GROWING SEEDS: "What Is FAITH?"

 

What is FAITH?

 

Seriously.......what IS faith?  

 

I always thought when Jesus said, "If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'May you be uprooted and thrown into the sea' and it would obey you!" ......that He was speaking literally to His disciples.

 

First off, I hate mustard and didn't know mustard came from a seed.  Secondly, I've known a lot of people who I would consider as having a BOATLOAD of faith and I've never seen them verbally pull up a mulberry tree, or any tree for that matter, and throw it into the lake.  And if they had that much faith, wouldn't you think they'd want to do that??  Geeez.....I sure would!!  Kind of a "Show and Tell" type trick for your friends.....way cooler than me pulling out my web toes and showing everyone.

 

But as I read over the scripture text for this week, a light bulb (although dim) flickered on.  Faith is all about ACTION.  Faith is the actual "pulling up" of the mulberry tree and "throwing" it.  And sometimes.....that ACTION requires standing still and waiting.  I think, in some ways, that's the hardest kind of faith.  The John-the-Baptist-In-Prison-Waiting-To-Have-His-Head-Chopped-Off type of faith.  The kind of faith it takes when the outcome doesn't come as you think it should.  Terminal cancer.....loss of job.....loss of your head.

 

Faith that God's "got this".......that He will never fail you....He will never abandon you (Hebrews 13:5) and that He knows what's best for your life.  "Faith is the confirmation of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality." (Hebrews 11:1).  I say that Faith is that point......that air-space......when you let go of YOUR hand and grab GOD'S hand.

 

In God's world, our faith is so small that it's smaller than a mustard seed.  In our world, it's time to tell the mulberry tree,  “Be uprooted and plant yourself in the sea!” and then watch it go.