Faith is the most powerful force known to man. Jesus told us that we can literally pick up a mountain and throw it into the sea (Mark 11:22-24) with nothing more than our faith. If we were to use a nuclear bomb, the best we could hope for would be to blow the mountain to bits. We would not be able to pick it up and throw it into the sea.
But there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to faith. In a conversation that I had some time ago, I was explaining to a friend of mine that I wanted to understand how faith works, and then explain it to people. His response was, "Faith is a mystery, and we can't understand it."
On the one hand, I understand what he's saying. There are things about how faith operates that are difficult to understand, and some things that we will never know (for more on that, please see my article: The Law of Sowing and Reaping). But having a better understanding of faith is essential if we are going to please God.
The first part of Hebrews 11:6 says, "But without faith it is impossible to please Him." Since we must have faith in order to please God, it makes sense that we must be able to have it. And further, it makes sense that we should be able to understand enough about it so that we can remove our doubts and have the kind of faith in God that will please Him.
But let me start this off by saying that much of this is just my current theory on how things work. When it comes to some of the technical aspects, realize that I'm not a scientist, and my understanding of some of this comes from watching programs on PBS and the Science Channel. So, keep that in mind.
This article is not meant to answer all the questions. When it comes to answers, my standard response is: "I don't have all the answers. As a matter of fact, I don't even know most of the questions." There is still a lot to learn, and I think that it's a lot of fun to go through the process of discovery.
Proverbs 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter." God doesn't conceal information so that we can't find it, He conceals it so that we will experience a greater sense of satisfaction when we find it, and so that we will place a higher value on the knowledge, understanding, and wisdom that we gain through the searching and finding, process.
Because we need faith in order to please God, I feel that understanding faith is one of the most important topics we can study. As we grow in our understanding of faith, and how it works, we should gain a greater appreciation for the power that is available to us. God has placed this power within each of us, and He wants us to use it for His glory.
Mark 11:22-24 says, "So Jesus answered and said to them, 'Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, "Be removed and be cast into the sea," and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.'"
One of the first things that I see in this verse is the magnitude of what Jesus is saying. He really does seem to be telling us that we can have whatever we want, as long as we believe that we can have it and don't doubt.
I know that some people interpret what Jesus said about moving mountains to mean a lot of different things. But even if we reinterpret what Jesus said about the mountain so that we can then decide what He "really meant," and make it easier for us to fit that interpretation into our concept of God, we would still have to do some mental gymnastics to get past "he will have whatever he says."
For the sake of this article, let's just accept that Jesus really meant what He said. He didn't have some hidden meaning that only a theologian can explain to us, but instead He used the illustration of a mountain to show us just how powerful faith can be. I tend to be in favor of a more literal interpretation of scripture, so that is what works for me.
But if this is true, one question that comes up in my mind is: How does faith move mountains? And I think that the answer to that question goes all the way back to the way God created the universe.
When God created the universe, Genesis tells us that He spoke, and things came into being. Whether you believe in the theory of evolution or creation isn't the issue. The important truth for us is that whatever mechanism was used, everything in our universe was created because God spoke it into existence. Hebrews 11:3 says, "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."
When it comes to the words that God speaks, His commands, Isaiah 55:11 says, "So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."
In other words, when God speaks, He speaks with complete and total faith that His words will do what He wants them to do. He never doubts. Which is different from how you and I work, because our minds are almost always full of doubt. I know that I have a long way to go before my faith will be such that I fully believe that I have whatever I say.
In Mark 11 Jesus told us we needed to "Have faith in God," but another way of translating that phrase into English is: "Have faith of God." I like to think that both ways of translating that phrase are true. We are to have faith IN God because He is the one who has given us our faith, and when we use it in Him, we will always use it in ways that glorify Him.
But I also like to believe that we are to have the faith OF God, in the sense that we are to have the same faith that our words always accomplish what we desire, and that they always achieve the purpose we have for them. This certainly seems to be what Jesus is telling us.
And I'll be honest; the thought that my faith can be that powerful really blows my mind. It's not surprising that people have tried to reinterpret what Jesus said, because this is hard for us to comprehend. We just have to shake our heads and say, "This does not compute." We can't believe that God would give this kind of power to sinful man.
