trinity Evangelical Presbyterian Church.  We are called to be whole-hearted in our faith, worshipers of the Lord, those who are being healed and delivered, equipped to do the good works Jesus has created us to do, and those who are sent out with the gospel.  Prayer is integral to every one of these 5 points of our vision.  As we learn to pray and engage in the battle which is taking place in the heavenly realms around us, God will build His Kingdom in our midst– if you missed these sermons, I would encourage you to pick them up at our information center.  This morning, we will add another step to the call on our lives to be those who actively engage in intercessory prayer, so that God’s Kingdom may come through His church.  We are to believe that our heavenly Father has heard our prayers, so we can be used to build Christ’s Kingdom.

I. The call to believing prayer.
Don’t forget!– In fact, never forget!!– that God is the One who calls us into prayer and delights in our conversations with Him more than we can imagine.  Prayer is our God given means of deepening our relationship with our Lord and King and bringing His Kingdom on earth!  Prayer is not primarily about getting things from God, or talking God into doing something.  God is not like this!  He already has our best interests in mind, and His love compels Him to act towards His children out of that love every time He acts.  Prayer is a delight, as well as a labor.  There is joy in the relationship as we seek Him, but there are also moments of struggle and work, when we do not feel like praying, but choose to set aside time to seek Him anyways.  Prayer is God’s idea, as we learn His heart through prayer and then pray His will so we can participate with Him in what He is doing to build His Kingdom.

In our passage this morning, Jesus has just cleansed the temple– turned over tables in the temple area in the court of the Gentiles, and literally shoved out those who were selling things there.  This was unpopular, to say the least, so the chief priests begin to look for a way to kill Jesus.  The next morning, Jesus is leading His disciples back into Jerusalem, and they pass a fig tree which Jesus had cursed the day before.  The tree has completely withered.  There is a ton of symbolism here– Israel is the fig tree, which is not bearing the fruit it is designed to bear, so is cursed by the Lord and withers away.  Jesus takes this opportunity to teach His followers about prayer, about faith and how we are to be used by the Lord to do the same things we see Jesus doing.  Jesus begins by commanding His disciples to believe God and God’s ability to do all things.  “Have faith in God!” says Jesus, and then he expounds further on what this means.

If I had asked you when you walked in this morning, “Do you believe in God?”, all of you would have said “Yes!” without hesitation.  I will tell you how you can know that you really believe and are not simply giving lip service to God– take the hardest situation you have faced or are currently facing and ask the question, “Am I at peace, that the Lord my God will work in and through this situation, for His glory and my blessing?”  The opposite of faith isn’t doubt, but worry and seeking to control the situation.  I was speaking with a brother in Christ about a time a few years ago when he lost his job and had no idea how God was going to provide for his family, but as he and his wife prayed, they both had a sense of God’s peace.  They put in applications, but never stressed about the lack of income.  They believed God, that He was going to take care of them, just as He promised!  They were at peace in the midst of these circumstances.  By this, they demonstrated their faith.  When a Christian brother of mine, who is now in his heavenly mansion, told me several years ago that he was going to go out to be with his son for the first time in 15 years, I asked him how he was doing processing the situation.  Joe told me that because of his own sin, and his son’s sin in response, their relationship had been broken for over 15 years.  When Joe came to Christ in his 60's and then began to grow in faith, we started to talk about being reconciled to those he had hurt in the past.  Joe initiated the restoration process as he prayed daily for his son and for the restoration of their relationship.  Then, he called his son and asked his son to forgive him for the many ways he had failed as a father.  His son was so surprised, he didn’t know how to respond.  This began a series of phone conversations through which his son asked what had happened to him.  Joe simply told his son that Jesus had come into his life, saved him from his sin, made him his own and also convicted him of the sin he had committed as a father against his son– mainly neglect.  As Joe was leaving the next day to see his son and grandchildren, to begin a relationship with them, I asked Joe if he was nervous.  Joe’s response was full of faith– “I don’t know how things will go, to be honest, but the Lord has given me this assurance deep within my heart as I have prayed– that He is going before me and will prepare the way, so that no matter what happens, I will praise Him and seek to point others towards Him.  Honestly, I have perfect peace, and I know that the Lord has given this to me.”  Joe was living by faith.

What happens when you and I do not live by faith?  We do not please God.  Do you remember what Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”  When we lack faith, we do not please God.  As you think about your own life, and the tell-tale signs of unbelief– anxiety and control– this should lead you to repentance.  I did not say condemnation– this is not the Lord’s desire for you.  He wants you to acknowledge what He already knows to be true about your heart– you still struggle with sin, even as one of His children.  Then the Lord wants you to experience His forgiveness and to relish in His love for you.  He wants for you to receive by faith what He has accomplished for you at the cross, and to ask for strength and grace to live according to who you are in Christ!  But pastor, you don’t know what I have done...  It doesn’t matter!!  I mean that!  The blood of Jesus takes away all your sin, so you are clean in His sight!  This is faith– to hear and believe the truth of God’s Word this morning.  What happens when I find myself anxious again?  You respond in the same manner!  By faith, you confess your own sin and receive what Christ has done!!  Someone has called this spiritual breathing– you breathe out the sin, whatever form it takes, and breathe in Christ’s forgiveness and strength to empower you not to sin.  As you breathe in, you ask for the Spirit of God to take control of your life again, so you can walk by His Spirit.

