Mustard Seed Manifesto

And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, said,

"Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly.

For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water.

And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him."

And Jesus answered, "O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? 

How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me."

And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?"

He said to them, "Because of your little faith.

For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of 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 17:14-20 (ESV)

If you're anything like me, you're amazed at the faith the disciples had throughout many of the stories told in the Gospels.

They were willing to drop everything to follow a man they did not even know. They were willing - heck, excited - to face persecution for Jesus. They were willing to get out of a boat on a stormy night and walk to Jesus.

But in Matthew, we read that Jesus' disciples are having trouble casting out a demon. They can't do it. And they can't figure out why they can't do it. So they ask Jesus.

After all, He's the Son of God - surely He knows why they're inept. Right? Right.

That's when he drops something big on them:

"Because of your little faith," he says. "If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move."

Oh, and by the way, if you do that, he says: "nothing will be impossible for you."

So you're trying to tell me that the faith of the Twelve is not even the size of a teensy tiny mustard seed?

Truth is, the disciples were just regular people like you and me, with the Holy Spirit working and moving inside of them. And if you and I are Christians, if we truly have given our hearts and lives to Jesus Christ as our Savior, then we have the Holy Spirit in us as well. So are we fully capable of this faith? Yes.

Then why don't we have it?

It comes down to human nature. We're flawed. We sin. Sometimes we find it hard to trust our entire being to something - well, Someone - we can't see.

Personally, I want to control everything. I like to be in charge. If I've got something on my watch, then nothing bad will happen. Or so I think. So with my fists tightly clenched, I hold onto my struggles and endeavors rather than give them up to God.

When we do these things, we essentially tell God that He is smaller than our problems, or that we are bigger than He is and can manage things better than He can. (Which, by the way, is totally false.)

So what can we do?

Read the Bible. Pray. And open our ears and eyes to what God is trying to tell us. He's bigger than our largest fears, our largest problems, our largest anxieties. And yet he loves us enough to care about all of them.

So go on this journey with me. Hopefully it will help remind both of us that God is faithful and that we no longer should hesitate, but instead totally depend, rely, lean, on Him.

Because when our faith grows, even to something as small as a mustard seed, that's when we will see God truly work and move in our lives - in ways bigger than our finite human brains ever could have imagined.

The Mustard Seed Manifesto:

1. God is great. He can and will do great things.
2. God fulfills His promises. He has a history of coming through, and He won't let you down.
3. We have not because we ask not. If we ask in faith, He will move in faith.
4. Because God's love knows no bounds, what He can and will do for us likewise is limitless.
5. It is our duty as Christians to tell others how God has proved faithful in our lives.