When Believing Isn’t Enough.

Scripture: And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” ….
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.” Matthew 17:17,20

Observation: A woman comes to Jesus looking for healing for her son, after the disciples failed to heal him. Jesus strongly rebukes…his disciples. They are the faithless and twisted generation. Later, he explains why they could not heal the boy—their faith was little. The problem is not that they did not believe who Jesus was. The problem was that they were not depending on who Jesus was. They did not lack faith; they lacked dependence on Jesus. They believed they could do it, but Jesus needed them to depend on Him to do it. The disciples were not given a magical gift of healing that they could do as they wished. They were not empowered simply for following Jesus. Their ability to heal was conditional on their reliance upon Christ. With this little bit of reliance, mountains could be moved.
There is a difference in believing who Jesus is and depending on him to move mountains. We don’t get to move mountains because we are Christians. We get to move mountains as we depend on Him in faith. It is arrogant to order around mountains simply because we bear the name Christian. But in humble dependence, we *can* move mountains.

Application: I have strong belief in who Jesus is. But I do not always have strong dependence on him to move the mountains in my life. I can see some pretty big mountains. And maybe I have been trying to move them out of my authority as a believer, out of belief. But not out of dependent faith. Christ, am I depending on You or on me to move this mountain?

Prayer: Jesus, forgive my self-reliance. Help me today to depend on you. Show me the mountains you want to move. Let me see what you can do with dependant faith—even as little as a seed—to move mountains.