1. My Testimony of how and why I believe that God gave me this Wonderful Revelation

Mark 11:24 - Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.

One day I stood up in faith upon this immense, seemingly unsurpassable promise verse of Scripture in hopes of obtaining the manifestation of the healing of my eyes from nearsightedness. I believed that when I would no longer need glasses then I could give glory to God for the healing. 

Mark 11:24 is a promise verse from God that seems to be for anything and everything that we can possibly imagine to ask from Him because it clearly states that we will get “all things” that we ask God to give us when we believe that we have received them. All things! Wow! This promise verse seems to be a huge, huge box that God has put Himself into for our sakes wherein He lets us loose like kids in a candy store to obtain anything and everything we desire!

Now one of the preachers whom I was listening to at that time even went so far as to say that we can write our own ticket with God using faith in this verse! Well, I did not believe his contention or that we could be like kids in a candy store because to me such desires come from self, not from God. Instead I believe that we are to die to our self desires in order to become aware of and alive to God’s workings around and through us. But over time I had come to so much believe in this verse to manifest my healing (so that I could teach others to rely upon God working through it for healing also) that by faith I threw away my glasses and I claimed it for the manifestation of the healing of my eyes.

However, my healing did not immediately manifest when I prayed and asked God for it. So, because I was still nearsighted, I could not yet see well enough without my glasses to do some things like safely drive my car. So in faith that my healing would manifest at any minute I began walking 3 miles a day each way praising God as I went back and forth to and from my workplace. This was to the immense consternation of my unbelieving family. They berated me continuously during this period over this decision to pitch my glasses. They all claimed that I had lost my mind and gone off the deep end on religion. They pompously declared that one day I would come to my senses and put them back on.

Isaiah 1:18a - Come now and let us reason together....

Well, after about 3 weeks of enduring my family’s and my friends' (even some so-called Christian friends') ridicule and the apparent failure to receive the manifestation of the healing of my eyes, I believe that the Lord spoke into my heart about it. I believe that He spoke to me in thoughts that went something like this, "Jim, I want you to know that I am very pleased with your firm faith in Me and in this verse of Mine in regard to this healing miracle you are requesting. I am also pleased that you have patiently suffered the devil’s rebukes through the unbelievers around you for the sake of your faith in Me and My word. But I want you to think more deeply about this healing miracle for a moment.”

“Now, were I to manifest the healing of your eyes at this very minute, technically speaking, you would not actually be receiving the thing that you asked of Me according to Mark 11:24 because you asked Me for your healing to manifest 3 weeks ago. So if I manifested your healing right now, I still wouldn't be giving you exactly the thing that you asked Me for! After all, you asked for it 3 weeks ago, not at some future time like right now.”

“So this promise verse of Mine has not come true for you as you expected that it would. You have not yet received the manifestation of your healing, even though this promise verse says that you should have received it because it is a “thing” that you believe has been granted to you. Therefore, I want you to begin to search the Scriptures to find out just why it did not manifest exactly as you expected it to manifest. I want you to do this because if you look deep into your heart you will find that you will never, ever be able to trust in any of my promise verses again until you can understand why your healing did not manifest just as you thought it would considering the fact that you have had unwavering faith that it would happen, trusting in the words of Mark 11:24!"

I perceived that this reasoning entering in my mind was not some devilish doubt but that it was good and true and therefore that it was from God. In spite of my great and terrible disappointment in the failure of the manifestation of the healing of my eyes to occur, I still fully believed that this promise verse of Mark 11:24 was true because I believe that God does not lie and all of His Word is true and that all of His promises can be counted upon completely. 2 Corinthians 1:20 - For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God....

So I began to feel that there must be some Scriptural “out" for God somewhere in the Bible from this seemingly all encompassing promise verse to us. I believed that there had to be an “out” for Him because I had not received the exact thing that I had asked for in faith and I had unwaveringly believed had been granted. To me God could not possibly be the culprit in this letdown and that I had been as firm in my faith as I could possibly be so i could not be the culprit either.  Therefore, the failure had to somehow be in my interpretation and / or my teachers’ interpretation of this wonderful promise verse in Mark.

After all, we are told to study for ourselves to rightly divide the Word of God and this promise verse says that all “things” that we ask for and then believe that we have already received them, will be granted to us. The “manifestation of this healing at a certain time” which I prayed and believed for is certainly a “thing” is it not? I had believed for this “thing” with everything that I had in me and I truly believed that I actually already had been granted this “thing” from our Father God but it certainly had not manifested from Him exactly as I had asked it to manifest! I even went so far as to throw away my glasses and stand up firmly against ridicule from Satan through my family and my friends for weeks just so that I would not doubt God for this “thing” and yet this requested “thing” did not manifest! 

