Sadly, we American Christians aren’t known for our prayer. So when we come across Jesus’ teaching on prayer, we’re left either confused or frustrated. “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed,” Jesus told us, “you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt 17:20). That’s an astounding promise—so astounding, in fact, that I think most of us just don’t believe it.
Our unbelief is, in one sense, understandable. After all, many of us know what it’s like to ask God to move a mountain, only to have it stubbornly sit there, immobile. If we’re honest, few of us even look for God to move mountains; we’d be satisfied with our prayers leading God to move an anthill. But even that seems foreign to our experience.
When our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears, our natural response is to assume something is wrong with us. Maybe we don’t have enough belief. Maybe we need to work up a little bit more feeling to qualify as “mustard seed” faith. But faith isn’t simply a positive emotion toward God. It’s not some presumptuous optimism that God will give us what we want if we just believe hard enough. No, in Scripture, faith is a response to what God has revealed. So if you want to pray in faith, discern what God has revealed, and then ask him for it.
God reveals himself through his Word. So if we want him to move mountains, we need to first look to the Word to find out which mountains he wants us to move. The more we ground ourselves in his revealed promises, the more we can pray with boldness. The prayers that are heard by heaven are the ones that start in heaven.
The church in the U.S. desperately needs to awaken to the spectacular truth that when we pray, God goes to work. Too many of us hide behind God’s sovereignty: “Well, it’s all in God’s hands, so I’m sure he’ll work everything out.” But for the great men and women of faith in Scripture, God’s sovereignty didn’t prevent them from praying; it moved them to pray. Why? Because prayer is the sovereignly appointed way that God does his work.
Is there a mountain in your life, something so imposing that only God can resolve it? It may be a broken relationship, an increasing pile of unpaid bills, an unfulfilled ambition. It may be your peers at school, mocking you for maintaining your purity. It may be your family, scoffing at your newfound interest in Christ.
Our society increasingly tells us that our faith is on the brink of destruction. “You can’t possibly maintain a Christian confession these days. The church is on the decline in the West. The Bible’s teaching is backwards and repressive. You’re on the wrong side of history.” It often feels overwhelming, a mountain too tall for us to move.
When you feel like giving in to those voices, think of how God has blasted mountains in the past. We serve a God so powerful that oceans split in two at his word and entire armies fall dead with one swing of his arm. Our God can do more while we sleep than any of us could do in 10,000 lifetimes.
And remember: the mountains are nothing new. Our society today tells us that Christianity is dying, but they aren’t the first. In 303 AD, the Roman Emperor Diocletian went on a rampage in an attempt to stamp out the church. He ordered that every Bible be burned. He fed entire families to the lions. Yet within a century, Constantine became a Christian and established Christianity as the religion of the empire.
In the 16th century, a group of people known as the Huguenots were fiercely persecuted in France. The government tried to kill them, thinking at one point that they had completely eradicated them. But the Huguenots survived, and they grew. Today a monument stands in their honor, saying, “Hammer away, you hostile hands; your hammers break, God’s anvil stands.”
In the 18th century, the French atheist Voltaire famously said that within 100 years of his death, no one would even remember the Bible. Yet as he died, he cried out, “I am abandoned by God and man…I would give half my fortune for just six months more!” And today, in one of Voltaire’s homes, sits a Bible-printing press.
In the mid-20th century, the Chinese Communist revolution tried to stamp out Christianity. But today Mao Zedong is dead, the Communist movement is fading, and the church is growing faster in China than it ever has at any time in history.
Hammer away, you hostile hands. The hammers break, God’s anvil stands.
God will build his church, and the gates of hell will not be able to stop it. Persecution can’t stop it. Atheist philosophy can’t stop it. Communism can’t stop it. Islamic terrorists can’t stop it. Secularism can’t stop it. Cynical professors at your college campus can’t stop it. God’s glory will cover the earth, and he will redeem people from every tribe and tongue on this planet.
As Martin Luther famously wrote:
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.
Our helper he amidst the flood, of mortal ills prevailing.
And still our ancient foe, doth seek to work us woe!
The body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still.
His kingdom never faileth!
That was true then; it’s true today; it will be true tomorrow.
Do you have something in your life you believe God wants to do? Is there a mountain between where you are and what God has revealed in his Word? Do you feel the hammer of the world beating down on you? All is not lost: get on your face and confess your belief in the God whose kingdom never fails.
