It is Wednesday of Passion Week, the last week of Jesus’ life before the cross. Thursday is Passover, Friday the crucifixion, Sunday the resurrection. And with only days left, Jesus stops to teach his disciples about prayer.
Why now? For three years these men had lived within arm’s reach of God in human flesh. When they needed protection, he provided it. Direction, food, wisdom: all of it came straight from his hand. Why petition heaven when you can grab Jesus by the arm? Their prayer lives had quietly shrunk.
But everything was about to change. Soon they would depend entirely on One they could not see. In other words, they were about to become like us. So Jesus gives them this lesson, at this hour: all of heaven’s resources are at the disposal of the believer who prays.
- Remember what God has already done.
- Trust God himself, not the strength of your own faith.
- Believe with an undivided heart about who God is.
- Ask plainly, like a child asking a father.
- Forgive before you pray, every time.
The withered fig tree
The lesson hangs on a strange miracle. The day before, Jesus had cursed a fig tree that was full of leaves and empty of fruit. It was a living picture of Israel’s religion: a show of faith with no reality behind it. Matthew tells us it died instantly (Matt. 21:19). Passing it on Wednesday morning, Peter marvels: “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered.” In Matthew’s account he asks how. How does that kind of power work?
Jesus answers, “Have faith in God.” Power like that, whether for judgment or for blessing, comes from God, and believing prayer draws it down. Then he lays out what effective prayer needs. Five necessities:
| Necessity | Kind | The question it asks you |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Remember | Historical | What has God already done? |
| 2. Trust | Theological | Who am I really praying to? |
| 3. Believe | Spiritual | Is my verdict about God divided? |
| 4. Ask | Practical | Have I actually asked? |
| 5. Forgive | Moral | Do I have anything against anyone? |
1. Remember: look back before you ask
Peter’s exclamation was an act of remembering. Mark says it plainly: “Peter, remembering, said to Him…” (Mark 11:21). The Greek word means to deliberately call something back to mind. That is where effective prayer begins. Why call on God now if he has not proven himself before?
This is Scripture’s own habit. As Israel entered the promised land, Moses told them again and again to remember: the Passover, the Red Sea, the manna, the water from the rock. The psalms retell God’s deeds as fuel for both worship and asking (Pss. 77, 78, 105). Joshua stacked twelve stones out of the Jordan River for one purpose: so that when children asked, “What do these stones mean?” the answer would be the story of what God did (Josh. 4:6–7).
Most answered prayers are forgotten within a month. Written down, they preach to you for decades. The more you have on record, the stronger your confidence when you kneel. And when your own record feels thin, borrow the church’s: the Psalms and the stories of believers who went before you.
2. Trust: faith in God himself
Notice where Jesus puts the weight: “Have faith in God.” The stress falls on the One you trust, not on how much faith you can work up. Faith is trust placed in someone. Jesus points us away from confidence in our own believing and toward God himself: his power, and also his purpose, his promises, and his will.
That is how Jesus taught us to pray: “Hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” God’s honor comes before our requests. John puts it this way:
James adds the warning: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:3). So prayer is handing your request to Someone wiser and saying, in effect, I want what you know is right and true and good and best.
3. Believe: one verdict about God
The word translated “doubt.” It joins dia, “between, apart,” to krinō, “to judge, decide,” the courtroom verb. So it means to judge between two verdicts. Biblical doubt is a divided verdict about God: one moment ruling “He is able and good,” the next ruling against him, like the double-minded man James compares to a wave of the sea (James 1:6–8). Honest questions are a different thing. The doubt to fight is doubting God, not doubting yourself. Your confidence was never the power source anyway.
Three things keep this staggering promise from being twisted:
- The mountain is a figure of speech. The rabbis called great problem-solvers “rooters up of mountains.” Jesus means problems that are humanly impossible. He never moved literal geology, and he is not teaching us to try.
- Your words have no power of their own. Some teachers (often called prosperity preachers) treat faith as a force and words as a way to make things happen. They have it exactly backwards. God has all the power. Faith is only the empty hand that receives it.
