"If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain,
Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing
shall be impossible unto you." (Matthew 17:20)
Alan L. Barrow
THE disciples did a very sensible thing when they consulted Christ about their failure. Having explained to them their unbelief, the Lord made the astounding comment to them that all they needed was "faith as a grain of mustard seed". This should come as a great comfort to us, for however modest we may be we surely feel that we can provide that amount of faith. When we [87/88] think of removing mountains, however, we may be puzzled unless, realising that the Lord Himself never performed that kind of spectacular sensation, we understand that what He referred to were not literal mountains but mountainous obstacles to the will of God.
The challenge to us is whether in fact we are seeing such movement, whether hindrances to God's will are being set aside by the effective use of our faith. After all, it only needs a tiny faith, faith as a grain of mustard seed. Jesus Himself said so. And the Bible gives us two helpful illustrations of little people with little faith who were most effective in this way.
"... a little maid ..."
The first is the captive girl mentioned in 2 Kings 5:2. She provides a very good example of a little faith, expressed in quite an unspectacular way. She gave no startling demonstration of mountain moving and yet she had a considerable effect out of all proportion to her own insignificance. From time to time the Bible gives us examples of people who were plunged into dreadful circumstances and yet demonstrated a faith which not only survived but flourished. With most of us, a relatively small adversity thrusts us into a deep depression in which our minds are filled with doubts and our vital faith in God is shaken to its foundations. This girl, however, with every reason to question divine love and power, continued to believe in a living God. She had been overwhelmed by calamity, carried away captive by Syrian enemies, in spite of the fact that she belonged to the Israelites who were supposed to be God's chosen people. It might have seemed natural and even inevitable for her to have abandoned all faith. She did nothing of the kind, but betrayed by this almost chance remark that her simple faith in the living God and His servant Elisha was quite unshaken. It was almost a casual remark that if only her master were where God could be met in Israel, all his problems would be solved. Now she must have prayed for her own deliverance and got no answer. In matters of her personal well-being there was plenty in life to suggest that if indeed there were a living God, He was either not interested or not able to meet her need. But, instead of becoming embittered with her lot, she never questioned the fundamental fact that if Naaman were to visit Elisha, he could be healed.
She represents a challenge to us all. We are not in slavery as she was. However difficult our circumstances may be they must surely be preferable to hers. Moreover we have all been grounded in the basic knowledge that men can find their needs met if only they will turn to Christ. Can we forget ourselves, as she did? Can we make it apparent to all that we have unswerving faith in an all-sufficient God? Do we communicate what we know to others? Let us remember that this lass was a nobody. It was not a sense of personal adequacy which prompted her words. She did not speak formally, as though preaching. She simply expressed by her demeanour and by this 'throw-out line', that she had complete confidence in the power of the living God, and was content in quite a spontaneous way to be a living link between Him and others. There was no question of the quantity of her faith, but only of its quality. It was like a grain of mustard seed in that it was living, though very small. And the result was that Naaman was not only physically healed but spiritually converted.
