The Mountains You've Stopped Trying to Move

Everybody has one. Maybe it's a marriage that's gone quiet, and you can't picture the way back. Maybe it's a child who has drifted from the Lord and won't talk about it. Maybe it's a sin you've confessed a hundred times and still catch yourself dragging behind you, or a grief that's sitting on your chest before you're even awake enough to pray. Whatever it is, it has stood there so long you've stopped imagining it any other way. In the Bible, that kind of immovable thing has a name. It's called a mountain.

And Jesus, standing beside a withered fig tree in the last week of His life, looked at people staring up at mountains like that and said something almost too good to believe.

"Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him." (Mark 11:22–23, CSB)

Now if you're like me, your first reaction is to shrink back. Move a mountain? I can barely believe my way through a hard day on Tuesday. But when we look closer at what Jesus says, it's kinder than we fear.

He doesn't say, "Have more faith." He doesn't say, "Work up a stronger feeling of certainty." He says, "Have faith in God." And that last part, in God, is the whole thing. We tend to treat faith like fuel in a tank, as if the amount were the issue, as if a bigger quantity would finally force God's hand. But faith is never impressive on its own. Faith is only ever as good as the One it's resting on. You can have enormous confidence in thin ice and still go under. You can step onto a frozen lake with your knees knocking, barely believing it will hold, and if the ice is thick enough, you'll walk right across. It was never the size of your confidence that held you up. It was the ice.

That's why Jesus points His disciples to a mustard seed, the smallest seed a farmer ever handled. A little faith is enough, He says, as long as it's aimed at a great God. The problem is never that our faith is too small. The problem is when it quietly stops leaning on Him and starts leaning on us instead.

Which means the truest prayer in the whole Bible might be the one a desperate father blurted out when he brought Jesus a son no one could help: "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24). His faith was cracked and trembling and honest about its own weakness. And Jesus healed the boy anyway. That is the kind of Savior we're dealing with. He isn't standing at the top of the mountain with a stopwatch, waiting for your faith to reach some required level. He's close enough to hear a shaking whisper and count it as faith.

There's one more surprise in this passage, and it's easy to skip. Right in the middle of teaching on mountain-moving prayer, Jesus talks about forgiveness. "Whenever you stand praying," He says, "forgive." For a lot of us, the biggest mountain in the whole landscape isn't a marriage or a diagnosis. It's a grudge we'd rather keep than surrender. And Jesus says the road to answered prayer runs straight through a forgiving heart. You can't hold a grudge in one hand and reach for God with the other.

So, here's the invitation, and it's a gentle one. Stop measuring your faith this week. You'll only ever find it too small. Instead, lift your eyes off yourself and put them on the God who spoke a tree into silence and walked out of His own tomb. Name the mountain you've stopped trying to move. Bring the mustard seed you actually have, honest weakness and all, and put it in His hands.

We're going to open this whole passage on Sunday, and I'd love for you to be there. Come and see what the Lord can still do. Until then, sit with Mark 11 for yourself, and don't be afraid to pray, "I believe; help my unbelief." He has never once turned away a prayer like that.

Join us at Cornerstone at 9:30 this Sunday at 5051 Wilmington Pike in Centerville. Or watch us online at cornerstone-coc.com.