I’ve become convinced that there are passages of Scripture, small statements and declarations that most of us use on a regular basis but don’t know the context, tonight’s passage contains one of those statements. How many times have we said and/or heard someone else say “whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he asks.”? It’s a true statement but without context it is a true statement that we use falsely. I believe we actually discourage ourselves and misrepresent the character of God when we use statements of His according to our understanding without regarding when and why it was originally spoken. Tonight I don’t want to diminish anyone’s faith but I do want to focus our faith rightly to understand that the mountains we are trying to move need to be the same as the mountains that God wants to move, that our prayers are not only our requests to Him but His desires for us, that the Holy Spirit lives in us, praying for us according to the will of God and praying through us when we have no idea what the will of God is or should be and that the greatest mountain that will ever move is the heart of man, going from hardened and selfish to soft and thankful. In our passage tonight we will get to see how Jesus connects prayer and forgiveness, how the living parable of the fig tree paved the way to the cleansing of the temple and how Jesus’ authority was questioned but could not be denied.