Matthew 17.20 observes, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you.

Mustard seeds are really small; really, really small. I don’t know if any of us have faith the size of a mustard seed. Why not?

First, we are immensely self-sufficient. We don’t depend upon nor rely upon anyone but ourselves for the most part. Our experience in this life has taught us to self-protect, self-preserve and self-rely if we are to get what we want or keep from getting what we don’t want. When it comes to moving mountains however, we don’t believe we can.

Second, we have been immensely disappointed. Everyone has let us down at some point in our lives including, we believe, God. This world is far from perfect and all of us have been the recipient of imperfect people not doing what they said they would do for us. Honestly, we too as imperfect people have also failed others. Faith rests on trust so where trust is weak, faith is weak. We haven’t seen anyone moving mountains on our behalf.

All of us have mountains in our life we would like moved. When we look up for God to move them He appears to look down and ask us if we have enough faith. We don’t, and we know it. So the mountains stay: sometimes. Sometimes though, the mountains do move. The cancer is healed. The job comes through. The rescue occurs. The goal is achieved.

My guess is that more often than not, the mountains move. Not because we have faith greater than a mustard seed. Because God has mercy, love and grace greater than our fears, our doubts or our disbelief. God comes through because we cant come through.

In fact, the greater we see the chasm between our abilities and our possibilities the more excited God gets to step into our lives to show Himself strong, loving and present. Yet like a good Father, He also invites us to keep praying, keep seeking, keep trying: drawing us into our best effort so that we are all in.

He does that so that we will proclaim to everyone how great our God is Who went above and beyond anything we imagined or could do because we experienced more from Him than anything we were able to make possible ourselves.

In this way, He increases our faith!