“Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, everything you pray and ask for believe that you have received it and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven will also forgive you your wrongdoing.”

Mark 11:23-25 (TPT)

Faith is what pleases God. “But without faith it is impossible to please and be satisfactory to Him. For whoever would come near to God must [necessarily] believe that God exists and that He is the rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek Him [out]” (Hebrews 11:6 AMPC). When we earnestly and diligently seek God, our faith grows. The truth of God’s Word begins to become alive and real to us. We become more open to trusting Him. This is because our relationship with Him is growing. Our relationship with people only grows because we spend time with them and we take the time to get to know them. Once we get to know a person, we begin to let our guard down and they become more trustworthy to us. It’s the same thing with God, as we get to know Him, because we spend time in His presence, we begin to let our guard down and we allow ourselves to trust Him more, which produces faith.

As our faith begins to grow, and more of our prayers are being answered, sometimes we see a delay in the answering of our prayers. We begin to wonder, “God, What’s up?”. Please know that sometimes the answers to our prayers can be a “no”, God only responds this way for our protection. Be grateful for those “no’s”, you have no idea what they are protecting you from. But other times, the delay to the answered prayer is us.

In Mark 11:25, the first word is “and” which means it is the contingency for us to see verse 24 become real in our lives. When we have unforgiveness in our hearts, the purity of our heart is tainted. The delay in the unanswered prayer doesn’t mean that God is angry with us, it simply means that we need to evaluate our hearts to ensure there are pure motives to what we are asking for. Sometimes we attempt to hold people hostage with our unforgiveness, when the only life that is held hostage is our own when we will not forgive. This unforgiveness can hinder our prayers from being answered.

The ultimate price was paid and all of our sins were forgiven, at the Cross. That same forgiveness that was extended to us, is what we have to be willing to extend to others. When we don’t forgive, essentially what we are saying to Jesus is what He did on the Cross was not enough. Let’s go back to the start and remember what was done for us on the Cross.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
I recall when my husband and I purchased our house. It was next door to the one we really wanted. However, that house had since been purchased by another family and was already in escrow. The last available home was the one next door to the one we wanted. What a sick feeling this was for me. However, out of obedience to God, we moved forward in purchasing this house. We knew it was His to do whatever with, so we put an offer on the house next door. In my time with God, I let Him know, I really did not like the house that we planned to buy. I reminded Him of the house I wanted. In that moment, the idea to put a contingency in our contract before we signed dropped in my heart. The contingency stated, if the house next door fell out of escrow for whatever reason, then we would get first dibs on it, for the same price as the house we were purchasing. Despite being told “this type of stuff (houses falling out of escrow) never happens in Hawaii and definitely not on a new construction house”, I was adamant about the contingency being placed in the contract.

During the construction phase, my husband and I would drive by our house almost weekly. The builders would ask us if one of the houses was ours. I would always reply with “yes, we purchased this house”, pointing to the one we purchased, “but this one”, pointing to the one next door, “will be ours.” Every time they asked us, I responded with the same response each time. When the stairs were built in the house we were believing for, we walked up them and began to pray and declare that this was the house that we would eventually live in. The layout had everything we wanted and we could immediately envision ourselves in it, all the way to the placement of our furninture. With the home we actually purchased, we had a hard time visualizing our lives there, and no matter how hard we tried, we could not even see the furniture placement in any room.

Four months went by and I was asking God, “What’s up? The builders are rushing us to close on our house and You already know I do not want that house.” A few Sundays later, after our morning services, I was walking down the street and I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Tonight, you will answer the altar call.” I just thought to myself, “Okay.” In service that evening, the altar call Pastor Art gave was for forgiveness. My mind was saying this is not an altar call for me, so I stayed in my seat. Instantly, the Holy Spirit reminded me what He said earlier in the day. I went to the altar and stood there, by myself, initially feeling embarrassed, wondering what were people thinking of me. Then I begin to ask God, “Please tell me why I am here.” He spoke three names to me and said you need to forgive them. I thought I had already forgiven these three people, but God had showed me that I didn’t. I stood at the altar and cried and repented asking God to forgive me for the unforgiveness that I had held on to.

The next day, my husband and I went to check the progress of our house. I knocked on the door to one of the houses to meet our neighbors. In our conversation, she shared with me that the house I wanted, fell out of escrow, but she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Immediately, I heard the Holy Spirit say, “I needed you to forgive first, that’s what was taking so long.”

Needless to say, we moved into the house that we put a contingency on just weeks later! This house has been a blessing to so many thus far, far beyond ourselves and what we could’ve imagined. (Nicole Farmer)

TODAY’S DECLARATION
“I have been forgiven by my Father in Heaven, therefore I extend forgiveness.”

TODAY’S BIBLE READING

• Old Testament: 2 Chronicles 34-36; Psalms 150
• New Testament: Luke 12:49-59; 2 Thessalonians 3:14-18