Things get tough sometimes and it’s in those times that we need our faith to be strong. We want our faith to be strong. And yet all too often, we become downcast and afraid. We lose the plot, just when we need the sort of faith that moves mountains.

You know something – I’m really excited today – because today on the program we’re kicking off a four-week series on faith. I’ve called it – Having Faith that Moves Mountains.

See Jesus once said to His disciples:

Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:22-24)

Now, if you take Him at His Word – and I’m one of those crazies who absolutely do – then this is an outrageous statement. Right? Does He really mean that for you and for me?

I mean, I for one have believed until I burst for something and I didn’t happen. And I’ve seen people who take this whole faith thing way to far, believing for outrageously selfish things.

And yet, this God who sent us His Son – He talks a lot about faith. And the only sort of faith He seems to talk about is the sort of faith that, well, moves mountains.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that. So if you’re up for it, let’s kick off a few weeks just chatting and exploring and let’s see what we come up with.

I visited an elderly man recently who was in the last few weeks of his life. He was dying of cancer. I’d spoken to him on the phone a few weeks before – this is what he said, “Well I’ve believed in Jesus most of my life, but … I’m not sure where I’m going when I die.”

Well, what an amazing time that was. I’d frankly felt a little uncertain about visiting him. “This whole ‘pastoral thing’ isn’t really my strong point,” I was telling myself as I pressed the doorbell. He showed me into his lounge room. He sat in his favourite soft chair over in that corner, me in a dining chair on the other side.

As we began talking, I looked down at his feet – he was wearing a pair of slippers, both of which had holes in the toes. My immediate thought was, “Oh, he needs new slippers.” But then it struck me. At this point in his life, the very last thing he needed was a new pair of slippers.

As the time passed, I felt more and more at ease in his presence. Whereas before, I’d been wondering what if anything useful I could share with him (a preacher, you can tell!) as the moments ticked by I was overwhelmed with a sense of deep privilege at being allowed in this place with him. It was such a special time.

The last thing he said to me as we shook hands on the front porch in the bright sunlight, was a confident, “We’ll meet again. But not here.” Sometimes, it’s just a little encouragement that we need to discover that the seed of faith that God’s planted in our hearts, has in fact grown into a mighty tree.

And that’s exactly what he needed. Not sage words of advice, or a sermon on faith. Just the quiet assurance that comes when we rediscover the faith within – a faith that had become clouded by the deep cares of the present.

Because that’s what had happened to him. He’d been walking all his life with his faith in Jesus. As long as he could remember he told me. But with cancer ready to take his body, all of a sudden, the realities of his circumstances started to take over.

I wonder how you and I will feel when one day, we don’t need new slippers anymore. I wonder how we’ll confront the greatest reality of all – that one day, we will breathe our last breath on this earth. How healthy will our faith be when on that day, the things that we struggled so hard for, the things that we always took for granted, the things that somehow we’d duped ourselves into believing would be for ever, don’t matter anymore.

Ever wondered why we need faith? For me, beginning at the end brings it into sharper focus. It’s not just death that we have to confront one day, all of us. But life. Today, tomorrow, next week, next year. Everyday life. And in that life that you and I lead, we know all too well that there are things that happen that are bigger than us. Things that overwhelm us. Things that are outside our control. Every day we face challenges. Every day things happen that can rob us of the confidence to live life.

It seems to me that the central reality that demands faith is this:

That there are things out there, outside our circle of control or influence, things that sometimes we can’t even see and don’t even understand, that can impact negatively on our interests.

On our health, our wellbeing, our finances, our career prospects, our relationships. On our very lives. You name it – any hope, any dream, any desire – and there’s something lurking out there that can rob us of the good things that in our heart of hearts we have planned for ourselves. And they don’t have to be particularly selfish or self-centred plans either. Just the ordinary, everyday, very reasonable things of life.

Sometimes, they’re even good things. The dreams that we have in our hearts to serve the Lord. The deep desire we have to be part of His plan for this world. No matter what it is, there are inevitably things out there that can rob us of what we have planned. And those “things”, they show up in a number of different ways.

