More about Mustard (by my mom, Beth Smith)

Back in my day, teenagers, including me, were wearing mustard seed jewelry, usually one tiny seed in a clear plastic ball attached to a bracelet or necklace. You were really in style if you had one! It came with a card that had Matthew 17:20 printed on it. Jesus said, “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.”

Well, personally, I didn’t move any mountains, but the mustard seed and the verse did help me learn that faith is important and powerful. I grew up thinking if things went well, I had faith. If things didn’t go well, it was my fault for just not having enough faith. That’s not true at all! The Amplified Bible describes faith as, “trust and confidence that springs from our belief in God.”

Maybe you’re thinking, “I guess I just don’t have faith.” If you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior, you do. The Bible says in Ephesians 2:8, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith.” (Don’t get a big head about having enough faith to accept Christ. It was, after all, God’s grace that gave you the faith to believe.)

2 Corinthians 5:7 says, “For we live by faith, not by sight.” The New Living Translation puts it this way, “We live by believing and not by seeing.” The world says, “Seeing is believing.”  The spiritual world doesn’t work that way. First we must believe, then we’ll see. Our aim is to trust God and his Word without demanding any other evidence.

But how in the world do we do that?

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17 KJV). When we really know who God is, we can believe. We find out who he is by reading his Word and spending quiet time with him in prayer.

In Matthew 14:28-31, Peter walked on water, but then he felt the wind, became frightened, and he began to sink. Jesus reached out and saved him and said, “Oh you of little faith. Why did you doubt?” We waver for the same reason that Peter did. We forget who God is and what he is like. Sometimes we stop thinking about him altogether. We forget that:

• He loved us before we loved him.
• He loves us all the time.
• Nothing can separate us from that love.

When we believe those truths, our faith becomes firm and grows just like the tiny mustard seed that, under the right conditions, becomes a mighty tree.

So, grow your seed! Be rooted in a healthy understanding of God’s love and grace, watered by the reading of his Word, and fed by a constant practice of faith.

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness” (Colossians 2: 6-7).

photo credit: @jlanzarini via Unsplash.com