Faith, the Tiniest Seed of All!
Matthew 17:20 And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.
if you have… will I ever have ENOUGH faith?
What is enough? Jesus says I only need faith the size of a mustard seed… the tiniest seed of all!
A MUSTARD SEED! And then… NOTHING WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO YOU! I want some of that!!!
I don’t have it!
I don’t have a faith bigger than the tiniest seed of all.
There are those who would infer I may not be “saved” if I don’t declare and show that nothing is impossible for me now that I have Jesus. Others might say that I am minimally saved but I am not yet a “disciple of Jesus” because I cannot move a mountain from here to there.
Big jobs require big impossible busting faith!
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” Luke 17:5
Ask, seek and knock, and then declare it so, right?
Maybe not.
And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; and it would obey you. Luke 17:6
Oh my, the “test” of faith is getting bigger by the minute.
I’ve never seen a mulberry tree (I have sang the song… “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush”) , much less uprooted one and planted it in the sea! Definitely NOT ready to take my faith show on the road to show and tell them how it’s done!
What is my faith road show… Is it faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1
The assurance of things hoped for, what am I hoping for? The ability to move mountains and trees with just my words? The conviction of things not seen, what am I trying to prove?
Or more importantly, is it NOT what, but WHO!
Am I trying to grow my tiny – smaller than the tiniest of seeds – into a huge ME TREE? (a mustard seed, this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.” Matthew 13:31-32)
A tree so large that birds of a feather can flock together while they admire all the impossible things this ME TREE can do. If this is my primary pursuit through faith, may I just say, “It (my miniature tiny seed) aint going to get any bigger than it is right now!”
The mustard seed of faith that Jesus is talking about is Him. Romans 10:9-10 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
The mustard seed of faith does not produce a Super-person who saves himself or anyone else. It produces a person who is ASSURED that God is in control of the future (the one we hope/know beyond a shadow of doubt is coming) and CONVICTED that there is no other name under heaven that guarantees our future.
After discovering that I don’t have faith as big as a mustard seed, I realized I have The One who does. Like Paul, I determined to know nothing except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I am with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching are not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:2-5)
I don’t need impossible busting faith to prove myself to you (But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” James 2:18). I also don’t need to show you my works to prove how blessed by God I am (My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. (James 2:1)
I DO NEED the smallest seed of faith that opens my mouth and confesses Jesus as LORD. I DO NEED the smallest seed of faith that plants belief in Jesus so deep in my heart that the weeds in my life will never choke the truth that God sent His son to die on the cross to pay my debt and raised Him from the dead to stamp BILL PAID on my life for eternity. I DO NEED The One to Whom nothing is impossible take up residence in me, so that my tiniest of faith seed will rest on the power of God alone. For this reason…
I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you (and me), according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your (our) hearts through faith; and that you (and I), being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you (and I) may be filled up to all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-19)
**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.