They can show up as fears and worries. We brood over the possibilities. They are after all, outside our circle of control. We can’t control them. We can’t change them. We can’t fix them. So what we do is we worry about them. It’s our cheap substitute. And the more we worry, the more fear grips us and immobilises us.

They can show up as insurmountable obstacles or barriers. Things we just can’t overcome. That’s what happened to elderly gentleman when he started to focus on the reality of death that confronted him. Doubt snuck in under his guard.

They can show up as challenges that we would love to meet, but can’t. Have you ever had this sense that ‘I should be able to do this, but …’ The salesman preparing to make that big sale who’s afraid to pick up the phone to make the appointment.

They can show up as a deep sense of inadequacy. The man addicted to pornography who try as he may, simply can’t break the cycle of shame. So he lives in his secret shame. The woman who deep within the fibre of her very being knows that she simply isn’t good enough and, what’s more, she never will be.

They can show up as deep regrets from the past. That bad financial decision. That divorce. That abuse. So many people for whom the past destroys their present and robs them of their future.

And here’s what I know – for each one of us as there are one or two of those that resonate deeply. And as we each examine our hearts and look into those darker recesses that we try not to look into too often, there’s an ache. A cry of our hearts that goes something like this:

If only. If only I could be set free from these things. If only those things out there outside my control, those things that I’m afraid of, those things that can rob me of the good hopes and dreams and plans of my heart – if only I could be rid of them. How wonderful my life would be.

I can’t promise to take away all the difficult things in your life.  But you can be free of them.  Free by faith from the fear and the worry that comes with them.

We know that faith and freedom both start with the letter “f” – but did you realise that, well, that they’re two sides of the one coin. That no matter what our circumstances, faith sets us free from the worry and the fear that rob us of our freedom. Faith really does move mountains. 

Freedom is a commodity that many of us take for granted but if we stopped to consider it, we’d realise just how highly we value it. Freedom. But are we really, really free? That’s the question.

Jesus once had this to say on the subject:

“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

They answered him,

“We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

Jesus answered them,

“Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:31-36)

Isn’t it fascinating? Jesus said to those who believed in Him – “I will set you free.” And instead of thanking Him or shouting a “Hallelujah” they took umbrage with what He said. “We don’t need setting free – we’re not slaves.”

Isn’t that the case with us too? So many people – so many – living their lives following hard after the success that the world offers, imagining somehow that we’re free, when all the time, actually, we’re slaves. Slaves to this world.

We think that we’re citizens of this world. We behave as though this world is forever. We know it’s not true. Deep down, we know. But we behave as though it is. We live as though it is. We make our financial decisions as though it is. We make our career decisions as though it is. We treat people…as though it is. Because we want to believe that this lie is true. Oh no? Really?

Let me ask you about the last time you had a conflict with someone. The last major financial decision you made. The last time you splurged on something for yourself. The last time you …

How much did the eternal consequences of what you were doing weigh on your mind? Please don’t think I’m pointing my bony finger just in your chest. I’m holding a mirror up to my life as well.

Let’s imagine that you’re an Italian citizen (or American, or English, or Australian – whatever you are). That’s where your home is. It’s where your heart is. It’s where your life is. And for a time, you’re holidaying in the Maldives. Now, this is one of the most picturesque places on the planet. Sun, palm trees, sandy beaches. There you are, lapping it all up. And a real estate agent grabs you in the street and offers you the deal of a century. You can buy into this timeshare resort for only …

He takes you on a tour. It truly is fabulous. It is a pretty good offer. After all, I deserve it. I work hard. But you decide to sleep on it. That night, in your comfortable hotel room, you’re anything but settled. You want to buy in – it’s so nice, but something, something’s holding you back. Something is not quite right.