II. The conditions of believing prayer.

Next Jesus talks about mountains.  What mountain do you face?  Jesus faced the mountain of the Pharisees and teachers of the law who were hindering people from believing.  As Jesus spoke with His disciples, He probably was pointing at a physical mountain, Zion or the Mount of Olives, be lifted up from where you hinder the movement of God and be thrown into the sea– far away from hindering God’s plan from being accomplished!  Jesus knew that the teachers of the law were hindering the will of God, and He was instructing His disciples how to respond when they identified anything which hindered God’s will from being done– to pray in faith.  Where does a person come to conviction about the will of God regarding the mountain in front of you?  From the Scriptures.  If you spend time every day chewing on the Word of God– I do this, but this doesn’t mean I always have revelation from the Scriptures.  Often, I read and pray in faith, without any emotions or sense of “ah-ha!” going off inside my heart.  There is simply re-affirmation of the truth I know.  But the daily discipline of seeking the Lord through His Word– this is the method He most often uses to speak to us– does affect me, does increase my ability to hear and respond to His voice. 

So, look at any mountain which is hindering you from knowing and doing the will of God in your life...  When God shows this to you, if you do not already know what it is, you speak in faith to that obstacle– it may be sin– “Lord, I know that gossip has hindered me in the past and even recently from receiving your truth and experiencing your blessings, so I stand against this in my life now in Jesus’ Name and ask that You would throw it into the depths of the sea so that it would no longer have any mastery over me.”  You can pray this way regarding any hindrance– lust, pornography, spending, judgmental spirit, controlling spirit, self abasement– we could go on, but you get the picture.  Or the obstacle may be external– a relationship at work, sickness which is ravaging your body, a wayward son or daughter– you can pray in faith in the same way over these types of hindrances– Lord, You are able to heal, change or destroy these things which are lined up against what I/we believe are your will for me/us.  I ask you in Jesus’ Name to break or change this person’s heart towards me or towards You, so they will not hinder me from doing what You have in mind!”  These kinds of prayers, made in faith, will cause the mountain to move!  It must move!  The mountain does not have a choice, because God Himself will speak the Word from heaven and His will is released on the earth.                                                 
We know from verse 25 that one of the mountains which must be removed if you want to see God’s will released and the mountain to move is unforgiveness.  Unforgiveness is sin, because the Lord commands us to forgive one another.  In one of the other gospels, it goes on to explain that you must forgive others or your Father in Heaven will not forgive you.  The reason this is so, is because if you refuse to let go of your judgement against another, it means you do not understand the gospel for yourself.  Your Father in heaven has had to forgive you much, much more than you have had to forgive anyone else!!  If you do not both understand and embrace this truth, it means you haven’t yet been saved yourself or haven’t applied the truth of the gospel to your own life.  Forgiveness is complete when you ask Jesus to forgive you of all your sin and to come into your heart to save you.  Do not allow the mountain of unforgiveness to rob you of the joy of knowing and following Christ!!  Do not let unforgiveness steal your faith!!  It will if you let it!  Choose now to completely forgive– ask for the grace of God to completely let go of judgement over another.  I will tell you how you know if you have completely forgiven another.  If that person were to walk in here this morning and walk towards you, could you go up and embrace them out of a heart of love and pray for them.  It doesn’t mean they will be your best friend, but you hold nothing against them.  Forgiveness is a work the Spirit of God desires to do inside of His people.  Take the first step in obedience and ask God to do this work in your heart.

III. The result of believing prayer.
Look at Jesus’ bottom line here.  Whatever you ask for, believe that you have received it– this is the condition for answered prayer.  How can you be sure you have it?  Because you are asking for things which are on our heavenly Father’s heart for you– you have lined your prayer up with God’s Word and you know what His will is, so you pray for this with perfect faith.  If you pray like this, believing that your heavenly Father has heard and will answer, then you might receive it... Is that what the text says?  No!!  You will receive it– it will be yours, meaning you will own the answer.  Certainly, God’s ways are not like our ways, and we see through a glass dimly on this earth, but the Scripture teaches that as we look to worship our Lord and to know the will of our Father, He will reveal this to us.  When you know what the mind of Christ is, you pray that very thing into reality, knowing that you will receive it; and then you walk it out in faith!

Most of you know this story, because you lived it with us, but it is still a great story.  When we arrived in Florence, Trinity was meeting at the Beltline property.  I had no opinion when I arrived in Florence as to what we should do with that land.  The original deal that a real estate broker was trying to pull off fell through, but we had to make a decision about this property where we are currently located, whether we were going to buy it or release it.  I told the Lord I had no opinion, but simply prayed each day for the Lord to show us what His plans were for this property.  I asked the elders to fast and pray and we got together in December before the contract ran out to make a final decision which we would present to the congregation.  I asked them what they believed the Lord would have us do.  I had a pretty strong sense by this time in my own spirit, after a few months of prayer, what the Lord had planned for us, but I wanted to hear this through the elders.  Together, we believed that this land was the Lord’s plan for His church called Trinity EPC.  So, we put out $900,000 to buy this property, with no guarantees that the Beltline property would sell to anyone.  I had questions from people inside and outside the church about what in the world we were doing.  Your elders are simply called to seek the mind of Christ, which is exactly what they did.  We continued to pray as a church, as you all agreed to this plan.  Even when the sale of the Beltline property was held up, I had a couple people say to me things like, “If this deal falls through, I will leave the church and others will follow me.”  This wasn’t a mature response from that person, nor was it from the Lord.  We had heard from the Lord– there never was a doubt in my mind or heart about this.  I didn’t have any idea it would take as long as it did, but God knows what He was doing, and provided for us every step along the way.