- Little faith is enough. Peter walked on water with little faith, and his sinking cry, “Lord, save me!” was still answered (Matt. 14:30–31). A desperate father prevailed with “I do believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). The threshold is a mustard seed (Matt. 17:20). Struggling faith still draws down the power of God.
4. Ask: like a child to a Father
“All things for which you pray and ask” (v. 24). Mark uses a humble word for “ask,” the word for a lesser asking a greater, a child asking a father (Matt. 7:9–11). No negotiating, no earning. Just asking. James is blunter: “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). Be honest: how many of your prayers are really worry, rehearsed in God’s direction? Turn the worry into plain requests (Phil. 4:6).
“All things” is staggeringly generous, and it is never unqualified. Scripture sets the boundaries: we ask according to his will (1 John 5:14), not to spend it on our own desires (James 4:3), abiding in Christ with his words abiding in us (John 15:7), and in his name (John 14:13–14). As his Word shapes you, it starts editing your wish list.
The model is Jesus in Gethsemane, the garden where he prayed the night before the cross:
Pour out your whole heart. Storm heaven. Hold nothing back in the asking, and then hold nothing back in the surrender. Close your hardest prayers the way the Lord closed his.
5. Forgive: release it before you pray
The psalmist said, “If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear” (Ps. 66:18). But Jesus does not demand a full moral inventory before every prayer. He gives one decisive test: do you have anything against anyone?
The word for “forgive” means to send away, even to hurl from you. It is the same word used for canceling debts (Matt. 6:12). Forgiveness here is a decision to release, and you make it on the spot, whenever you stand praying. The feelings follow the decision, sometimes months later. When the offense washes back ashore, release it again. Seventy times seven is the Lord’s own arithmetic (Matt. 18:22).
One careful word: this verse is not about how you are saved. That was settled at the cross. Jesus means the Father’s daily, family forgiveness (think of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet in John 13) that keeps fellowship open and prayer unhindered. A man forgiven an unpayable debt cannot strangle his neighbor over pocket change (Matt. 18:23–35). The choice is stark: hold the grudge, or have your prayers answered. You don’t get both.
Did they learn it?
After Jesus rose and returned to heaven, the disciples were back in the upper room, “with one mind… continually devoting themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14), about a hundred and twenty of them. Then came Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out. Three thousand saved, then five thousand, and the pattern of the whole book of Acts was set: prayer and power, prayer and power. That pattern has not expired. Remember. Trust. Believe. Ask. Forgive.
Five ways to live this out this week
- Start a prayer journal. Date what you ask. Date what God does. Let your own history turn into faith.
- Rehearse before you request. Before you ask for anything, recite two or three things God has already done (Ps. 77:11–12).
- Pray a promise. Find a verse that covers your situation and pray it back to him.
- Name the mountain. Say the impossible thing out loud and ask for it specifically. If you waver, pray the honest prayer of Mark 9:24.
- Run the pre-prayer test. Ask yourself whether you hold anything against anyone. Release that person in words: Father, I release them for this. I am sending it away.
For discussion
- Jesus taught this lesson because the disciples’ prayer lives had shrunk while he stood beside them. What has a season of God feeling close, or distant, done to your praying?
- What are three things God has done, in Scripture or in your own life, that you could put on your list of memorial stones tonight?
- Where are you trusting God on Sunday and ruling against him by Wednesday? What evidence settles it?
- What request have you been circling that you have never plainly made?
Not sure you can pray like this? Every one of these five rests on something God did first. You can forgive the pocket change only because at the cross God canceled a debt you could never pay (Matt. 18:23–35). You receive that forgiveness by trusting Christ, who died for sinners and rose again. You never earn it by forgiving others. If you have never come to him, start there: turn from your sin, trust him, and then talk to your Father. All of heaven’s resources are at the disposal of the believer who prays. “Pray without ceasing.” (1 Thess. 5:17)
Want this teaching as a printable five-page PDF to share with a friend or your small group? It’s free when you join the weekly list.