Those ministers that I was listening to then claimed in their books that this kind of failure could only happen if one's faith was weak or if one vacillated between faith and doubt or if one had wrong motives or if one had some other prayer hindrances but I truly could not find any of these mistakes consciously within me. I admit that I did at first have some doubts about it but as I kept standing in faith for it, like Abraham, I grew strong and immovable as a bulldog in that faith.

Romans 4:19 - 21 - Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body....yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.

I fully believed that I had the manifestation of my healing coming to me from God based upon my absolutely firm faith in Mark 11:24 and I was just waiting for it to occur. But I had to admit that I had asked for it 3 weeks earlier and even if I did get it right then, technically speaking I would not be getting that for which I had asked. This thought was beginning to shake up what until then had been my absolutely rock solid faith in the truth and reliability of every Bible passage! God had promised us in Mark 11:24 that we would get all “things” that we asked of Him but He didn't give me this particular “thing” and now even if He did give it to me, it would not be exactly what I had asked Him for and had unwaveringly believed Him for!

Wow, was I in a pickle! Satan began using this “failure” for the miracle manifest as I expected it to manifest, to try to overthrow all of my faith in the Bible!

Luke 22:31 - ....Satan, by asking has obtained you....for himself and from My (Jesus) power into his, in order that he may shake you like a sieve, as grain is sifted, by an inward agitation, trying your faith to the very verge of overthrow. But as for Myself, I made petition concerning you that your faith should not be totally eclipsed. (Kenneth Wuest's Expanded Translation of the New Testament)

Well, after the initial shock from this line of reasoning entering my mind, I humbled myself to God and I began to do much immediate and intense Bible study. Thank God, He was faithful to rapidly lead me to my answer to this terrible dilemma. Of course, there it was right in plain sight, but hidden within a passage of Scripture that I had never noticed!

I believe that He moved to give me a revelation of the principle found in another promise verse, an overriding promise verse of Scripture that I now believe supercedes all of His other promise verses. Starting my Bible study I didn't really think it would be possible to find a greater promise verse than Mark 11:24 but there it was, where else but right in Hebrews 11, God's Hall of Faith chapter. 

Hebrews 11:39 - 40a - And all of these (aforementioned heroes of faith), though they won divine approval by [means of] their faith....

(THIS WAS ME ACCORDING TO THE THOUGHTS OF APPROVAL THAT I FELT I WAS GETTING FROM GOD),

….did not receive the fulfillment of what was promised....

(YEP, THIS WAS ME TOO! THE VERSE'S FULFILLMENT HAD NOT YET COME)

….because God had....something better and greater in view....(!!!!!!!) 

Here we are told that Biblical believer's of extreme greatness who went through much greater struggles of faith against Satan then most of us ever have to go through and then died in the process (!) would be eventually given better outcomes than the promises that they were hoping for and had waited in faith for but did not actually receive here on earth before they died!

My revelation was that in this verse God puts Himself into a bigger box than He does in Mark 11:24! That bigger box is that THERE IS ONLY ONE REASON that He doesn't give us exactly what He promises to give us in Mark 11:24 (if our motives are good and we are unwavering in our faith and nothing is hindering our prayers). That one reason is because He is going to eventually give us something  SO MUCH BETTER than what He promises to give us in Mark 11:24 that we will never complain about it! 

Ephesians 3:20 - Now to him who is able to do IMMEASURABLY MORE than all we can ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us

What a revelation that was to me! God showed me by revelation that this is His Scriptural “out" from the box which He seems to have put Himself into with His immense promise verse of Mark 11:24! His “out” from that one box of giving us any particular “thing” that we ask for is to put Himself into a much, much, much larger box wherein He is constantly improving upon our prayer and faith requests so that eventually, here or in heaven, He will give us much, much more than we could ever think of to ask of Him!

After all, will any of us complain to Him if we don't get exactly what we asked for from Him if He ends up giving us some future “thing” or “things” which are so much better than we could think of to ask from Him? I sure won't, that's for sure! 

Isaiah 55:8 - 9 - For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways HIGHER than your ways and My thoughts HIGHER than your thoughts.

So, as I see it now, whenever I make a faith prayer request to God and believe that I have received it, He grants it to me exactly as I have asked for it OR - OR - OR He replaces my faith prayer request with something better for me than I could ever think of to ask of Him! Never does He replace it with something less than what we ask for!

