Faith to Move Mountains

I have always loved mountains. Just looking at them fills me with a sense of awe. Mountains are stalwart sentinels, but take on vastly different guises with each turn of the season and movement of the sun. Ever-changing clouds wreath the peaks with rainbows and mist. Golden sunrises highlight their grandeur with deep shadows, the last remnants of the fleeing night. Sunsets silhouette the summits and halo them with fiery billows. Snow on mountaintops fascinates me since I grew up in a place where it was a novelty.

Recently, I had a chance to visit some beautiful mountains with my family. My mom and I even went on a crazy hike to a waterfall and descended the trail only as night fell across the land. Walking through a dark forest, barely able to see the path ahead of you, is a very surreal experience. I will never forget that hike.

Let me show you some of the pictures we took on the trip!

The First Day (featuring the moon, dragonflies, and a sibling)

She’s actually pointing at a dragonfly. We saw a lot of wildlife on this adventure!

The Second Day (featuring trees, waterfalls, robins, and butterflies)

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  Sunlight among the Ponderosas.

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  An arbor of trees over a creek.

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  A close-up of the creek!

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  A robin saying “hello”!

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  A Weidemeyer’s Admiral butterfly.

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  The mountain with pines and aspens at its base.

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  The moon on the way up the hiking trail.

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  The moon after sunset on the way down the trail.

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We didn’t take many more pictures during the rest of the trip, but it was a wonderful blessing! Something that I have been considering since I returned home is the idea of faith that can move mountains (Mark 11:22-24). When I was younger, I used to look at the mountains on the horizon and wonder if they would flatten or jump or move even an inch if I just prayed hard enough. As a practical youth, I never decided to try it. After all, what benefit would come from moving a mountain? It would probably cause a lot of bad things instead. I also secretly doubted whether the mountain would actually move at my request.

While I still don’t believe God wants Christians to go around leveling physical peaks, what about the mountains that exist in our own hearts? Perhaps it’s fear of the unknown, fear of taking a chance, fear of failure, or fear of what others may think of you. Perhaps it’s a mountain of shame that keeps you from moving on in your life, or anger toward someone who has hurt you.

Sometimes God doesn’t want us to ask for the strength to climb the mountains, but the faith that He will remove them. Trusting in God is hard when it looks like the world is out of control, but it’s all in His hands—and His hands are so much stronger and more capable than our own.

Instead of slipping and sliding as you scale a slope, step back and let God take control. Watch as your anxieties and burdens crumble away into dust. It might look impossible, like a child gazing at a distant peak and wondering how it could ever slide into the sea, but with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).

Ours is a faith that can move mountains, Christ-followers—never underestimate that.