“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible” (Matt. 17:20, NLT).

So, why can’t we move mountains today? There are basically two reasons: (a) James tells us it is because we ask with wrong or selfish motives and (b) we secretly want to take the credit for such a miracle rather than giving that credit to God.

Sure, we’ll say that God moved the mountain, but we’ll also say that He moved it because WE asked Him to. Very often, what we ask for always seems to come back around to being all about US.

In fact, the very mountain that Jesus was referring to is an artificial mountain that Herod the Great built, to show that he could create and manipulate nature, just as good as God could. Herod was trying to put God in a box of his own creation.

But God is bigger than that. At some point we’re going to have to learn that it’s not about moving the mountain, it’s about our finding our place in God’s world rather than us trying to fit God into ours.

So, we should really be saying, “Okay, God, I’m not going to ask You to move a mountain. Instead, I’ll ask You what it is that I can do for You today?”

See the difference? When we shift the focus of our faith from what God can do for us to what we can do for God, we often find that He will move mountains in response to our humility and consideration of Him. We have become very good at asking God to bless our plans, but we need to be asking God to bless His plan for us!

David McCall, Executive Pastor

Highland Park Church