He does not tell me directly that He has replaced my request with something better because He tells it to me in the words and the principle of Hebrews 11:39 - 40. So I now believe that He never lets any of my prayers go unanswered even though it appears to me that He has not answered them because His answer is to not grant my exact request because He is instead replacing my request with something better than my request. He never, never, never grants me something less than my request!

It's now been nearly 35 years since that particular faith trial and I am still wearing glasses and still believing every day for the manifestation of the healing of my eyes! I am still wearing glasses because I came to believe that God gave them to me as His provision by which for me to get by for now until He manifests the healing of my eyes here on earth (if He ever does). Consequently, I am looking forward to the much better thing(s) that He has in store for me perhaps here on earth but most certainly in heaven for diligently keeping this particular point of faith for all of these years!

There is one other thing that I feel that God wants me to mention here. Those ministers that do not understand this principle have been known to err by teaching people to have faith in Mark 11:24 for a loved one's healing or even for their life but if that loved one is not healed and / or he or she passes on, they will then tell them that the reason that this promise verse failed them has to be because their faith in it had wavered or they had wrong motives or they had prayer hindrances! These ministers fall back to this untruth because they believe that God doesn't lie so all that's left that they can see to blame for the promise of Mark 11:24 not occurring is these people’s failures of faith. In effect they are telling those who lost that loved one that their doubts or failure to remove their prayer hindrances is what killed that loved one, which implies that they are murderers! 

This is so wrong and it has turned many away from miracle faith. The truth of the matter is that God took that sick person as part of His “something better” plan for all concerned and the full wisdom and understanding of that death event is just too high and complicated for them to comprehend now but eventually it will turn out to be for the good of them all.

Romans 8:28 - And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Eventually all of God’s “something betters” for us will be revealed to us by God, some maybe here on earth but most probably up in heaven. So for now, with the overarching replacement promise of Hebrews 11:39 - 40 in mind, we can walk away from the death of a loved one for whom we have had unwavering faith to be healed, sorrowful but at the same time still faithful, realizing that if our unwavering faith could have healed that loved one, it would have! But since it didn’t, we can have the joy of knowing that something better is surely waiting to manifest at some future time either here or up in heaven for all concerned. This will sustain us and comfort us in such an event!

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Dear Anita - Thank you for your positive response to the “something better” miracle faith teaching I sent you. I’m glad that it has given you peace of mind with God at the loss of your loved one and the unintentional but humiliating abuse you suffered from Satan through the faith teachers who did not understand this principle and falsely accused you of wavering in your faith.

This teaching has been a blessing to me for 30+ years and it has served to strengthen my faith in God immeasurably. May I just say that the major point of this teaching is that whatever appears to us to be a "No" answer from God is actually a "Yes”, but instead of granting us that which we have asked of Him, He is replacing our request with something so much better than we could have thought to ask of Him that we will never complain about it!" So His "No" is actually a "Yes” in disguise which fulfills -

2 Corinthians 1:20 - For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are "Yes"; therefore also through Him is our “Amen” to the glory of God through us.

Therefore, if I stand in bold but humble faith upon a promise verse of God like Mark 11:24 and exactly what I ask of Him does not manifest, I believe that God did not say "No" to me. Instead I believe that instead He is saying, "Yes my dearly loved child! Yes! Yes! Yes! Thank you for honoring Me by asking for this “thing” from Me in Jesus name. But instead of giving it to you exactly as you requested it, I'm improving upon it with some thing or things which will be much, much better for you and Me and My Kingdom than you can possibly conceive of now. So you will never have grounds to complain to Me that I didn't give you exactly what you wanted and had unwavering faith for when that better “thing” or those better “things” with which I have determined will improve upon your request, finally manifest to you!"

This is the underlying principle of -

Hebrews 11:39 - 40a - And all these, having gained approval (from God) through their faith, did not receive what was promised because God had provided something better for us....

When I got a hold of this concept I realized that if my motives are right and if I'm not doing anything to hinder my prayers and if I'm humble before the Lord, and if I’m unwavering in my faith, He does not say "No" to any of my requests because those requests or better “things” for me become His will for my life here on earth and / or in the next world. This is what now strengthens my faith and what I try to pass on to others. May God richly bless you in all of your future "something betters" too.

1 Corinthians 2:9 - ….as the Scripture says, What eye has not seen and ear has not heard and what has not entered into the heart of man, [all that] God has prepared (made and keeps ready) for those who love Him [who hold Him in affectionate reverence, promptly obeying Him and gratefully recognizing the benefits He has bestowed].

Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the thoughts and the plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for your welfare and your peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome.

Romans 8:28 - And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.