“Therefore, I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” –Mark 11:24
You believe and you have a willing heart. Now, it’s time to take your first action of faith I take it. Mark 11:24 tells us that when we pray, we should expect to receive. But some Christians pray, believe, and then kick back in their recliners waiting for the manifestation to drop in their laps. That’s not what Jesus is telling us to do.
If we zoom in on one word in this verse, we find an important clue.
The Greek word translated receive in Mark 11:24 is lambano, which means “to take with the hand, lay hold of,” or “to take in order to carry away.” You can take faith because Jesus is offering it to you! And you use that faith to take those things you know are yours according to His Word.
For example, faith will heal your body. It will straighten out your children. It will cause your finances to flourish. Faith will remove limitations and conquer anything the world can throw at you because, as 1 John 5:4 says, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”
It’s no wonder God said:
- A righteous person will live by faith (Hebrews 10:38).
- Have faith in God [constantly] (Mark 11:22, AMP).
- It is impossible to please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6).
As far as God is concerned, it’s all or nothing.
Why? Because we don’t receive as He wants us to without faith…and our receiving is extremely important to Him! After all, He sent Jesus to the cross to take upon Himself the whole curse—every sickness, every disease, all poverty, and every other kind of defeat—so that we could be BLESSED.
He paid the price of His own blood to purchase our salvation, our deliverance, our healing, and our prosperity. He sacrificed His own Son to provide us with abundant life—and the only way for us to fully receive it is by faith!
So, anyone can just “leave it up to God,” but they will miss out on a lot because that’s not the way He designed things to work. As one preacher says, “We can’t leave up to God what He has left up to us.” And He gave us the responsibility of receiving His BLESSINGS by faith. When you see a promise in the Word, don’t hesitate; contend for your supernatural breakthrough, and say, “I take it!”
Jesus said: When you pray, believe, receive, and you “have them”. You can confidently say after you pray that “I take it”. That is the declaration and confession of faith necessary to receive your breakthroughs.
