BT31: A sincere young Christian attended a teaching series based on Psalm 37:4 ("Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart") and Mark 11:24 ("Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours"). Based on the teaching, he began to write checks "on faith," and was rather dismayed when they "bounced." How would you council him regarding the teaching that he had received concerning these verses?

In the matter of Psalm 37:4 and Mark 11:24, I would read those passages, formulate my hypothesis, and then, try to prove it by using other parts of the Bible. For example, several verses already come to mind when I think about prayer and the above verses.

In the first four verses, things changed when people prayed. But in the last two verses, the things that did not change and that never change are God and Jesus. Their constancy is an attribute of their deity. Therefore, my first conclusion is that prayer is a vehicle for changing "me". God does not change when I pray, but I do.

In Psalm 51:10, the Hebrew word used for "create" was "bara'," and the interesting thing about that word is that it means "to shape, fashion, or create (always with God as the subject)." "Bara'" is used five times in Genesis, Chapter One and several times in Genesis, Chapter Two. The implication in Psalm 51:10, then, is that David was asking God to create in him something that only God can create in a person. And even though "bara'" was not used in the Book of Jonah, the same principle of people being changed by God, in ways that only He can do, is still there.

So what I would next want to do is see if "prayer as a vehicle for changing people" has a part in better understanding Psalm 37:4 and Mark 11:24. To do that, I would look at both chapters to try to put those verses into their correct context. In Psalm 37:1-9, David is the author, and he is clearly upset over the apparent prosperity of evil men. In Mark 11:20-25, Jesus makes His comments about prayer in response to the fig tree that has withered overnight. The fig tree represented the spiritual leaders of the synagogue. The season was right for the fig tree to be bearing fruit, but it was barren. The time was right for the spiritual leaders of Israel to be bearing fruit, but they were also barren.

In my opinion, Psalm 37 is a combination lament and praise psalm. It begins with David lamenting over the apparent good fortunes of the evil, and it ends with him praising God for salvation. Therefore, if David's attitude in writing the psalm was consistent with the whole psalm, then he changed from being sad to being glad. God created in him (bara') a happy spirit that only God could create. In Psalm 37:4, David said that God would give those that delight in Him the desires of their heart. What the non-evil person, who delights himself or herself in God, wants most from God, according to David, is mercy for self and no mercy for those that continually reject God. I think that David is saying that that form of mercy/judgment will happen automatically without anyone ever having to pray for it.