Mustard Seed Faith

This week, I will not limit God to the scope of my own faith.

Your faith doesn’t have to be a certain size, shape, or species in order for God to work in your life or ministry.

We have our heroes ... people we think of as having “great faith,” who can believe God for anything.

But when I face a difficult situation in my life or ministry, how much faith does God require before he’ll solve it?

In Luke 8, the church leader named Jairus fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house. How great was Jairus’ faith? If we look at his actions with a bit of emotional detachment, we might be able to say that his faith was not really all that great. He thought he had to have Jesus in the room with his child in order to get healing for her.

A woman with the chronic bleeding, however, came up behind Jesus in the same scene — and did nothing more than touch the edge of his cloak. How great was the woman’s faith? Huge. Mark 5:28 tells us that she said to herself, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”

Between the two of them, Jairus and the sick woman demonstrate that Jesus can meet my need regardless of how great or small my faith is! In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says all I need is “faith as small as a mustard seed.”

Real faith says, Jesus can work a miracle however he wants to. Jairus didn’t have the kind of faith that the woman had. Her faith didn’t include any preconceived notions about how Jesus was going to meet her need. She didn’t have the idea that Jesus had to come to her house, or that he had to go through any kind of routine or procedure. She just knew that her healing was going to come from him. Somehow. She didn’t know how. She only knew whom.

Do you have a need in your life or ministry that you’re asking God to meet? Do you have an idea how he could meet it? Have you got God in a box? Have you limited your faith to how God can answer your prayer?

Jesus can meet my need — or the need of my ministry — regardless of how I think it can or cannot happen!

My Prayer for the Next Seven Days... Lord, help me to trust you to meet my need. Help my unbelief. Build my faith! Or at the very least, please take what small measure of faith I have, and do your thing with it! Thank you! Amen.


Luke 17: 5-6
The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.