And then it dawns on you. This isn’t your country, you’re only visiting. Sure it’s nice. But it’s not where your home is. It’s not where your heart is. It’s not where your life is. You’re not Maldivian. You’re Italian. Or American. Or English. Or Australian. Whatever you are.

You decide not to buy into the timeshare. And it’s the right decision. Sure it’s a nice place to visit, but you don’t belong here. If you bought into this thing, it would just never feel right. It would end up being like a millstone around your neck. That’s exactly the point about our life here on earth. We’re here just for a time – but it’s not our permanent home.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philippians 3:20)

The reason so many people are slaves – is because they’ve bought into the citizenship of this earth. There’s a new word that’s crept into the English language. Short-termism. It describes the reality that so many people spend so much of their lives thinking about the next plasma TV screen or the next jewellery, and then they end up spending time worrying about the debt they’re in. And so they’ve forgotten how to be free. We’ve forgotten how to dream. How to live. How to hope.

I have a beautiful park that I go walking in often. I love the exercise. And this park – it has trees and fields and lakes and swans and flowers and … it is one of the most beautiful places you would ever want to go walking. And I realised after a while that as I was walking, concentrating on my stride, I spent most of my time looking down at the pavement instead of up at God’s beautiful creation. What a waste! Don’t you agree?

So why is it that so many people are living their lives like that? In slavery rather than freedom. Now what does this have to do with faith? Not a bad question. We do seem to have digressed a little. But if that’s the question that you have rolling around in your mind just at the moment, here’s my answer: EVERYTHING. Absolutely everything.

Because if the truth be known this is how most people live their lives. As slaves to the here and now. As short-termists who can barely see past the end of their noses. Conditioned by the advertising industry to react to this music and those images and that colour and this smell that the pump through the store to induce us to buy, buy, buy into a world where we really don’t belong.

And then – here it is, here’s the link – then when we reduce faith to being something that gets us out of the debt we’re in so that we can go spend some more. I think we’ve missed the point. We bring God down to our level instead of lifting our eyes up to His – and then we wonder why this faith thing isn’t working so well. Hello?! I have heard faith reduced down to “Name it and claim it!” “Blab it and Grab it!” Isn’t that what Jesus meant when He said:

Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:22-24)

Didn’t He mean that I could walk into the car yard and name it and claim it with that new Mercedes or that new BMW, not that there’s anything particularly wrong with those two brands. I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s what faith is about. In fact, I know that’s not what He meant. Because this is the same Jesus that said:

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Like 14:26,27)

That’s a statement that doesn’t sit so well with today’s consumer mentality does it? Nor this one:

Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it. (Luke 17:33)

In fact, the more you read of what Jesus said, the more you realise that either He needed a better spin doctor to help Him get His message out, or He never really intended to fit into our 21^st century consumerist, short-termism. Now – let me think, which one of those statements is true?

Have you ever found yourself walking around looking at the ground, instead of up at all the beauty that surrounds you? We can go through life like that. So sometimes, perhaps right now – we need a wakeup call. Maybe it’s time to raise our gaze. 

Jesus promised us that if we have faith just the size of a tiny mustard seed, we’d be able to move mountains. Crazy really, that couldn’t possibly work – and so, many of us decide to ignore that bit in the Bible. It’s almost as though we mentally cross it out. 

God tells us over and over again in His Word, the Bible, that we need to have faith. So you stop and think about that for a bit. Hmmm. “Well, if that’s going to work – God’s perfect so my faith has to be perfect … Hmm, it’s not. Oh well, there goes the whole faith thing!”

There’s an old saying – no man is a total loss, he can always be used as a bad example. Always makes me smile. This week and, for the next three weeks on the program, we’re talking about ‘Having Faith that Moves Mountains’.

And yesterday I made the comment that:

Our faith doesn’t have to be perfect in order to move mountains.

We always think we have to have perfect faith. Huge faith. We think that your faith has to be bigger than the mountain. Of course, that’s logical, problem is, it’s not true.

If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain be lifted up and cast in the sea … the size of a tiny, tiny mustard seed.

