How Big is a Mustard Seed?

THIS WEEK I discovered GodVine.com for the first time. It's a website all about videos meant to inspire, ecourage, and amaze you. It's just my kind of thing, especially categorized as "Miracle."

There's one I really want to share with you, about a man who had a heart attack:



Watch that real quick. It only takes 6 minutes and 15 seconds. I'll wait here.



That was amazing, right? It's so awesome that God still does these things in response to our faith. My favorite part was when the cardiologist confessed that he was having a day of very small faith, but when he took the little bit of faith he did have and obeyed God with it, he saw God's power.

It isn't hard to have faith, and it isn't a weakness to have faith. Faithful people aren't dumb. It takes faith to drive a car, that when you make a turn the light will stay red for everybody else and you won't be hit. It takes faith to eat spagetti, as I did earlier this week, because you must wait patiently for it to cool before you eat it, hoping for the promise that it will be much better after it won't burn your tongue. It even takes faith to pick up a new, unsharpened pencil, faith that when you sharpen it the graphite inside won't be made of chalk and disintegrate, and that it isn't already broken straight from the pencil company.

People need some level of faith just to function in the world. Disappointment comes from putting faith in the wrong things. Pure joy comes from putting our faith where it belongs, in God.

My Life Group talked about faith and faithfulness this week, and my favorite thing we talked about was this: that it isn't how much faith you have that matters, but whether your faith is true. Jesus said that even a faith the size of a mustard seed, which is about the size of the letter O on this page, is enough to see Him move. That is because He respects and appreciates our faith and He is not shy about proving it is not in vain.

I read Psalm 27 this week and it really blew my mind.

v.1 "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

It seems so easy to think about, but when trouble comes, aren't I afraid and fearful sometimes? God is completely trustworthy and it isn't hard to trust Him. The hard part about faith is learning to trust Him more than we trust ourselves. Do we try to climb the mountain alone, or do we bring a guide who knows every rock on the mountain? He makes us stroner because He is strong enough for anything.

v. 3 "Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war may rise against me, in this I will be confident." Can you imagine having an actual war rise against you? What kind of faith does it take to make impossible odds turn out in our favor? What does that look like?

Joshua 6 tells the story of the Israelites under the leadership of Moses' successor, Joshua. God told them they could have Jericho, an extremely well-forified city with a thick wall all the way around. Okay, what should they do? Should they get out jackhammers and bulldozers and knock the wall down? No. God said just to take a walk around the city once a day for six days, carrying the Ark of the Covenant. On the seventh day they would walk around seven times, and then shout really loud, and the wall would come down. That makes sense.

I'm reminded of the Kiwi and the Dragonfruit again, how God chooses the foolish things to put to shame the wise. They Israelites knew what God was telling them to do, and He hadn't failed them before. So they walked, and they shouted, and they ran for the city, and the wall fell. All it took was faith that God is wise and has good intentions for our benefit.

That's the kind of faith we are supposed to have. Faith that whether the sun is shining or there is a hurricane outside your window, whether the answer is to walk back into a room and pray for a dead man, or to just walk around a wall a few times, God will keep the promises He has made. One way or another.

Faith in God gives us access to the power of God. It doesn't take much.

We are called the descendents of Abraham because his faith in God was enough for him to me called righteous. His faith was imputed as righteousness.

Romans 4:23-25, "[23] Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, [24] but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, [25] who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification."

If an ounce of faith is enough for us to be saved and reconciled with God because of His sacrifice, then faith must be very strong indeed. Imagine what else can happen. Go ahead and ask.