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"So whatever you ask for when you pray, believe that you have already received it, and you will have it." In other words, what you believe you become. For me, this requires a "see it and say it faith."

When I pray I don’t yet have the thing I ask, so in order to believe it I have to intentionally paint the picture I asked for on the canvas of my mind and look at it often. What I focus my imagination on is what I find and become in my life. In order to believe, I also choose to speak in accordance with the answer to my prayer. I talk as if the thing was already done. Even in the prayer, I spend more time in thanks for receiving than in bemoaning the lack. Compare John 11:41-42 and Philippians 4:6.

In the setting of this passage Jesus miraculously killed a fig tree that boasted leaves but had no fruit. On a fig tree, fruit usually comes before leaves, and this was not yet the season for fruit, much less for full leaf. Jesus was hungry and, being invited by the leaves, he went to get some figs, found none, said some negative things, and went on. Next day people saw the fig tree withered up and dying. This is Jesus’ only miracle of destruction recorded in the biblical gospels, and it puzzles many scholars. Some explain it as a temper tantrum. Others, as do I, see it as a lesson connected to the larger context, in which Jesus was forced to deal with people who put on airs of goodness but had no internal substance of good.

This fig tree announced about itself what wasn’t true and received the curse of Jesus. Apparently people who talk but don’t walk the talk call out in Jesus a singular displeasure.

Now I had a conundrum. On the one hand, talk without substance is condemned. On the other hand, I am told to believe what hasn’t yet happened. I used to worry that if I did the belief part, I would be talking without substance. However, now I see a difference. The fig tree had no relationship with Jesus and therefore flaunted its leaves, boasted its own powers. The faith I need takes a humble stance, relies on Jesus, and gives glory to God for the picture it sees and the gratitude it speaks.

So now I know, Jesus powers the real "see it and say it faith."