Summary
Prayer: Cause and Effect, or Request and Trust?
Why does it seem that some prayers are answered as the petitioner asked, while others are not? A common but mistaken assumption treats prayer as a closed loop of cause and effect: if I supply enough faith as the cause, God must supply the requested outcome as the effect. When the desired outcome doesn't come, the diagram is run in reverse to assign blame—usually to the one who prayed. This thinking turns God into what one writer calls "the giver of gain," dangling blessings like a carrot before a horse: the necessary quantity of faith is never specified, so when health, wealth, or success fail to arrive, the verdict is always, "you didn't have enough faith." It is the same bad theology Job's counselors pressed on him in his suffering—straighten yourself out, and the blessing will follow Job 11:13-17.
Jesus' words about the withered fig tree are often pulled into this framework, but they teach the opposite. After cursing the barren fig tree as an enacted prophecy of judgment on faithless Israel—a judgment fulfilled in the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70—Jesus uses the moment to teach His disciples about prayer: "Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him" Mark 11:22-24. The threefold emphasis falls on faith and belief—but the banner over it all is the first phrase: have faith in God. God is the object.
That detail dismantles the cause-and-effect scheme. Faith always has an object, and the question is never how much faith we have but in whom our faith rests. Jesus removes quantity from the table entirely when He tells the disciples that faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move a mountain Matthew 17:20. He does not say, "have faith in your faith." He says, "have faith in God." And that faith is itself God's gift: "by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God" Ephesians 2:8. God is both the object of faith and its source. He gets the glory for all of it.
The "doubt" Jesus warns against is also commonly misread. The Greek word is diakrinō—not the honest struggle of the father who cried, "I believe; help my unbelief!" Mark 9:24. Christians know that struggle, and it is not what Jesus is condemning. Diakrinō means being double-minded—holding an opinion contrary to the truth, asking God for healing while simultaneously believing He never heals. Because God is the source of our faith, we trust Him to keep us from that double-mindedness; we don't trust our trust, we trust the Giver.
Scripture interprets Scripture, and John fills out the picture: "This is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us" 1 John 5:14. Petitions are laid before God in faith; their answer rests in His will. If He wills it, it will be; if He does not, it will not. Prayer is not a mechanism by which we obligate God. It is request and trust—the trust of children before a loving Father, not contractors invoking a clause.
This is why the cross is the final answer to the cause-and-effect lie. The God who could move any mountain did not move the mountain of Calvary out of His path; He walked up it and bore upon Himself every sin, including the sin of imagining that God is somehow beholden to our performance. So believers are freed to come with joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, and to set their petitions down before the throne—knowing the answer to prayer is not finally about us, but about Him. As “Prayer” “Cause and Effect?” 5-12-24 summarizes it: prayer is not cause and effect; it is request and trust in the Father's will.
Video citations
- "Prayer" “Cause and Effect?” 5-12-24 — Would you open your Bibles, please, with me to the 11th chapter of the Gospel of Mark, for our study today, if you're using a Pew edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find that New Testament…