Mustard Seed Faith

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." (Mat 17:20, ESV)
When considering faith, most people compare their own faith with the faith of others, whether Biblical characters or godly people they have read about or even someone they know. Often we hear people say, “She must have had a strong faith to continue like that, even when things were so terribly bad,” or, “I just don’t know how he did it. I would have given up long ago. Where did he get his faith?”
For the Christian, the “where” is really the “who.” The man whose son was demon-possessed had faith, but that faith was not in Jesus’s disciples as much as it was in Jesus himself. Even then, he had his doubts. When Jesus challenged his faith, the man acknowledged his doubts and asked for a greater faith. Only by focusing our lives on the Christ of the pages of the New Testament and not on the Christ of Hollywood or of the popular media can we expect to have a stronger faith. Once the father realized his faith must be in the Teacher who stood before him, he realized the weakness of his own faith, but desperately wanted to believe. Jesus has a way of evoking faith if a person will truly look at Jesus as God Incarnate, God in the flesh.
Animals and children have a sense of trust that puts many adults to shame. I grew up on a small farm and my family raised geese, goats, cows, pigs, chickens, sheep and had a horse for a time, as well as a pet skunk. All of the animals had one thing in common - they trusted us to give them their food and water and to take care of them when they became sick. The family cow was with us for ten years, until I went off to college. We had a well that supplied our water and the pump was a windmill, very eco-friendly. When the wind blew, the windmill would turn, pulling the water up from 137 feet below the surface of the earth, cool and delicious, even on the hottest of days. Then the pump would continue to push this refreshing liquid several hundred feet up the incline of the hillside we lived on, to fill a large wooden reservoir that could hold 500 gallons. Usually the wind blew daily over those dry, dusty hills, filling the tank with water until it overflowed, watering the desert-like hillside and giving life to trees that had been planted by the birds of the air, including a palm tree. On occasion, though, someone would forget to turn off a tap somewhere, draining the tank and leaving the family and the animals without water. And sometimes the wind would not refill that tank for several days. Once we went without for ten long days. In that event, we would pull a trailer with a 60 gallon tank to a neighbor’s house where we could fill the small tank and take it home for drinking water and water for the animals.
The point of all of this is: the animals never worried about where the water came from, nor whether or not there was any water to be had. Their trust was fully in those responsible for caring for them - us.
And that’s the way it should be with our faith walk with God. We should never question or worry about where He will get the things that we need. He has always taken care of us and always will. Once we have a trust like that of a small child for his mother or an animal for its owner, we will really begin to be those who learn how to live our lives “incarnadine,” bathed in the blood of Jesus so that those around us will be filled with a sense of the presence of Jesus. A spirit-filled life is a life of strong faith. Jesus was able to do everything well because He knew who He was and He knew who His Father was. When we know those things, we will see our faith soar. We will learn to wait on the Lord and see His great and wonderful way of caring for us and others. We will truly learn what the scripture means when it says, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:28-31, ESV) Let's look for people who are interested in learning to fly.