FAITH OF A MUSTARD SEED - Matthew 17:14-21

FAITH OF A MUSTARD SEED - Matthew 17:14-21
What Does it Say?  At the foot of the mountain, a large crowd was waiting for them. A man came and knelt before Jesus and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son. He has seizures and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. So I brought him to your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.”

 Jesus said, “You faithless and corrupt people! How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” Then Jesus rebuked the demon in the boy, and it left him. From that moment the boy was well.

 Afterward the disciples asked Jesus privately, “Why couldn’t we cast out that demon?”

 “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”
How Does it Apply?  The reason the disciples could not drive the demons out was because they did not have enough faith in God's power.  They were operating in their own strength.  When God has given us ability to do something a couple of times, we may get overconfident and rely on our own strength rather than God's.  When we think we can do it and asking God is just a formality, we should watch out, we could fail, just as the disciples did. We can see what we are trusting in by how committed we are to pray and our courage to try new things.  Do we serve Jesus in ways that we know will be a failure if God doesn't do it or do we only attempt what we think we can do?  This passage says we can move mountains if we have even a tiny bit of faith.  God builds our faith as we depend on him and we see him come through.   The most important part of any work God has called us to do is to pray.  When we pray, our focus is drawn to God's power and away from our ability to perform without God's help.  It keeps us humble and God's work gets done God's way.