What is Faith?

There are few things in our Christian walk we struggle with more than faith. Jesus said, “Have faith,” but even the great leaders of the Bible struggled with faith. Peter said he would never deny Jesus. Then he promptly denied Him three times. Doubting Thomas said he wouldn’t believe Jesus had risen from the dead unless he could see Jesus with his eyes and feel His wounds. That’s how he got the name doubting Thomas.

I have struggled greatly with faith and I would guess that most Christians have at some time or other.

The reason we struggle with faith is that we are born into the world with a sinful nature and we are full of doubt and unbelief. To counteract this nature and to set us on the right path Jesus said, “Believe.”

Believe. It is so simple, yet at times we are plagued with doubts.

How many times have you encountered some humble Christian trying so hard to believe? He asks God for something and he doesn’t get it. We’ve all been there. Then some well-meaning brother or sister, trying to help, says to the struggling one, “Well, you only need the faith of a mustard seed.”

True. We just need the faith of a mustard seed, but in quoting the scripture, we open up a whole other barrel of monkeys . . . because that phrase in scripture is followed by another phrase: “If you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain ‘move from here to there,’ and it will move.”

And in the process of trying to encourage the struggling saint, the “encourager” discourages him. Now, not only does he have to have faith, he has to have the faith that moves mountains.

Well, here are some of the keys to understanding this passage; 1) Check the context. A lot of frustration can be avoided in interpreting scripture if we will just read the passage in context. 2) Was Jesus using a figure of speech when He said you’ll be able to move this mountain? Yes, He was. 3) The mustard seed can teach us some very simple, basic concepts about faith that will help us in the long run.

Let’s examine these three principles in some depth. Firstly, read the scripture in context.

And when they had come to the multitude,

a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying,

“Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely;

for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.

So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him,”

Matthew 17:14,15  (NKJV)

 

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said,

“Why could we not cast it out?”

So Jesus said to them,

“Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you,

if you have faith as a 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 17:19,20 (NKJV)

Jesus teaching on the mustard seed was in answer to the disciples’ question, “Why could we not cast it out?” This was the disciples’ unique “mountain” on that particular day.

Secondly, was Jesus using a figure of speech to illustrate His point? Yes. Jesus often used illustrations that He did not mean literally. When He said, “First take the log out of your own eye (Matthew 7:5),” He obviously was not referring to a real log. Everyone knows a log will not fit in a person’s eye. When He said, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you (Matthew 18:9),” He wasn’t saying you should gouge your eye out. He was emphasizing how serious and dangerous sin is.

Though many Bible teachers have made statements to the opposite and in the process, laid impossible burdens on young Christians, I firmly believe He was not talking about a literal mountain. He was talking about figurative mountains that we encounter in our lives, things that we seemingly cannot get victory over.

The reason I believe this, is very simple. Since Jesus spoke those words over 2000 years ago, no one has ever moved a literal mountain with their faith. If they had, we would have heard about it. Jesus would not tell us to do something that no one has ever been able to do. If He had meant a literal mountain, someone would have done it by now.

Thirdly, the mustard seed can teach us some very basic, precious things about faith. This is the real meat of this passage, the illustration of the mustard seed. We don’t need much faith, just the faith of a mustard seed. The mustard seed is very small, from one to two millimeters in size. In Jesus’ country, the mustard plant was a tree, usually reaching a height of from six to twenty feet, and in some cases reaching a height of thirty feet. In comparison to how tiny the seed is, that’s pretty amazing.

So, He is saying our very tiny measure of faith will grow to great size. Real faith grows . . . and the more you use it, the more it grows. It is like a muscle. The more we use that muscle the bigger and stronger it gets.

The most important thing, however, is the fact that the mustard seed is alive. He could have likened faith to a tiny pebble, but there is a big problem with that analogy. The stone is dead. You can plant it in the ground, and water it until the cows come home, but it will not grow or produce anything valuable, because the stone is “dead!”

The mustard seed, on the other hand, is alive! It was designed to reproduce.

When you put it in the ground, the soil provides all of the nutrients that will make it grow. When you water it, the water also makes it grow.

What is the lesson here? You only need a tiny bit of faith, because faith is alive, and when you feed it, it can grow into a huge thing.

We could discuss at length, what the soil represents, that is, the nutrients that make faith grow. In short, the nutrients are things like the Word of God, positive conversation, positive confession, positive thoughts, worship, spending time in God’s presence, things like that . . .

But that is a subject for a later discourse we will pursue at another time.

What is important for you to remember, is that whatever amount of faith that you have, even if you feel it is a tiny amount, that faith can grow exponentially into something very large, even invincible, providing you supply your faith with the right nutrients.

Log in next week for the next installment, posted right here!

Photo was designed and taken by Lorraine

The seeds in the image are not mustard seeds. I was unable to find mustard seeds for this photo but I think these seeds still make a good illustration for the story of faith.