James 1:3 (NLT)
For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.
Matthew 17:20 (NLT)
"You don't have enough faith," Jesus told them. "I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it would move. Nothing would be impossible."
As Christians, we have a ton of things on our mind every day. We try to be kind. We try to be giving. We are continually weighing our words. We try to make the best of the many situations that life throws our way. We just don’t want to let anyone down. We don’t want to let God down! Amidst all of these things, I believe a Christian’s main priority, whether it’s realized or not, is simply keeping the faith. Choosing to believe even when it makes absolutely no sense.
Over the next few days, we’ll dive into the lives of some people who, through gut-wrenching pain and disappointment, had every logical reason to give up on God but refused to. We like to use the analogy (and rightly so) that measures the amount of our faith by how many mountains we’ve moved. Most of us would view a faith capable of moving mountains as the absolute pinnacle of faithfulness. While we should certainly aspire to have this kind of faith, Jesus taught us that not very much faith is actually required to move a mountain. Only that of a mustard seed (the smallest seed known to man).
Furthermore, I believe that spending dozens of years building a boat when you’ve never seen rain requires more faith than that. Trusting God when your child’s life is taken requires more faith than that. I believe that trusting God when you lose your entire family and livelihood for no good reason requires more faith than that.
The truth is this: Moving mountains is only the beginning. To give up our entire lives to serve Christ will take as much faith as we can muster.
We’ll continue this conversation tomorrow.
