Speak to the Mountain but Hold the Image The Principles and Practice of Outcome-Based Prayer Big idea: Outcome-based prayer is praying from an outcome God has already secured in Christ, and holding that outcome in the heart until it is seen. Main text: Mark 11:22-24 Supporting texts: Romans 4:17-21 · Genesis 15:5 · Hebrews 6:13-19 · Psalm 78:7 · Romans 10:17 · James 1:6-8 Flow: what prayer is → the principles (Mark 11:23) → the practice (Mark 11:24) → Monday morning Prayer is not begging an angry God. That is a slave’s mindset. Prayer is love communion with a God who loves us without limit or condition. It is intimacy: a place of exchange and fellowship. If we are partakers of the divine nature, then prayer is not pleading for what we lack. It is aligning with what God has already provided in Christ. We still ask. Jesus taught us to ask for daily bread. But we ask as children who are sure of the Father, not as beggars unsure of a master. What “outcome-based” means • It does not mean a technique for getting results out of God. • It means the outcome is already secured in Christ, and prayer is how we receive it and call it into our circumstances. • Faith is a response to the promises and character of God. It is not something we do to get God to move. Keep that definition in view. Everything that follows rests on it. Tell this slowly, in the present tense. Put them on the road. The morning walk Come with me. It is early, and you are walking out of Bethany with Jesus and the twelve. Yesterday was palm branches and shouting crowds. This morning it is just the road. By the traditional reckoning, it is a Monday. Jerusalem is about two miles off, over the Mount of Olives. Nobody has eaten. Mark tells us Jesus is hungry (v12). Up ahead stands a fig tree in full leaf. From a distance it promises breakfast. He walks over, parts the leaves, and finds nothing. All show, no fruit. Then He speaks to it. No shouting. One sentence: “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever.” (Mark 11:14 KJV) And Mark adds a detail: “his disciples heard it.” You heard it. You were standing right there. Nothing seems to happen Now look at the tree. As far as you can see, nothing has changed. The leaves are still green. Nobody says anything. You all keep walking. A whole day goes by. The temple, the tables overturned, the long walk back out of the city at evening (v15-19). You go to bed with that sentence still in your ears and a tree that looked exactly the same. The same road, the next morning Same road. Same bend. And Peter stops dead. “Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.” (Mark 11:21 KJV) Mark says it was “dried up from the roots” (v20). From the roots. It began to die the moment He spoke, underground, where no eye could see. The leaves were the last to know. What Jesus says, standing there He does not explain the tree. He turns to you and says: “Have faith in God.” (Mark 11:22 KJV) The phrase can also be read “have the faith of God”. Either way, He is pointing at what you have just watched. Then He says “this mountain”, and you are standing on one. “For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” (Mark 11:23-24 KJV) You know this road You have walked it. You prayed. You spoke to the thing. Then you looked, and the leaves were still green. The bill was still on the table. The report still said what it said. That is the walk between the word and the withered tree. This message is about how to walk it.
