Mark 11:23 begins like this: “Whosoever shall say to this mountain, be removed and be cast into the sea…” You and I are the “whosoever” in this verse. To me, that means everybody can do this. Everyone can talk directly to his or her mountain.
The Greek word in this verse for the word, “say,” actually means “command.” Let’s read it like this: “Whosoever shall command his or her mountain…” We should be giving commands to all of the mountains in our lives.
Instead of talking to our mountains, we just talk about them. We might call up a few of our best friends and tell them how sick we are or how mad we are about something someone did to us. God’s word doesn’t tell us to talk “about our problems,” but rather, we are to “talk directly to our mountains or problems” and tell them to get out of our lives.
If we’re not talking directly to our mountains, then our mountains will start talking to us. Let me give you an example here. If you’ve been hurt by someone and have thoughts of revenge in your mind against them, that’s a mountain. If someone has made you mad, your anger is a mountain. You can either talk to that revenge and anger and command it to leave, or that mountain will start talking to you. Your mountain will say something like this: “Don’t you think it’s time you get back at them? Wouldn’t it feel good to give them a piece of your mind?” That’s your mountain talking to you.
If we don’t stop such thoughts from getting a foothold in our brain, then the revenge and anger will keep growing and growing into more and more thoughts of revenge. Soon the evil thoughts will become large weeds in your mind and heart against that person.
The Lord has taught me over the years that it’s easier to command a couple of toxic thoughts to get out instead of having to pull up a whole bunch of revenge and anger weeds after they’ve taken over our entire mind.
About thirty years ago we had a small non-poisonous sumac plant growing up in front of our home. I would walk by it every day and think, “I should really pull up that weed.” I should have done that when it was small. Instead, I ignored it and after a while it grew larger and larger. Finally, it was so large and so rooted in the ground that I had to call a weed exterminator to dig it out of our front yard. By then the plant had deep roots. He had to pull it out of the yard, cut the sumac down to the roots and then poison the roots to get it to die. How much easier it would have been for me to get rid of it when it was a tiny little thing rather than waiting that long to take care of it.
It’s the same scenario with the mountains in our lives. Let’s get rid of them before they take over the soil of our heart. You and I are the only ones who have authority over what goes on in our head and heart. If we don’t start to command our mountains and tell them to get out in the name of Jesus, then we’ll be in deep spiritual trouble with God. We will lose all of our prayer power and we’ll be miserable until we take authority over our revenge and anger thoughts and command them to leave us. If we tell them to go, those thoughts will obey us. We will have the victory over them in the Name of Jesus.
Mary
