In the case of our text, what Jesus has to say about prayer and faith must be never be isolated from the larger story and used to justify some kind of hyper-faith doctrine, which argues that any of us can have anything we want, any time we want it if we just have enough faith and are willing to speak our miracle into existence. That is not what the Bible teaches, therefore, that cannot be what this passage teaches. With all that, said, look again at our passage.
Typically, the pastors who came to serve the small church were either older pastors on their way to retirement, or younger pastors needing an entry-point into the pastoral ranks to qualify for a better future assignment. Few, if any, of the pastors had formal seminary training. At that time the theology book for pastors was the Bible, and the approach was a quite literalistic interpretation. To their credit they placed a premium on the Word of God above all other books or sources for doctrine--a heritage that I appreciate and continue to hold.
