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Growing Faith Life
Let's Meditate The Words of Jesus Christ
And the Lord
said, lf ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this
sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and
it should obey you".
Another passage
in Mark 11:23 mentions not only trees but mountains: "If you say
unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast in the sea, it shall obey you" .
The
Spiritual Meaning of Mountain-Moving Faith :
God wants His Word to work. He says in Jeremiah 1:12, "I will hasten
my word to perform it" or in a better translation: "I will
stand behind my word to make it work". We
need to find this kind of faith that 'speaks' and things happen.
The point is
this: There is 'speaking faith' available to God's children , 'a faith that
saith'.
1. Mustard Seed Faith
And Jesus said, ' lf ye had faith as a
grain of mustard seed.... In another translation says:
'if you had faith that grows as a grain of mustard seed... "
Jesus was not telling us that all we need is a tiny bit of faith, as a tiny mustard
seed, and then we can move trees and mountains. Rather,
the Lord was teaching us that faith that GROWS as a grain
of mustard seed can heal the sick, cast out demons and see signs following it (Mark
16:17-20.).
We have a divine
commentary on how a grain of mustard seed grows in Matthew 13:31,32. It is the Lord's own
words:
In Another
parable Jesus , saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard
seed, which a man took and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown,
it is the greatest... and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the
air come and lodge in the branches thereof. "Now, the mustard seed is small; but
Jesus said that when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs and becomes a tree big
enough for lodging birds.
When we understand that it is not little faith but growing
faith that does big things.
Little faith will do some things; and big faith
will do bigger things, but Jesus was teaching the faith that grows was the Ideal Faith.. It
is from "faith to faith" (Rom 1:17)
that we progress toward ultimate, mature faith.
2. Mountain Moving Faith
In I Corinthians 13:2, Paul comments on
faith that moves mountains:
"And though I have
the gift of prophecy, and understand and all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have ALL faith, so
that I could remove mountains..." Paul
recognized that it took 'all' or total or 'full-grown faith' to move mountains'.
You don't move mountains with seed faith; you move mountains with
'all' faith. It takes fully developed faith to relocate a mountain!. Paul recognized this
and Jesus taught it. In Matthew 17, we read a certain man came to Jesus
who had a son who was lunatic. Paul recognized that it took 'all' or total or 'full-grown
faith to move mountains'. You don't move mountains with seed faith; you move
mountains with all faith. It takes fully developed faith to relocate a mountain!
This caused him to fall into the fire and into the water. The man came to
Jesus and said: ' I brought him [my son] to thy disciples
and they could not cure him' (Matt 17:16). They
could not cure him! "And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of
him: and the child was cured from that very how. Then
came the disciples to Jesus apart and said. Why could not we cast
him out?"(Matt 17:18,19).
The
disciples said, in effect: "Lord, we gave that fellow the full 'Charismatic
treatment': we shook him, we said In the Name of Jesus,' we did all these things, and that
devil didn't come out. Why?"
The King James version says, "And
Jesus said unto them, Because of your
unbelief... " (Matt 17:20). In the original Greek, that word is
not 'unbelief ' but rather "little faith"
or "undeveloped faith."
Jesus was not talking about unbelief (a
negative force). These disciples would not have tried to cast out devils if they had been
in unbelief. Unbelief is a negative thing that disbelieves, whereas the problem of
these nine apostles was "little faith." They were
trying, but with not enough faith, to do the job. So, then, the disciples were not
unbelieving; they simply did not have sufficiently developed faith to
cope with the problem. They had "seed-faith" and a "tree-sized"
problem.
Jesus went on to teach them that even though
their faith was undeveloped, if they would allow it to grow as a grain of mustard seed,
they could eventually "say unto this mountain. Remove
hence to yonder place; and it shall remove and nothing shall be
impossible unto you" (Matt 17:20).
In other words,
nothing shall be impossible to you if you have developed faith, faith that has
grown and continues to grow!
Growing faith is a scriptural concept. In
Paul's writings he talks to us in this metaphor: he says that we are changed "from
glory to glory" and "from faith to faith"
(2Cor 3:18; Rom 1:17). Faith grows in a series of steps or seasons.
By
Ralph Mohoney
World MAP
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For all
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