Now today, I want to drive this point home because as much as I say this, we still want to go back, fall back into the same old deception that actually, to move this mountain, my faith has to be bigger than the mountain. Right?

So, I want to introduce you to a man called Abraham. Maybe you already know him. He had faith. God did amazing things – but Abraham’s faith, well, it was far from perfect!

Abraham was the father of Israel. You can read about him from Genesis Chapter 12 and onwards. He was seventy-five years old, his wife Sarah was about the same age, and God called them out on an amazing journey of faith.

But Abraham was also human. Very human. Very imperfect. In fact, he was and is a case study in imperfection. Now Paul, amongst other things, says this of Abraham:

Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations,’ according to what was said, ‘So numerous shall your descendants be.’ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ (Romans 4:18-22)

Wow! He didn’t weaken in faith. No distrust made him waver. Here we go again. Another impossible super-Christian that I’m not! As I said we’ll come back to Paul’s assessment of Abraham’s faith later. But right now, we’re going to take a quick walk through the story of Abraham. And my hunch is that as we take a closer look, it will make your spirit soar too!

There is no doubt that Abraham was a man of faith. Of course he starts the story with the name Abram – which means exalted father”. What a joke. Seventy-five years old. And his wife Sarai is no spring chicken either just quietly. No children. No hope of children. And God comes along and says this to him:

‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

So Abram went, as the LORD had told him and Lot went with him (Genesis 12:1-4)

Now that is an incredible step of faith. He leaves the comfort and safety of his home, his family on the promise from God of great blessing. Land and children – the two symbols of blessing in the Old Testament. If you had those, you were blessed of God. If you didn’t, you weren’t. Abraham wasn’t.

He had no hope of having children at his age. He didn’t even have a Bible (because it hadn’t been written yet) or a pastor to run this by. He just went to follow hard after God’s Plan A for his life.

But then what ensues over the next 25 years or so … well, it’s best described as a comedy of errors.

You see time after time, Abraham’s faith wavered. Twice he sold his wife (the woman who was supposed to have his baby to fulfil God’s promise) into another man’s harem. He put his life in danger trying to save his nephew Lot, whom he took on this journey on his own volition. He sleeps with a slave woman to conceive a son with her. He implores God, he complains to God – “What are you doing God?” He laughs at God even! So does his wife. After all, they’re both heading towards 100 years old. Still no baby! Twenty-five years they’ve been on this journey – this is crazy, right? Have a read of it Genesis Chapters 12 to 21. But at the end of the day, he gets his son. Isaac. Against all odds, against the completely, totally impossible, God blesses him.

Now it seems that Paul was looking at Abraham through rose-coloured glasses those 1900 years on. Remember what Paul wrote about Abraham…we looked at it earlier:

No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’

How can that be? How can Paul give such an apparently glib executive summary of this comedy of errors which was Abraham’s faith journey? Well we find the answer there in Paul’s letter to the Romans, Chapter 4, if we’ll take a closer look:

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. (Romans 4:13)

In other words, you and I can judge Abraham for what he did and didn’t do. But God will not. And the reason that He won’t is because Abraham believed. Granted, he did it imperfectly, but He believed. He had just the smallest amount of faith. And he used it the best way he knew how. He went out on the journey. He did his best. And that was enough for God. God wasn’t looking for perfection. In fact, as Paul points out, the Law hadn’t even been written back then. There was no Law for Abraham to comply with. That only came centuries later through Moses.

It wasn’t perfection that saw the promises of God realised. It was one man’s simple faith. This is what it says:

And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)

That’s just like you and me. When we put our faith in Jesus our right standing with God (our righteousness) comes through faith:

For ‘no human being will be justified in his sight’ by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:20-26)

It’s a gift called grace. And it’s not just for our eternal life, it’s for life here and now. It’s for all the mistakes we make along the way – with a heart to follow after God that sometimes grows weak. A heart that sometimes aches. Eyes that sometimes grow dim. Ears that sometimes grow dull.