So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God.  23 For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.  24 Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. Mark 11:22-24 NKJV

The barren fig tree that Jesus cursed (Mark 11:11:13-14) serves as an object lesson about prayer. He told His disciples to have faith in God; to have the faith of God; to have faith as God gives—the God-kind of faith where everything is possible in prayer according to God’s will. Praying with the God kind of faith requires that you believe that you receive even before you can measurably see the answer (Mark 11:24).

Prayer without the God-kind of faith is, more or less, just religious form that is dead and empty (2 Tim. 3:5). So, what is the God-kind of faith? In responding to His disciples about cursing the fig tree that resulted in the tree withering from the root, Jesus clearly taught that in prayer you are to put your faith in God, not an outcome (Mark 11:22; 2 Tim. 1:12), and you must not doubt in your heart (Mark 11:23). Doubt enters in when we confuse what God is doing with how He is doing it (Rom. 1:17). In prayer, we must let God be God!

The God kind of faith, metaphorically, moves “mountains”, i.e., challenges, obstacles, problems, etc. The “sea” speaks of a place where the memory of undesired things are “lost at sea”, such as   affliction, adversity, trouble, etc. (Zech. 10:11).  This picture of a mountain moving into the sea (Mark 11:23) serves to teach that nothing is impossible in prayer when you believe that you receive (Mark 11:24). To believe that you receive requires that you put your trust and confidence in God’s Word (1 John 5:14-15), speaking and declaring the answer in the present tense according to His promise (Heb. 11:1; Gen. 1:1-3).  The God-kind of faith is always now!!