One thing we do have to remember is: Man wasn't originally sinful. Ever since Adam sinned, we have followed our sinful nature, and gone from bad to worse. But when man was originally created and placed in the garden, so that he could tend it and cause it to be fruitful and multiply, he was free of sin. We have been cursed, and we now struggle in life, and one of the areas in which we struggle is our faith. So rather than experiencing the power of our faith, it, like the ground, brings forth doubt, or thorns and thistles, instead of its full strength.
Before I answer the question about how faith moves mountains, let me share a few things with you about my current understanding of some scientific theories that I find very interesting. Again, I am not a scientist, so my understanding is very superficial, and may be incorrect on some points, so I present this as an interesting way of looking at things, not as "the gospel truth." :-)
The first point is that everything in the universe is made up of energy. When Hebrews 11:3 says that the physical, visible, universe was created out of things that can't be seen, it is telling us that God turned energy, something that we can't see, into matter, something that we do see. And when we look at matter, even our own bodies, and we go down into the extremely small world of atoms and beyond, we see that everything is energy.
One of the theories that I particularly like is the String Theory. String theory tells us that everything in the universe consists of extremely small vibrating bits of energy. These strings vibrate at different frequencies, and the frequencies determine the function of the string.
We have to remember that this is all theory, but it is, nonetheless, quite interesting. If we assume that it is, at least in part, correct, it would explain a few things. For example, it could explain how the rocks and stones might have been able to cry out if the people had stopped praising Jesus as he entered Jerusalem (Luke 19:40). It would also explain how the mountains and hills could break forth into singing before us (Isaiah 55:12), and how all of creation groans because of the corruption brought on by man's sin (Romans 8:19-22).
So let's take a look at how this relates to us.
The activity in someone's brain, their brain waves, can be measured by connecting electrodes to their scalp. An EEG (electroencephalograph) picks up on the electrical activity that is caused by our thoughts, whether they are conscious or unconscious.
But even beyond the fact that we can measure them, we have probably all heard about picking up on someone's vibes. Whether it's a woman's intuition, or just a gut feeling, we have all experienced situations, or we've been with people, that gave us good, or bad, vibes. Women tend to be more sensitive to these feelings, but that doesn't mean that men don't experience something similar.
Just like the words that we speak, our thoughts reverberate into the universe. And not only can we pick up on them, but God hears them as well. How does God know what we need without even asking? He knows them because He knows our thoughts. They echo out into the spiritual, unseen world that is all around us. And because our thoughts and words are the expressions of our faith, they have an effect on our world.
The universe responds to our faith because God created the universe to respond to it. It responded to His words, His faith, and it responds to ours in a very similar way.
Let me also take a minute to talk about something that seems to be a hot topic these days, something called the law of attraction. The way I understand it, the law of attraction states that like attracts like, and that we can attract things into our lives by thinking the right thoughts. It is based on the same principles I've been talking about here, the fact that all of creation is energy, that we actually vibrate with frequencies that are determined by our thoughts, and we then attract those things into our lives that are in harmony with those thoughts.
And while there is some truth to this, mainly because of the way God created the universe, the "law" has a few problems when we look at it from a biblical perspective. The first one being that the law is only concerned about the universe, and not God.
The way most people teach this idea is that the universe, an impersonal force that seems to have a consciousness, but not a personality or will of its own is what responds to the vibrations of our thoughts. According to this law, the universe is nothing more than our personal genie that grants us our every wish.
And while I don't have a problem with people calling it the law of attraction, I really think that it's just faith at work. In Mark 11:23 Jesus said, "Whoever says." The ability for faith to effect the physical world, to move mountains, is something that everyone has. In Ephesians 3:20-21 Paul says, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."
Unlike people who put their faith in the universe, our faith is in God. And while the universe may not really care what happens to us, God loves us and wants what is best for us. A God who works all things for our good, and who knows the importance of helping us add perseverance and persistence to our faith. And we know that it is His power that is at work within us, and that He is the one who gives us "immeasurably more" than we can even imagine.
