God is ENOUGH...mustard seed sized faith.

            God is enough…easy to say, harder to live out, at least for me anyway, I don’t know about you. I love the Lord. He is everything to me and if you’ve read any of my blogs before, you already know that about me. I cannot live in this crazy world without Him. I would never want to. However, I do not always live like I really believe this. Sometimes my faith is smaller than a mustard seed! Last night, during our mid-week service, one of our volunteer teachers gave us a message on that very subject, faith. He covered a lot of Scripture in a short time, he shared from personal experience, and he talked a lot about “mustard seed sized faith”. (that’s a tongue twister if you say it fast!) He even brought a bunch of tiny mustard seeds for each of us to see and touch. I am one of those hands-on kind of girls, so the seeds really helped to hammer things home for me. Holding something in my hand always helps me to grasp ideas or concepts a lot better.

            I wish I had a recording of the message so that I could just share it here, but I do not, so I’ll try to share some the things he taught us. I don’t think he’d mind me sharing. In fact, I’m sure he’d be glad I did. He started the message by saying that it is easy to believe that God exists. His glory is displayed all around us in His creation. (See Romans 1:20) He continued his message by saying that we cannot earn our salvation in any way. Jesus Christ already did that for us by paying for it with His own life, our job is to believe and accept Him as our Lord and Savior. It is DONE! He did it! Nothing we can do will save us, because it is by His grace and His grace alone that we are saved. I think our speaker wanted us to remember those facts before he broached the subject of faith. He wanted to us to think about Who we place our faith in. Good reminders.

            Next, he talked a bit about what the Bible says about faith. He shared several passages from Scripture about different people and their faith; the Centurion in Matthew 8, the official and his dying son, found in John 4, and the possessed boy in Mark 9. (Of course he also mentioned the faith chapter, Hebrews 11 and others) As we looked at these passages, he kept talking about faith the size of a mustard seed. He closed his message with some other thought provoking points. One thing stuck firmly in my mind…God is enough. He tied it all back to Matthew 17:20 and Ephesians 6:16. He reminded us that we need to take up the shield of faith each morning and he said that, “if God equipped us with a shield of faith that is the size of a mustard seed, then Satan’s arrows must be a lot smaller than we think they are. (He held up that tiny little seed and said that we only need a shield that big, or small). We give Satan a lot more credit than we should.” This statement made me think too. Do I give Satan too much credit? Do I really believe that God is BIGGER and that God is ENOUGH?        

            Our faith is a gift from God, and as my teacher friend said last night, “He gives us this gift just when it’s the right time to open it.” In other words, our faith is a gift from the Lord, and even if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, it is enough, and God will give it to us at just the right time. We will be able to open our package of faith exactly when we need to. Just like Thomas, in John 20, Jesus met him right at his point of disbelief; He will meet us right where we are too, with our tiny amount of faith and take us from doubting to belief, from questioning to trusting, and from fear or worry to a place of peace. He is enough!

            If we trust Him and place our faith in Him rather than in some “substitute” (you name your own substitute here…), He will meet us where we are. He will “water” our faith if we let Him and grow it from a mustard seed to a mountain sized faith. I’d like to close these reflections with some other Scripture verses that God has given me in these last few weeks. They are precious words from our Father about faith, peace, and worry. I brought home three little mustard seeds last night after the message and they are in the fold my Bible, right in the middle of some of these very verses. I picked up the little seeds this morning and was immediately reminded of the message last night and of these verses and promises from our Father. I’m so grateful that He has blessed us with the gift of faith. I am so grateful that I do not need to be some spiritual giant in order to experience His grace and blessings. All I need is that little mustard seed sized faith! I have things in my life right now that are concerning me. Do you? I’m sure most of you do and I know that some of these challenges are bigger than the largest mountain, I know that these words sound so simple and I know it is easy to say and hard to do, especially when life seems so impossible to face at times, but, let’s agree together to take them all to Him in faith. He is the Great Provider. He hears us, He cares. He will answer and He will provide. We can trust Him. Thanks for reading. God bless you today with grace and peace.

“You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.” Isaiah 26:3

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” John 14:12

“In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” Ephesians 6:16

“He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:25-34

 “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”Hebrews 11:1