Mountains

Faith. It's a tough concept. What is faith? What is enough faith? How do you know how much faith you really have? Do you have any at all, even when you think you have it? How do you get it? How do so many people lose it?

The questions about faith are endless. 

One of the best measures of faith I think I hold onto is that faith is the measure of a man's confidence in God. It's how much you believe He is who He says He is, that He's doing what He says He's doing, that He can, that He will, that He wants to. It's how much you trust that He loves you, and that He is good. It's how much you're willing to stake your life on that. 

That's one definition of faith. But I think it's missing something. Because even all that...still falls short of what Jesus says faith is.

And this is where I get hung up.

Jesus says if you have even the tiniest bit of faith, if you have even the smallest measure of real faith, you could say to this mountain "Move" and it would move. You could say to this mountain "Fall into the sea" and it would fall into the sea. And for all the people I know in my life who have ever had, to me, any measure of faith, not a one of them has moved a mountain. For all the times in my own life I have felt my faith strong, I haven't, either. No one, in the history of the world, has ever moved a mountain. 

Most of us, we're left standing in front of our mountains, like Israelites at the feet of Sinai. We hear the thunder. We see the fire. We know God is there...somewhere. But there's too much mountain for us to get there. We start wandering around, kicking the dirt, trying to figure out what to do to get the God we know is there to come down here and to move that mountain so that we can see the Promised Land. But it's never so easy. It never seems to come down to simply how much we believe. 

So what, exactly, is this thing called faith?

I want to say I have some wise words on this. I want to say I know what faith is, how a man gets it, how much he's supposed to have. I want to say that on the days I feel most faith-full, that maybe I understand. That maybe I'm starting to get somewhere near to what faith really is. That the absolute confidence I have in God - that He can, that He will, that He wants to, that He is - is something. But if I take the words of Jesus seriously, it's not even the tiniest thing. It's not even the smallest of faith that I have, even when it feels abundantly so. Because I've never moved a mountain. Nobody...has ever moved a mountain. 

Maybe it serves to remind us just how big our God is. Maybe it serves to show us how small we truly are. If we can fill ourselves with a thing called faith and still not have even the smallest measure of it, how much greater is our God than our understanding? How much bigger is He than our imagination? It's not a tremendous comfort at the foot of the mountain, but it does lend perspective to the foot of the Cross. 

So I don't know. I don't know what this faith thing is, but I'm looking for it. I don't know how to move mountains, but I'm trying. And when I can't move mountains, I guess I'm content to stand at the foot of them and listen to the thunder and know...and know that my God is so much bigger than my mountains. And I may not move them, but He moves me. Maybe that's enough.