Smile Through Doubt

Scripture: Mark 11:20-25

Key Verse: Mark 11: 23

Sometimes giving a smile can be hard when everything around you looks bad. Life can feel like no matter where you go all you face is rejection and disappointment. However, God has given us the power to speak life into our situations. We cannot continue to have doubt about God’s plan for our life. We must smile about the things that are to come.

In Mark 11:21, Peter draws Jesus’ attention to the tree that he had cursed the day before. (In life we often try to show God things that He has already spoken over.) We want Him to look at our friendships and fix them, but He already cursed them because they were not for us. We want Him to look at our jobs, but He already cursed that because He wants us to begin to look somewhere else. We want an increase in our finances, but maybe those are low to draw our attention back to the true source. A fig tree obviously produces figs, and those figs bring about nutrients. Have you ever thought about the fact that nutrients that are good for one person may not be good for you? We have to trust that God knows what He is doing, which is why we get Jesus’ response to “have faith in God” (v.22). This means that we must fully trust and rely on Him.

God expects us to speak life into our situations and not to doubt that things won’t work out. The mountains in verse 23 represent the large problems in our life. So, when we are praying for the toxic relationships to improve, we can’t start back worrying and speaking negatively about them a few seconds later. We can’t pray about our jobs being stressful and then continue bad mouthing the stress while expecting the situation to get better. We can’t pray about our finances and then complain about how our bills aren’t paid. We have to speak life into these situations.

More importantly, we have to actually pray (v.24). It’s one thing to say that we will pray about something, and it’s another thing to actually pray. Prayer is our way of communicating with God. It is our way of opening up to Him and telling Him what we need. But prayers without power are useless. We must walk in faith as if God has already blessed us with the thing we’ve been praying for. If your friendships are failing start speaking over those friendships like they are the best ones you’ve ever had. If you’re job stresses you out all the time, start telling yourself that you love your job and you have the best job ever. If your money is looking funny and the bills are almost due, claim that you will have electricity, running water, and a roof over your head with money to spare. But you can’t just say it and not mean it, you have to really believe that God is going to make these changes in your life. We must remember that before you can start praying for ourselves, we have to pray for those around us. Everyone, you allowed your negative mindset to impact and those who you cast doubt upon must be included in your prayer. In order for God to bless you and forgive you, you must grant that same grace to others.

Ask yourself what you need God to curse and remove and then ask God for the strength to speak life into those situations during the meantime. It might take some time to reflect. Don’t rush the process because you are going to have to believe it. When some things start dying around you, it might hurt, and you are going to want the Teacher to look. However, God knows what He’s doing. We just have to smile through the doubt.

Prayer: Lord today we just want to thank you. Thank you for killing off some things in my life and for giving me the power to speak life into these dead situations. Lord thank you for being willing to just look at my life. Lord, please help me to forgive those who have hurt me and allow those I have hurt to forgive me. Lord bless them and keep them. Remove my doubt and restore my faith. In Jesus’ name, Amen.