Maybe this message is more for me than it is for you, but maybe not. I wasn’t sure where this message would land when I sat down to write it. But I believe that the Lord wanted to reveal something in the process. The Lord has put breakthrough on my heart. I’m sure we’ve all lived in hard seasons where we needed a victory. We’ve needed a mountain moved. I feel like I’m living in one of those seasons now. I want to see breakthroughs in ministry. I want to see breakthroughs with my family. I want to see breakthroughs in my health. 2026 has been a season of battles, a series of mountains. I think the closer we get to the Lord, the more He asks of us and the more mountains we run into that we need to overcome. Saying yes to Jesus will cost you something. Sometimes it’s the fight you don’t see coming. One of two things is certain. God will move the mountain, or He’ll say, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
I want to spend just a little time talking to you about it tonight.
Mountains Aren’t Made for Comfort
We’ve all faced mountains in this room. Each of us has faced something too big to climb and too wide to walk around. And right there lies the choice.
We can accept the mountain. We can build a house at the foot of it. We can arrange the furniture in the house and just… live there. We can decide that the mountain is the way things are and the way things will always be.
You might even introduce the mountain to your friends. “Hey everybody, meet my friend. His name is Mountain. He lives with us now. The only problem is, he’s constantly in the way. That guy never moves.” (Do you know people like this?)
Some people would rather get comfortable with the uncomfortable than trust the Lord to move the mountain.
Or…
We can pray. (But, oh Kevin… I’ve prayed 100 times) We can ask God for the breakthrough. He may be the one who put the mountain there in the first place. We can choose NOT to accept that it’s here to stay. Instead of granting permission for permanent residency, by faith we expect it’s only here for a moment. For a season.
And here’s a thought I want you to hold onto for a minute. We’ll come back to it. Sometimes we’re the mountain. We are the very thing that God needs to move.
What Jesus Says
Mark 11:22-25 (NLT) Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God. 23 I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. 24 I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours. 25 But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.
I’m going to come back to this passage, because there’s something in it we’ll miss if we don’t look closely.
We need to acknowledge that we serve an omnipresent God. He’s not far off as though He were on the opposite side of the mountain from us. He’s right here, with us and all around us. We serve a God who is omniscient. He sees the mountain in our lives and knows exactly what needs to happen. He is not confused or intimidated by the mountain. We serve a God who is (OM-NIP-O-TENT) omnipotent. All power. All authority. He can do anything He wants to do.
And He can surely speak to a mountain. David knew that.
2 Samuel 5:20 (NLT) 17 When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king of Israel, they mobilized all their forces to capture him. But David was told they were coming, so he went into the stronghold. 18 The Philistines arrived and spread out across the valley of Rephaim. 19 So David asked the Lord, “Should I go out to fight the Philistines? Will you hand them over to me?”
The Lord replied to David, “Yes, go ahead. I will certainly hand them over to you.”
20 So David went to Baal-perazim and defeated the Philistines there.
“The Lord did it!” David exclaimed. “He burst through my enemies like a raging flood!” So he named that place Baal-perazim (which means “the God of breakthrough”).
So what makes the difference here?
Why do some people see breakthrough, and some don’t? The Bible doesn’t give us a formula. Nothing says, “do these five things and the mountain moves.”
If we look at Hebrews 11:33-40 (NLT) It recounts the stories of the faith of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and all the prophets.
33 By faith these people overthrew kingdoms, ruled with justice, and received what God had promised them. They shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the flames of fire, and escaped death by the edge of the sword. Their weakness was turned to strength. They became strong in battle and put whole armies to flight. 35 Women received their loved ones back again from death.
But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. 36 Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. 37 Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. 38 They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.
39 All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. 40 For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.
That chapter lists people who shut the mouths of lions. And in the same breath, it lists people who were sawn in two. And it says of that second group that they never received in this life what was promised… and God commended them for their faith anyway.
Daniel prayed the same prayer for twenty-one days. On day twenty-one an angel showed up and said, “Your answer was sent on day one. I got held up.” Nothing Daniel did on day twenty-one was different from day one. The delay was on the other side of the wall.
So the first thing that makes the difference is something we don’t control. God’s timing. God’s purposes.
But Scripture does name some things on our side. Things it connects, over and over, to answered prayer. And I want to walk through them with you, because the people who saw breakthrough in the Bible all have something in common.
They kept praying. This is the one Jesus emphasized most. He told a story about a widow who wore out a judge, and Luke tells us exactly why: so that we “should always pray and never give up.” Elijah prayed for rain on Mount Carmel and sent his servant to go look. Nothing. Pray again. Nothing. Seven times. And on the seventh, a cloud the size of a man’s hand. Here’s what I think. Most people who don’t see breakthrough may have stopped on the sixth prayer.
They kept asking. David asked the Lord before he fought the Philistines the first time, and he won. And when the Philistines came back, he asked again. He didn’t run the last play. And God gave him a different plan. Breakthrough comes to people who keep saying, “Lord, what do I do now?”
