Molehills

"Say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move."

- Jesus, Matthew 17:20

"There comes a moment when you must quit talking to God about the Mountain in your life… and start talking to the Mountain about the God in your life."

- Mark Batterson, "Draw the Circle"

I heard a story several years ago about a car accident with a mother and her child, and the child was pinned in her seat and could not get out.

And so this frantic, 115-pound young mother ripped a bashed-in car door off its hinges, yanked an entire crushed front seat off her child, and pulled her little girl to safety in her arms. When the policemen and firemen arrived on the scene, after seeing what she had done, exclaimed, "Wow! How did you do that?!" She said, "I HAD TO! I'm a mother. I HAD TO do everything I could to protect my baby!" So, what turns a 115 pound young woman into a force to be reckoned with? Performance-enhancing drugs? No! It's the "HAD TO" in her life.

In Matthew 17:14-20, Jesus is totally frustrated by His disciples' failure to heal a young dad's son of severe epilepsy. Scolding them, Jesus is like, "Man, do I have to do everything? When will you discover, and begin acting on, the divine capacities God has placed in you?" Then, Jesus heals the boy. When the disciples ask Him again, "How did you do that?" Jesus said:

"You don't have enough faith. I'm telling you the truth, if you had faith the size of a little mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it would move. Nothing would be impossible." (v.20)

Jesus, here, is speaking figuratively. He isn't expecting you and I to move Mt. Everest from Tibet to Tahiti. Rather, He is speaking of the great trials… the heart-breaking challenges… the overwhelming problems that we will face in our lives. And Jesus is assuring his disciples… and us… that no difficulty will be too great for them and us to overcome!

What's required? Faith! And not watermelon-sized faith, but mustard seed-sized faith. In other words, it's not the quantity of faith, but the quality of faith that turns mountains into molehills! That is, do you really believe God WANTS TO in your life?

Recently, a very good friend of mine had a health scare of biblical proportions - a real wake up call. He said that it left him with an unnerving sense that he was not in control of his life as much as he thought. I told him this…

"After my heart attack… which was the first time I truly looked into the face of my own mortality… I got strangely sad. Even though I had put my life in God's hands, I still felt I could control most of my life.

If I was smart, good, and responsible, good things would happen. My heart attack convinced me of the opposite… that bad things can happen to me in this broken world even when I'm being good. I didn't like that, and it bummed me out for a while.

I realized that I could not control the biggest things in life.

So eventually, after I got over being pissed off about it, I re-upped with Jesus! Only this time… I put my life totally in His hands and found peace… knowing that when life surprised me with something bad, it did not surprise Him. That He saw it coming, and was with me to either walk me through it down here or to walk me to Heaven up there. And that He would take care of those I loved and cared about even when I couldn't. I believe that's God's WANT TO in my life and yours!"

My question for you is this: What's the mountain in your life that needs to be moved? What's the "HAD TO" in your life - the thing you have to do to move forward?

Listen… when your "HAD TO" meets God's "WANT TO," mountains get turned into molehills! AMEN!

Pastor Harry

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