Faith

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. (Mark 11:22 NIV)

I do not doubt that God has full authority in heaven. Nor do I doubt that God has full authority on Earth. I think the scriptures are very clear about this.  The context of this verse Jesus tells his disciples to have faith and by having faith they can speak and mountains will move.

Jack Hayford has great insight about this type of faith:

"The issue of faith is never founded on our ability to “move the mountain,” but faith in the Mountain maker. Visualizing a victory or working up a “feeling” of faith is a pathetic human attempt to get something to happen. Real faith lays hold of the Faith-giver (Eph. 2:8), who holds all power for every need, and trusts Him to answer our prayer as He promised He would do. As faith-challenging situations rise, turn to the Lord. He is waiting for you to call upon Him." (Jack Hayford)

Mountains (obstacles, struggles, sin, etc) in our life remain where they are because our faith is in our faith?  Jesus tells us not to doubt but I do not think the picture here is that we purge our minds of doubt and only through that purging will mountains move.  I have heard people mourn the fact that a loved one has died from a horrible disease because they themselves did not have enough faith for God to heal them.  Such thinking reminds me of Christopher Reeve's role as Richard Collier in the 1980 film 'Somewhere in Time'.  In the movie Collier is able to travel back in time through self hypnosis to meet his true love.  Collier locks himself in a room where he removes everything modern and replaces it with items that are period specific for his time travel.  It works until a single moment of doubt (Collier finds a penny in his pocket dated from the future) brings him back to his original time period.  Collier losses his true love because he was unable to remove all doubt that he was really from a different time period.

I do not think Jesus is telling his disciples (or us) that we can see the obstacles of our lives removed only if we discipline our minds to the point we remove all doubt.  I think the answer is in verse 24 where Jesus connects faith with prayer.  The evidence of mountain moving faith is connected to prayer.

I pray because I realize that my source of mountain moving power is not in me, but in God.  Prayer is my willingness to say 'God I need you in my life', 'God I want you in my life'.

Prayer is the faith moment when I believe that God has all authority in heaven, earth and over the mountains in my life.