Most people read Mark 11:24 and think it’s about asking nicely and having faith that someday, eventually, the thing they want will show up. That’s not what it says. Read it again, slowly.
“What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”
The tense matters. Believe that ye receive them. Not “will receive.” Not “might receive.” The instruction is to enter a state of having already received, right now, in the present moment of prayer. That small grammatical detail is the entire teaching.
Neville’s Radical Reading
Neville Goddard returned to this verse again and again throughout his career. In his 1944 book Feeling Is the Secret, he stripped away centuries of religious interpretation and said something that still shocks people:
“Prayer is the art of assuming the feeling of being and having that which you desire. Your feeling is the secret. Your realized wish is what you must feel.”Neville Goddard
For Neville, prayer wasn’t kneeling with clasped hands and begging. Prayer was the deliberate act of changing your inner state. You don’t pray for something. You pray from the state of already having it. That’s what “believe that ye receive them” means. It’s an instruction to rearrange your imagination so thoroughly that the thing feels done, finished, yours.
I remember struggling with this for months. I’d close my eyes and try to “feel” that I had what I wanted, but it felt like pretending. Like lying to myself. What finally helped was a sentence from Neville’s 1966 lecture series: “You’re not trying to make it happen. You’re accepting that it has already happened in imagination, and imagination is the only reality.”
The Gap Between Wanting and Having
Here’s the problem most of us run into. We pray from the state of wanting. And wanting is a state of lack. If I say “I want more money,” I’m confirming that I don’t have enough. If I say “I want to be loved,” I’m confirming that I’m alone. The prayer itself reinforces the very condition I’m trying to escape.
Mark 11:24 cuts through this entirely. It says: skip the wanting. Go straight to receiving. Feel it now.
Joseph Murphy taught the same principle through the language of the subconscious mind. In The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, he wrote:
“The feeling of health produces health; the feeling of wealth produces wealth. How do you feel? That is the only question you need answer.”Joseph Murphy
Murphy’s method was practical to the bone. He’d tell his congregants at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre: don’t wrestle with your problems. Don’t analyze them. Don’t beg God to solve them. Instead, right before sleep, assume the feeling that the problem is already solved. Let that feeling be the last impression on your subconscious mind before you drift off. Then let the subconscious do its work.
The Drowsy State Is the Prayer State
Both Neville and Murphy identified the same optimal moment for this kind of prayer: the hypnagogic state, that liminal zone between waking and sleep. Murphy called it “the drowsy state.” Neville called it “SATS,” or State Akin to Sleep.
Why this state? Because in those moments, the critical conscious mind relaxes its grip. The inner censor that says “this is impossible” or “who are you kidding?” goes quiet. And the subconscious, which is always listening, accepts the feeling you give it as fact.
This is what the verse is pointing at. “When ye pray” isn’t about a time of day or a physical posture. It’s about entering a psychological state. The state of receptivity. The state where belief becomes effortless because the doubting mind has stepped aside.
What “Believe” Actually Means Here
The word translated as “believe” in Mark 11:24 is the Greek pisteuete. It doesn’t mean intellectual agreement. It doesn’t mean “I think this is probably true.” It means something closer to trust so complete that you rest in it.
I think of it like sitting in a chair. You don’t analyze whether the chair will hold you. You don’t intellectually affirm that the chair is structurally sound. You just sit. That’s the kind of belief this verse is talking about. A relaxed, total acceptance.
Neville illustrated this beautifully in The Law and the Promise:
“To believe is to accept something as true. I go to a chair and I sit in it. I don’t hope the chair will hold me. I simply sit. That is belief in action.”Neville Goddard
When you “believe that ye receive,” you’re not trying to convince yourself. You’re resting in a feeling so completely that the external world has no choice but to rearrange itself to match.
Why This Is So Hard (And What Finally Helped Me)
I’ll be honest. This was the hardest teaching for me to put into practice. My mind is good at arguing. It’s good at presenting evidence for why things aren’t going to work out. And every time I’d try to “believe that I receive,” that inner lawyer would start cross-examining: But do you really have it? Look around. Where is it?
Two things helped me break through.
The first was realizing that the feeling doesn’t need to be vivid or dramatic. It can be quiet. A gentle sense of relief. The kind of exhale you make when a problem is finally resolved. That’s enough. You don’t need fireworks. You need the subtle inner shift from “I need this” to “it’s done.”
The second was Neville’s concept of “the Sabbath.” After you do your imaginative work, after you feel the wish fulfilled, you stop. You rest. You don’t keep checking whether it’s working. You don’t keep repeating the scene obsessively. You accept that the creative act is complete and you go about your day. The Sabbath is the refusal to worry after you’ve prayed.
A Practice You Can Try Tonight
Choose one thing you want. Something that matters to you. Not something trivial you’re testing with, because half-hearted experiments give half-hearted results.
Before bed, lie on your back. Let your body go heavy. Let your thoughts slow down. When you feel that drowsy, drifting sensation, construct a brief scene in your imagination. Not the thing happening in the future. The thing having already happened. You’re telling a friend about it. You’re holding the evidence of it. You’re living the moment that would naturally follow its fulfillment.
Make the scene short. A few seconds. Loop it. Feel it as real. The key word is feel. Not visualize. Not think about. Feel.
And then let go. Fall asleep in that feeling. That’s the prayer Mark 11:24 describes. That’s the “believe that ye receive them.”
The Part Nobody Talks About
There’s a second half to this teaching that doesn’t get enough attention. After “believe that ye receive them” comes “and ye shall have them.” There’s a gap implied. A bridge between the inner and the outer. The feeling comes first. The physical manifestation comes second. And the bridge between them is not your problem to build.
You don’t need to figure out how it will happen. You don’t need to orchestrate circumstances. You don’t need to “manifest” in the sense of pushing and forcing and making. You need to accept. To receive. And then the how takes care of itself, often in ways you never could have planned.
That’s the real miracle in this verse. Not that you can get stuff by thinking about it. But that there’s an intelligence beneath the surface of reality that responds to feeling. That your inner state is not private. It’s creative. And when you align it with what you desire, the world moves.
Believe that ye receive them. Not tomorrow. Now.
