Believe That Ye Receive

Have faith in God. MARK 11:22

The Necessity of Prayer is Bounds’s most orderly book. It takes prayer and sets it beside the things it cannot live without — faith, trust, desire, fervency, importunity, obedience, vigilance and the Word of God — and it begins, as it had to, with faith. “In any study of the principles, and procedure of prayer,” he wrote, “first place, must, of necessity, be given to faith.” This chapter follows that opening, and his three chapters on faith and trust.

Faith that asks and takes

Bounds drew the heart of his teaching from the words of Jesus beside the withered fig tree.

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. MARK 11:24

He called this saying the keystone of the arch of faith and prayer. It describes, he said, a faith that realises, appropriates and takes — not a vague belief that God is good and able, but a confident expectation that He will do the particular thing we ask. He put it memorably: “Prayer projects faith on God, and God on the world. Only God can move mountains, but faith and prayer move God.”

Faith and prayer, for Bounds, cannot be separated. Faith gives birth to prayer, and prayer in turn feeds faith. He wrote that faith goes ahead of prayer to clear the way to the mercy-seat, walks beside it as its companion, and follows it into a life of trust. Remove faith and prayer becomes a string of words. Remove prayer and faith withers: “when faith ceases to pray, it ceases to live.”

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. HEBREWS 11:6

Faith rests on a Person

It would be easy to hear all this as a technique: work up enough certainty and you will get what you want. Bounds guarded against that reading. The faith that prays powerfully, he said, is the faith that centres itself on a powerful Person. It is not faith in faith, nor faith in a formula, but trust in God Himself and in Jesus Christ.

He illustrated it from the Gospels. The leper did not say, I believe in healing. He said, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. The blind men were asked, Believe ye that I am able to do this? Martha believed in the resurrection at the last day, but Jesus lifted her faith from a doctrine to Himself: I am the resurrection, and the life. Trust in a fact may be passive, Bounds observed, but trust in a person is alive and loving.

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. LUKE 22:31–32

He noted that when Jesus foresaw Peter’s fall, it was Peter’s faith He prayed for. Faith is the foundation, and when it gives way the whole structure of spiritual life falls with it. That is why it must be guarded and nourished, and why, he said, we should keep praying the disciples’ prayer: Lord, increase our faith.

Faith that waits

The most pastorally valuable part of these chapters is what Bounds said about delay. Faith, he wrote, is often called on to wait. It does not grow disheartened when prayer is not answered at once. It takes God at His word and lets Him take what time He chooses.

He found his example in Bethany. When Lazarus was ill, his sisters sent word to Jesus, and Jesus did not come. While He waited, Lazarus died. It looked like disaster. Yet the delay served a greater good, and the sisters saw the glory of God.

Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? JOHN 11:40

“Delay is often the test and the strength of faith,” Bounds wrote. And he added a searching observation about Jacob, who prayed to be delivered from his brother Esau. Before that prayer could be answered, God had to deal with Jacob himself. “Jacob had to be converted to God, before Esau could be converted to Jacob.” Sometimes the delay in an answer is God doing a deeper work in the one who prays.

Faith for today

In a passage of quiet good sense, Bounds tied faith to the present. When we pray Give us this day our daily bread, he said, we are shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. Faith lives in the present, trusts God today, and leaves the morrow with Him. We cannot store up tomorrow’s grace or do tomorrow’s praying. He wrote elsewhere that “Trust always operates in the present tense.”

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 4:6–7

This is one of the most practical things in all his writing. Much anxiety is simply faith trying to live in next week. Prayer brings it back to today.

Where this must be read with care

Bounds pressed the promise of Mark 11 hard, and it must be read alongside the rest of Scripture.

He taught that faith must be definite and specific, and that God commits Himself to do the very things that faith and persevering prayer name. Taken alone, this can sound as if the believer sets the terms and God must fill the order. In the century since Bounds wrote, some teachers have built exactly that doctrine, promising health and wealth to anyone who believes hard enough. Bounds would have been appalled; his faith was always tied to obedience, humility and the glory of God. But his words can be bent that way, and they need the balance of other texts.

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: 1 JOHN 5:14

The faith that pleases God is not certainty that I will get what I want. It is confidence in God Himself — that He hears, that He is good, and that He will do what is best, whether that is the thing I asked, or something better, or grace to bear His refusal. Jesus prayed with perfect faith in Gethsemane, and the cup did not pass. Paul prayed three times about his thorn, and it stayed. Neither lacked faith.

So pray boldly and specifically, as Bounds urged. Expect God to act. But let your faith rest on the Person, not on the outcome, and it will not be shaken when the outcome is not what you hoped.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write down one specific request you have been praying vaguely. Pray it this week plainly and definitely, and expect God to answer.

2. Ask whether your faith rests more on God Himself or on getting a particular result. Tell Him honestly.

3. Think of a prayer that seems delayed. Read John 11 and ask God what He may be doing in you while you wait.

4. Notice where anxiety is pulling you into tomorrow. Bring today’s need to God and leave tomorrow with Him.

5. Pray every day this week the disciples’ prayer: Lord, increase our faith.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You told us to have faith in God, and You promised that those who ask believing shall receive. I confess how small my faith is, and how often I pray without expecting anything.

Increase my faith. Let it rest not on my own certainty but on You — on Your power, Your goodness and Your word.

When You delay, teach me to wait without losing heart. When You say no, teach me to trust You still.

Give me today my daily bread, and the faith to leave tomorrow in Your hands. Amen.