Highlighted New Testament Bible

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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

St Matthew, Chapter 17, verse: 19c, Faith to move Mountains.

Our paragraph topic is:  (Why the disciples could not cure him) Part 3.

Try as they might the disciples were not successful.  They were unable to remove the demon from the child.  The father begged them.  They tried all they knew.  They remembered that Christ had given them powers to cast out demons as they entered the towns and villages going before him.  But this was different and they did not understand why.  Christ had given them powers to do the work and now that the work was completed they did not have the power.  They could not cast out this demon.  What was different?

Did they not continue to have the power?  Was the power taken away?  Was the power only temporary?  What was happening?  They asked Christ why and he told them of their little faith.  He told them that even though he had given them the power to cast out demons in his name they lacked faith.  Their faith was so empty that it could be compared to that of a mustard seed.  Yet with only a small amount of faith, the size of a mustard seed even, they could move mountains.  He told them:  "You will say to this mountain,
'Remove from here'; and it will remove."

How do you say to a mountain 'Remove from here?'  How do you mentally speak something that mentally you know is impossible?  How do you begin to believe that such a thing is possible?  We dream, we fantasize, we create heroes and monsters in our minds and bring them to life in the movies and in books and magazines and they are capable of doing the impossible.  But all this, we know, is only fantasy, make believe, wishful thinking.  All those dreams and desires and impossible things that we would like to happen in our lives and in the world, are only ideas and thought within our heads.  We do not envision that we will ever have the power to do the things that we dream of.  Yet they are the desires of our hearts, things that we would like to do, powers that we would like to have. 

We have read the stories in the Bible where Moses parted the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to escape from the Egyptian armies.  We have read about the Manna from heaven.  We have read about the water that came from the rock.  Do we believe in the stories that we read about in the Bible or are they just fiction?  Our minds have sought to make sense of the miracles that we have read.  Even through scientific evidence, we have attempted to prove these things happened naturally without the intervention of God.  So we fall short of true belief, fall short of true faith, and have not the faith of a mustard seed because of what our physical belief tells us is impossible.

I have not tried to speak to a mountain to have it moved.  I have not tried to do things that would seem unnatural.  But I know that I have faith.  I know that I am loved.  I know that the spirit of Christ lives within me.  And I believe that through Him nothing is impossible.  Will I try to prove it?  Do I have to prove it to know that it is possible?  Do I have to see with my own eyes, to feel with my own body, to smell with my own sense of smell, to know that it is possible?  No!  But that does not stop me from knowing that I have the faith to believe with certainty, with the faith of a mustard seed, that all things are possible with God.  And there is the difference.  We seem to know through our physical being but we lack the certainty to believe within our spiritual being.  For it is through the spirit that we have certainty.  It is through the spirit that we see who we are.  It is through the spirit that we transform ourselves beyond the physical being to who we are in the spirit. 

We are created in the image and likeness of our father.  He gave us life.  He gave us breath.  And he gave us the physical, to experience who we are in him.  It is not through the physical that we are.  It is not through our arms and our legs, and our physical ability that we exist.  It is only through the spiritual being that is within the physical that we are.  Are you dead to the spirit?  Do you not know that you are a spiritual being and not a physical being?  Can you not see the spirit within, to know?  Do you not have the light of Christ within you that you might


see who you are?  Come!  Walk with me on this journey!  Experience the truth of who you are.  Know the true light that is within you and you will see for yourself that you too can have the power to say to mountains to remove from here and it will be done for you.  Christ loves you so much that to experience his love will overwhelm you.  He is our desire.  He is our fulfillment.  He is our love, our protection, our provision.  Open the door and let him in.  Follow the path set before you and see the light within. 

Read the sign of the times! Read the Highlighted New Testament Bible and lift the scales from your eyes that you may see, that you may know, that you may find the truth of who you are in Christ. Read it as though you would read a good book, from cover to cover, and see for yourself. Do not study it in parts reading one passage and then skipping to another, but read it for understanding. Read it for knowledge. Read it for faith. Read it that your eyes may be opened, that your ears may hear, that your heart may be filled with the light of Christ. The Holy Spirit awaits you. Christ seeks to know you. Open the door and let him in.