When I was a little girl I always wondered what the point of moving a mountain was. I saw this verse very literally and believed that God could move a physical mountain to a different place if I had faith the size of a mustard seed but I never really got why he would want to. It is only as I have got older that I have realised that a mountain is a metaphor for our situations. The mountain is the problem in your life. A mountain is anything that is a barrier to you completing God's Will. A mountain is anything that is slowing down or getting in the way of your progress in the Kingdom of God.
You may find yourself daunted by your mountain. You may find yourself circling around it wishing and praying that someone would move it, but you will never find your place here. If your mountain is a hindrance to you moving into the things of God you have to GET UP and tell it to move.
I found myself at the foot of two mountains, both seemingly immovable. My husband and I felt we had done everything to try and keep going, working around them, facing them head on, fasting, praying, believing wholeheartedly that God would step in. At the time I didn’t acknowledge these problems as mountains, they were problems that we believed God could solve. We were waiting on some miracles and then one day we day we thought that we had received one. The relief I felt was immense. I cried out of relief and thankfulness and belief that God had done all that I had asked him to. A week later our dream was shattered and the miracle was not there anymore, it was a mistake. I hit the bottom but at the bottom I was reminded of the power of the resurrection and I got up again.
For the first time I saw our problems as mountains. There were two and to us they were big. We couldn’t climb them and I did not want to stand at the foot of them. I recognized that I could tap in to the power of the resurrection and I was desperate for these mountains to move. I couldn’t see clearly and I was so distracted from the will of God and who He wanted me to be that I had to do something about it.
I was reminded of the verse: “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you”.
So I sat at the top of my stairs and something stirred in me and I began to whisper “Move!” God knows what our mountains are and ours felt very big to me at that moment, but nevertheless I carried on “Move!” “Move!” The thing that was stirring in me turned into something much louder than a whisper and I started to speak it out “Move!” “Move!” “In the name of Jesus move!” “Move!” Imagine the scenario, what must the neighbours have thought? But in the end I didn’t care, and an anger against the power of hell rose up in me and I screamed louder, “Move! Move! MOOOVE!” and then, after a few minutes, a peace descended on me that I can’t explain. In my minds eye, I couldn’t really see the mountain any more. It was vague and hazy, and the thing that seemed so big didn’t feel quite as big anymore. I saw that God was uprooting it. My outlook changed and I felt lighter. He was moving it and I believe that by faith I moved a mountain that day. As the days unfolded I recognized it was not there anymore.
God is moved by faith. I don’t understand why sometimes He moves mountains and other times it seems like He doesn’t. If it looks like He hasn’t think about what you can do, have you spoken to it? Have you told it to move? Do you really believe it can move or are you comfortable at the bottom of it because it provides you with an excuse as to why you are not moving forward? Some people describe the mountain in full detail to God and ask Him to move it. Maybe the reason that we are told to move the mountain is because it is us who view it in this way, we are causing the blockage between us and God with our blurred vision. I am not saying don’t pray about your problems, of course you should, but when there is a mountain it is worth telling it to move. When you do it, don’t look at the mountain, look through it to what is beyond. Look into the eyes of Jesus because He is the one who will move it. I believe He can move mountains, I have seen it, but you have to tell it.
If you don’t talk to your mountain your mountain will talk to you. It will tell you it can’t be moved: It’s too big. The mountains in my life seemed immovable and the devil kept telling me that God wasn’t going to do what I hoped for. He is a LIAR! He doesn’t know the future. The truth is he is scared that God will do exactly what we ask in faith and he loves to tell us it can’t be done, that it is impossible, that God doesn’t love us enough, that we are not worthy of a miracle, that the sin we committed isn’t really forgiven. He is a LIAR! God is the only one who knows the future but we can see glimmers of it in faith when we look beyond the mountain and we can be confident that beyond the mountain is the goodness of God. So don’t listen if your mountain talks to you, it will bring doubt and anxiety. Don’t stand there looking at it. It will overwhelm you and overtake you, but speak to it, shout at it, command it to move in Jesus’ name.
The interesting thing for me is that over a period of three or four days I went from hitting the bottom of the ocean, to tapping in to the power of the resurrection, to moving a mountain. My circumstances did not change. They still remain but the mountain, the blockage, moved. I can see more clearly now what is on the other side of the mountain, in fact most days I can see that more clearly than what is actually in front of me.
“Faith apprehends as real fact what is not revealed to the senses, it rests on that fact, acts upon it and is upheld by it in the face of all that seems to contradict it. Faith is real seeing.” (Vincent)
Faith is real seeing. Even when everything seems to contradict it we can be upheld by faith that our God is a God who moves mountains. I like the part where it says, “acts upon it!” Act as though your miracle is on it’s way. Get ready because God is moving. Make plans in faith that your mountain will not prevent you from moving forward. Make a decision to move. Get up and move!!! You do it! No-one else will move that mountain for you. You do it and keep looking to what is next.
Interestingly when our mountain has gone we have some choices to make. Are we going to let ourselves go back there? Will we keep going even though our circumstances haven’t necessarily changed? We must be obedient to Jesus. We have to learn to be obedient to Him and yield everything to him. The mountain is the blockage and when it’s gone are we able to yield our miracle? What I mean is, are we able to submit to God and say, “Whatever you want me to do I will do it, even if I don’t get what I want in the timing that I want?” He will work all things for good and He can be trusted. In his letter to the Philippians Paul writes in chapter 4 verses 11-13 “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.”
Paul shows us that it is possible to be content even if our circumstances are not as we hoped they would be. We can settle and find peace if we move our mountains, the things that are a blockage between us and God, and we can move forward into His will with faith and confidence that all things are possible and that we can do ‘all things through Christ who strengthens’ us. Tell your mountain to move and then learn to be content to be in God’s will. That is where our place is and it is the best place to be.
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