And we also know that God's heart and desire is not to simply pour out his blessings on us for our consumption. God wants to continually increase the wealth and blessings that are in the world. The way He does that is to cause us to bear fruit, the results of our faith, our thoughts and words, thereby allowing Him to create more abundance through us. God is constantly turning energy into matter, constantly bringing greater blessings into our lives, so that we can be a blessing to others, and by serving others, share His blessings with them.
In order to find an example of this happening, all we have to do is look around us. As we look at nature, God's creation, we see how plants absorb energy in the form of sunlight and nutrients from their environment, and then convert that energy into matter in the form of stems, leaves, fruit, etc. We also see it when our bodies turn an ordinary donut into energy, realize that we aren't exerting enough energy to burn off those calories (which are a measure of the energy in the food), and then turn it into fat (more energy) which will be stored up for later...which for most of us is much, much later :-)
If we look at the example of a fruit tree, the fruit is produced so that some creature can consume it. And there is seed in the fruit that, when it falls on the ground, can produce more trees that will bear more fruit and feed more creatures.
The first chapter of Romans tells us that even the hidden things of God can be seen in what He created. So when we look at what He created, we see that God is constantly creating more. He is constantly adding to the abundance of our world so that more of His creatures can enjoy more of His creation.
When we act in faith and believe that God will bring us the things we ask for, we become part of this creative process. The result is that we create more for us, and everyone else, to enjoy. Everyone benefits and God receives all the glory. He gets the glory because He is the one who gives greater increase according to His power that He put within us, so that He could bless the world through us.
It's a wonderful system that guarantees that we will always have all that we want, and the world will always be able to sustain an ever growing population. The problem comes when we forget that this is the way God created things.
If we begin to think about scarcity rather than abundance, we start hoarding what we have, or even worse, coveting what others have, and the blessings stop flowing. We end up unhappy with what we have because we're afraid someone will take it from us, and we don't share what we have, which dams up the flow of blessings through our lives.
All around us is a spiritual reality, a spiritual universe that we cannot see with our eyes. It is the original energy that was here, and from which God created our physical universe. In the first chapter of Genesis, when God separated light from darkness, He created our physical universe out of the spiritual. He took what we can't see, pure energy, and converted into matter, what we can see, by His word.
So how does faith move mountains? It moves them because it is the most powerful force in the universe. It was the very force that created the universe, and the universe responds to it. It actually moves the mountains by working at the level of pure energy, the level of pure spirit, which is greater than anything in the physical universe.
Our words and thoughts, mixed with faith, resonate out into the spiritual universe, which responds by turning that energy into physical things. And it usually moves into form by working through existing channels of supply. What I mean by that is that God can simply move a mountain, or turn a couple loaves of bread and some fish, into a feast for five thousand. But what He does most of the time, what we observe in nature, is that He works through what is already there. He causes events and people to come into our lives, and they bring us what we have prayed for.
Can God answer us out of thin air (spirit), out of pure energy? Yes, but He wants to continue the creative flow of energy through what is already there so that all of creation can take part in the process and receive benefit from it.
And as I finish this up, let me talk a bit about faith itself.
Hebrews 11:6 says, "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." Faith is first, and foremost, a belief that God exists. But not only that He is "out there somewhere" but that He is who His word, the Bible, reveals Him to be. He is love. He loves us and gave His Son for us, and now freely gives us all things through Jesus. Which is the second part of this verse.
Not only do we believe that God exists, and that He is who His word says He is, but also that He rewards us. He allows us to be partakers in His creative process through our faith in Him. By doing that, we become a blessing to the world, and we are blessed.
Psalm 67 is one of my favorites. I like it because it says that the world will learn about God through us as He is merciful and blesses us. It tells all the people that they are to praise God and sing for joy, because when He judges and rules the world, He will do it with righteousness. And it concludes with: "Then the land (or the earth) will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us. God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear him." (Psalm 67:6-7)
When we use our faith and become part of God's ongoing creative process, the earth will yield up its harvest to God, He will bless us, and all the earth will fear Him. May our eyes be opened to see God's plan and His heart, and may we receive His blessings so that the world will see His salvation.
========================
If this article has blessed you, please take a moment to donate to this site.
Get two chapters from my book, Taking On Goliath for free when you sign up for my free newsletter. Click here to sign up today.
Recent Comments