“I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart.”
Mark 22:27
Knowing that Mother’s Day is coming, I took down my mother’s old Bible that I keep above my office desk. It’s old and worn and it is beyond use any more. The pages are worn and some are torn, some are lying loose within.
Mother has written some things in it that I enjoy reading. One statement says this, “Does your faith move mountains or do mountains move your faith?”
As the Oxford English Dictionary testifies, the phrase “move mountains” is often interpreted to mean “achieve spectacular and apparently impossible results.”
A mountain in scripture often symbolizes a kingdom and many times it was Satan’s kingdom. Most likely Jesus was primarily referring to seeing massive obstacles, demonic powers, and major difficulties removed.
I know that my mother had lots of mountains to face in her lifetime. She faced mountains produced by Satan. One by one, she faced each one, and her faith took her through. As we children watched her and Dad climb one mountain after another that Satan had put in their way, it instilled a faith in us that helped us face the mountains Satan puts in our way.
There is an old song that I love. “Faith in God can move a mighty mountain! Faith in God can calm the troubled sea! Faith can make the desert like a fountain! Faith will bring victory!”
God Answers Prayers of Faith
A church congregation built a new facility on some donated land. Ten days before the new church was to open and be dedicated, the local building inspector told them that their parking lot size was inadequate.
They found out that until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they would not be able to use their new facility. The church had totally used up the land already, except for the mountain in the backyard, against which it had been built. In order to build more parking spaces, they would have to remove the mountain out of their backyard.
Undaunted, the pastor courageously announced the next Sunday morning that he would meet that evening with all members who had “mountain-moving faith and believed in the power of God.” They would hold a prayer session asking God to remove the mountain from the back yard and to somehow provide enough money to have it paved and painted before the scheduled opening dedication service the following week. At the appointed time, 24 of the congregation’s 300 members assembled for prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours. At ten o’clock the pastor said the final “Amen.”
“We’ll open next Sunday as scheduled,” he assured everyone. “God has never let us down before, and I believe He will be faithful this time too.”
The next morning as he was working in his study there came a loud knock at his door. When he called, “Come in,” a rough-looking construction foreman appeared, removing his hard hat as he entered. “Excuse me, Reverend. I’m from Acme Construction Company in the next county. We’re building a huge new shopping mall over there and we need some dirt. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk of that mountain behind the church? We’ll pay you for the dirt we remove and pave all the exposed area free of charge, if we can have it right away. We can’t do anything else until we get the dirt in and allow it to settle properly.”
The church was dedicated the next Sunday as originally planned and reportedly there were far more members attending with “mountain-moving faith” on opening Sunday than there had been the previous week!