When I was a young girl my Mom had a rock on her night stand that had a Bible verse glued onto it. I am not sure where it came from or why she had the verse she did. Maybe a retreat that focused on the verse? As I sat on her bed and she did my hair I would read the verse and it became one I can still recite from memory. It brings back so many great memories of those moments with my Mom but it also has been a great reminder as I grew in my walk with Christ.

The verse is Matthew 17:20 which says “He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

The backdrop to Jesus speaking is the disciples asking why they could not cast out a demon from a boy. He told them it was because they did not have faith that they could do it and that their faith only need to be as small as a mustard seed. That is not much faith is it? Mustard seeds are only about 1-2 millimeters!

Mustard seeds are small but they can make a mighty plant (or tree/tree like bush). It seems to me, if I can have faith as small as a mustard seed that it will grow in me and my faith will grow as big as the plant multiplying into other seeds of faith for those in my life.

But I only need that small faith and I can move a mountain. Some days just the laundry seems like a mountain I need faith to move… but just those every day problems that come up I just have to have faith that I can handle that mountain. That God will be there with me to help move it. Maybe not take care of it or remove it, but just show me that I can handle the problem. We all have mountains in our lives that we need to apply a little faith. Challenges at school, marriage issues, wayward children, aging parents that need our help, bills…. the list could go on and on.

Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We just need to believe in God, in every circumstance, even without seeing evidence. This faith can start out small but will be mighty, we only need to take a step in that faith and watch what God will do with it.

Imagine if we all had this faith and shared about the mountains that we moved with others. That mustard seed faith would certainly grow and spread around the world.