I hope to share a simple, concise, yet important thought with you. Part of Matthew 17:20 contains these words of Jesus, “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” Just to be 100% up front, I am going to pull this verse a little out of its primary context. I’m not going to use it to talk about Jesus’ disciples’ ministry at a specific time and place when they were driving demons out of people.
There have been many observations made about mustard seeds and the word picture Jesus uses to highlight something about our faith. I want to draw out something adjacent to that. Jesus highlights that at times our faith is small. That’s true, and if you’ve walked with Jesus for more than 24 hours, you’ve probably felt like your faith was small, too. But notice this, Jesus isn’t worried about the disciples having small faith in this passage, and He isn’t worried about your faith or mine being small at times, either.
One of the truths revealed in Jesus’ statement is simple but profound. Something we spend a lifetime grasping if we truly commit our lives to Him: the size of our faith matters so little compared to who our faith is in.
Whether we trust God in a way that feels big or in a way that feels tiny compared to our circumstances, our trust and our faith are not the determining factor in the outcome. Mountains don’t often need to be moved, at least I haven’t heard many reports of it happening! But Jesus’ words to His closest followers remind us that our strength is small, and that our smallness has nothing to do with the outcomes in our lives.
Now contrast Matthew 17:20 with Psalm 77:16-19, which says:
“The water saw you, God. The water saw you; it trembled. Even the depths shook. The clouds poured down water; the storm clouds thundered; your arrows flashed back and forth. The sound of your thunder was in the whirlwind; lightning lit up the world. The earth shook and quaked. Your way went through the sea, your path through the vast water, but your footprints were unseen.”
Psalm 77 is written in the context of God parting the Red Sea for Moses and the people. And here’s the contrast: no matter the context, and no matter how tiny our faith may be, when God moves, He moves huge! Our joy, our hope, and even our faith cannot rest on our own evaluation of how big our faith feels. We have to constantly remember who our faith is in. We must look past our own judgments, our own understanding, and our own feelings about ourselves, and look straight at God. When we do, we see how little it matters what size our faith is, because everything changes when we focus on who our faith is in.
Even if the only change we see is our own hearts resting exactly where they’re meant to, secure in a God bigger than any faith we could ever muster(d)!
Pastor Will