{"id":2118,"date":"2015-05-13T11:20:17","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T15:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/?p=2118"},"modified":"2015-05-13T11:20:17","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T15:20:17","slug":"a-prayer-for-small-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2015\/05\/a-prayer-for-small-beginnings.html","title":{"rendered":"A Prayer for Small Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em><strong>&#8220;Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin&#8230;\u201d Zechariah 4:10<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">If you can&#8217;t move your mountain today, you can at least move your molehill. What do you have faith for today? Do you need a million dollars? You might not have faith for a million, but can you believe God for one penny? That&#8217;s a start! Did you know that if you have one penny and you double it daily that after 31 days you will have $21 million? That is why God doesn&#8217;t scorn small beginnings. Small beginnings snowball into colossal\u00a0blessings!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em><strong>Then Jesus said to the disciples, \u201cHave faith in God. I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, \u2018May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,\u2019 and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you\u2019ve received it, it will be yours.&#8221; Mark 11:22-24<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Grab your shovel, and start moving the mountain that&#8217;s standing in your way.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><em>Father,<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><em>I am receiving\u00a0the promise of Mark 11:22-24. I have a huge mountain to move, but the truth is I don&#8217;t have the faith to move the whole kit and caboodle\u00a0today. Today I have just enough faith to move a piece of it with your help. So I take your promises in hand, and I stand in faith, believing that a small beginning is better than no beginning at all.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><em>Amen<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Here are a few steps to get that mountain uprooted:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">1. Be honest with yourself and with God about the quality and quantity\u00a0of your faith. If it&#8217;s lacking, grow it, but start where you are at today. As the man said to Jesus, &#8220;I believe. Help me in my unbelief.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">2. Wait on the Holy Spirit\u00a0and consider what He would have you ask for.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">3. Grab a promise in Scripture and stand on it in faith today!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">4. Take hold of\u00a0your faith as you would a tool, and get to work on that blasted mountain, praising God for His promises all the while! What&#8217;s the work? Speaking directly to that obstacle, as Jesus instructed. Command &#8220;it&#8221; with your God-given authority. For example, you can say, &#8220;Mountain of debt, I command you to get out of my life. I repent of indulging in spending money that I didn&#8217;t have. I align my finances with the Word&#8217;s instructions, and, debt, you have to leave.&#8221; Start according to the capacity of your faith, perhaps\u00a0with one debt payment at a time until it&#8217;s eradicated.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">5. Get into His Word and listen to it, for faith comes through hearing, using those two convenient holes on the side of your head, and it seeps down into your heart and changes your perception so that it aligns with God&#8217;s reality, not yours! What a great adventure!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin&#8230;\u201d Zechariah 4:10 If you can&#8217;t move your mountain today, you can at least move your molehill. What do you have faith for today? Do you need a million dollars? You might not have faith for a million, but can you&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":478,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15,7,25,3,1],"tags":[245,325,393,532,450,142,86,770,1740,1742,1097,1096,117,208,794,511,225,524],"class_list":["post-2118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-bible-prayer","category-daily-prayer","category-jesus","category-prayer","category-uncategorized","tag-blessing-2","tag-change","tag-discipleship","tag-encouragement","tag-faith","tag-fear","tag-forgiveness","tag-gods-promises","tag-holy-spirit","tag-jesus","tag-miracles","tag-moving-mountains","tag-prayer-3","tag-repentance-2","tag-trusting-god","tag-understanding","tag-wisdom","tag-word-of-god"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Prayer for Small Beginnings<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2015\/05\/a-prayer-for-small-beginnings.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Prayer for Small Beginnings\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin&#8230;\u201d Zechariah 4:10 If you can&#8217;t move your mountain today, you can at least move your molehill. 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