They brought the actual thing to God. Hezekiah got a letter from the most powerful king on earth telling him he was finished. And he took that letter, walked into the temple, and spread it out in front of the Lord. And God answered overnight. What’s our letter to the Lord? Have you laid it in front of Him, or are we still carrying it around folded up in our pocket?
They prayed together. When Peter was in prison, the Bible says, “the church was earnestly praying to God for him.” And an angel walked him out the front door. When Jesus said, “If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done,” He was describing a Wednesday at noon in the prayer room here at CPC. Some breakthroughs can only happen when God’s people join together in prayer.
They worshiped before the answer came. Jehoshaphat had three armies coming at him. He prayed, “We do not know what to do, but we are looking to you for help.” And then he did something crazy. He sent the choir out in front of the army. Paul and Silas were in a Philippian jail at midnight, backs bleeding, and they sang. And the ground shook. There’s something about praising God for who He is before He’s done anything. It changes the atmosphere. And it usually changes the one doing the praising.
They kept going when nothing was happening. Israel walked around Jericho for six days in silence. No cracks. No rumble. Nothing. Day seven looked just like day six… until it didn’t. Breakthrough almost always looks like nothing is happening right up until the moment it happens.
They believed He could. Not faith you work up as a feeling. A settled expectation that God can and that God is good. The father in Mark 9 barely had any faith. He said, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief.” And Jesus healed his son. That was enough.
Now back to the mountain
Remember I said there’s something in Mark 11 we’d miss?
Mark 11:22-25 (NLT) Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God. 23 I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. 24 I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours. 25 But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.
Read it again. Verse 22: have faith in God. Verse 23: speak to the mountain. Verse 24: believe you’ve received it. And then verse 25: “But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against.”
When I first read that, I wondered why forgiveness is in a passage about moving mountains?
Because everything in verses 22 through 24 hangs on one word in verse 25. Father. The prayer of faith is not a technique. It’s not a formula for moving mountains.
What is it? It’s a child asking a Father. And trusting that the Father hears.
So, the question underneath the whole passage is not “how hard do you believe?” It’s “what’s the state of your relationship with the One you’re asking to move the mountain?”
Jesus is saying you can’t come to the Father expecting Him to act on your behalf while you’re refusing to act on His behalf toward someone else. The same mercy you’re asking Him to pour out on you… you’re holding back from your brother. And that contradiction will render the prayer completely ineffective. It’s why the psalmist says in Psalm 66:18, “If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” And unforgiveness is sin in the heart.
But there’s a faith angle too. Look at what a grudge is. It’s holding onto a debt because you don’t trust God to settle it. You’re keeping the case open in your own courtroom. But Jesus just said, “Have faith in God.” Faith in God includes trusting Him with the wrong that was done to you. So a person nursing a grudge while praying “in faith” is doubting in the very heart Jesus said must not doubt.
The mountain prayer and the forgiveness command are the same thing. Both are letting go of your grip on the outcome and trusting God the Father to handle it.
And this is the key… so maybe I misled you by saying there wasn’t a formula to this, because if there was a formula, I believe it’s simply this.
- Hold on loosely to everything because you don’t own anything.
- God does. And you can trust Him with all things.
I don’t want us to miss where Jesus was standing when He said this in Mark 11. It was the morning after He cleared the temple. He’s near the Temple Mount. He’s next to a fig tree He’d cursed the day before for being full of leaves and no fruit. The temple was supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations, and it had become religious performance with no mercy in it. When Jesus says “this mountain,” He may well have been looking right at the temple. Real prayer was about to move from a building to a people. Remember we are the temple of the Holy Spirit now. And the mark of the believers would be faith and forgiveness.
A church that prays mountain-moving prayers but holds grudges is just the fig tree again. Leaves. No fruit.
So before you speak to your mountain, look around and ask: is there a mountain between me and somebody else that I need to move first?
Maybe it’s not unforgiveness, but God has asked you to do something else that you haven’t done or completely given over to Him.
Are we holding on loosely and trusting the Father in every area of our lives?
I had to stop and evaluate myself as I studied and wrote this. The Holy Spirit brought some people to mind. I don’t want anything to render my prayers ineffective.
And sometimes we are the Mountain.
I told you at the start we’d come back to something. Sometimes we’re the very mountain that needs to move.
Paul asked three times for the thorn to go. It didn’t. What he got instead was, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” The thorn stayed. And Paul was changed.
Jesus knelt in a garden and asked for the cup to pass. It didn’t. And the world was saved.
If we count only the breakthrough as the circumstance changing, we may miss it entirely. Because sometimes God moves the mountain. And sometimes He moves the person standing in front of it.
So tonight, whatever your mountain is… bring it. Lay it before Him like Hezekiah. Pray it again like Elijah. Pray it with somebody like the church did for Peter. Forgive whoever you need to forgive. Do what God has asked you to do. Then expect Him to break through like a flood, as He did for David.
And if the mountain doesn’t move… look and see if He’s moving you.
He IS the God of the breakthrough!