{"id":45,"date":"2012-09-13T09:03:53","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T13:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/?p=45"},"modified":"2012-09-13T09:03:53","modified_gmt":"2012-09-13T13:03:53","slug":"moving-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/moving-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"

How many times have you heard a preacher or Sunday school\/small group teacher say “if you have the faith the size of a mustard seed, you could move mountains?”\u00a0 If you have been in church very long you have probably heard that before.\u00a0 It is used many times when a church is facing what feels like insurmountable obstacles.\u00a0 The mustard seed concept is found in Matthew 17.\u00a0 I would caution us all to make sure that we “rightly divide the word of truth” as it says in 2 Timothy 2:15.\u00a0 By this I mean, we need to make sure that we read the entire context of a verse and not just pull one verse out as that could lead to us misleading people about what the verse says.\u00a0 In this case the context is a man brings his son to Jesus’ disciples to have demons cast out of him.\u00a0 Yet the disciples were unable to do it.\u00a0 Not knowing what else to do, the man takes his son to Jesus and says I brought my son to your disciples, but they couldn’t cure him (Mt. 17:16).\u00a0 Jesus then proceeds to rebuke the demons and they leave the boy.\u00a0 The disciples were curious as to why they couldn’t do that, after all they had seen Jesus do it before and they had done it as well.\u00a0 What happened this time?\u00a0 Jesus rebukes them for their lack of faith (Mt. 17:20).\u00a0 We get a little more information about what Jesus was talking about in verse 21 where it says, “<\/strong>Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”\u00a0 What becomes clear is that the disciples had tried to cast out the demon themselves.\u00a0 They were trying to be the power source rather than being plugged into the Power (Jesus).<\/p>\n

You and I are a lot like the disciples at times in our life aren’t we?\u00a0 Sometimes we remember the words of John 15:6, “For without Me, ye can do nothing.”\u00a0 And so we pray and we truly depend on Jesus and because of our belief, it seems as though mountains are moved.\u00a0 Yet at times, we think “oh this is no big deal, I’ve done this before” and so we forget how and why we were able to do it before.\u00a0 The end result is frustration and many times failure.\u00a0 The key is to remember a specific phrase in a commonly quoted Scripture.\u00a0 Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things THROUGH CHRIST WHICH STRENGTHENS ME<\/strong>.”\u00a0 Notice we are only able to do all things when Christ gives us the strength to do it.\u00a0 and Christ’s strength only comes through our utter dependence upon Him, first and foremost through prayer.<\/p>\n

Are you facing a mountain in your life right now?\u00a0 Mountains come in all shapes and sizes.\u00a0 Sometimes it is a financial need, sometimes it deals with our marriage, our kids, school, friends, or any number of other things.\u00a0 The good news is, God already has the answer to our problem, even before we realize we have a problem.\u00a0 All we have to do is follow the words of a popular hymn, trust and obey!<\/p>\n

By His grace and through His strength, may we live for him!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many times have you heard a preacher or Sunday school\/small group teacher say “if you have the faith the size of a mustard seed, you could move mountains?”\u00a0 If you have been in church very long you have probably … Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westlakebaptist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}