And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus admonishes the disciples for their little faith and then He says if they have faith as small as a mustard seed they can move mountains? What was Jesus talking about? Was He contradicting himself? What prompted Jesus to talk to His disciples about this subject of faith to begin with? Well, prior to Christ’s mustard seed conversation, we read that there was a father who had a demon possessed son. The man desperately comes to Jesus for healing and explains to Jesus that His disciples tried to heal his boy but failed to deliver his son. Upon hearing this, Jesus immediately delivers the young man and frees him from his demonic bondage. So what went wrong, why couldn’t the disciples heal the man’s son? Jesus did send them out before and they did healings and drove out demons but in this particular instance they failed. Why? I believe it’s because the disciples were trying in their own strength to do a miracle rather than trusting in the power of God. The disciples were thinking they could do the impossible in their own strength but Jesus wanted to remind them that they were limited without His power. They needed to constantly rely on God’s faith for their lives. Instead of mustering up their own faith and trying harder, Jesus wanted to remind them that they needed to rely on His faith to move through them and only through Jesus could they do the impossible. Sometimes, we as Christians think that when confronted with difficulties or spiritual battles, we just need to have more faith and believe harder but when we do that, we will always fail. When we try like that, we are trusting in our works and the Bible tells us that our works clearly will never save us nor anyone else. We need to realize first of all that we cannot produce faith but only God can. We must learn to trust in His faith that He has freely given to us according to His grace. How do we do that? Stop striving for it and just change your mindset that you have it already. Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us that we were saved by grace through faith “and this was not your own doing”. Here we see that grace and faith are not our own doing. A lot of us believe that grace is a gift and faith is up to us but both grace and faith is not our own doing. It is all up to God. In other words, not only is grace a gift but so is the faith we bring to the table for our salvation. Our faith that we claim saves us is really the gift of His faith that He puts in our lives. Hebrews 12:2 tells us that Jesus is the “author and finisher of our faith”. He forms it in us and He will complete it for us. So, when Christ tells His disciples to just use a mustard seed of faith, I believe He is referencing to His faith in their lives. If you and I want to see God do the miraculous, we need to stop trying to muster up our own faith but rely on His faith instead. Just a mustard seed of His faith and anything is possible. God desires for us to live in total dependence upon Him for everything so that when we face the challenges, difficulties and spiritual battles in our lives, we can say to any mountain move and it will move. Yes, I will say it again, no matter the mountain, it will move because Jesus promised for us that it would. But you might wonder what about the person who doesn’t get healed of cancer or that person that doesn’t get saved or the marriage that doesn’t get restored? What about those times when you are trusting in Christ and still the mountain remains? Don’t get discouraged, just because it doesn’t move the way you want it too doesn’t mean it won’t be moved. God’s will is what ultimately prevails and how He moves it, may look different than how you may imagine it to be. However, if we are limited in our thinking, then we will miss out entirely on the real miracle when the mountain does move. For example, in the verses following Jesus’s profound statement of nothing is impossible, He follows this up by foretelling His death and then mentions His resurrection. Then scripture says that after hearing this, the disciples were distressed. Huh? You would think they would be rejoicing but they were focused more on the hill rather than the actual mountain. They believed Jesus would be their savior and move the mountain of Roman oppression but they didn’t get it till later that God’s plan was to actually move the mountain of spiritual oppression from sin and death instead. So, all this talk of Jesus dying didn’t make sense to them but if they saw the bigger picture they would have been praising God instead of getting distressed. Sometimes, our mountains don’t get moved and we get distressed but what we think is our mountain is actually the small hill of the real mountain that God is going to move. I recently lost my two year old nephew to an unfortunate accident. My whole family believed that God could bring him back to life. In fact we even quoted the mustard seed scripture to ourselves and we believed that Christ could do this. However, his temporal healing was just the hill and not the mountain and he eventually passed away but there were mountains that were moved. Not only did my nephew get healed again, for he was resurrected from death to life with a new heavenly body but the mountain of unbelief in the hearts of many of our friends and family members started to topple. People began to trust their lives to Christ for the first time and some who were already Christians dedicated their lives to Christ again. There was also the mountain of distance between some of my family members that was thrown into the sea. Some of us including myself began to reach out more and spend more time with one another, no longer taking each other for granted. I don’t know what that mountain is for you, but I want to encourage you, to speak forth to it, relying on His power to do it and trust for His will to be done. And if it doesn’t appear that your mountain is moving, don’t get discouraged, God is still a mountain mover. Remember, that the mountain we may want tossed into the sea, may actually just be the small hill of the actual mountain He will ultimately throw into the sea for us. Just ask Him to reveal His will to you in your situation and in His timing He will do so. No matter the mountain that stands in your way, stop trying to climb it. Put your gear away and do it God’s way. PUT ON HIS FAITH AND COMMAND it to MOVE!!!! And when His will prevails and it finally topples down, just make sure you’re wearing a poncho. It’s gonna be a big splash!