Mountain Moving Faith

What a wonderful morning already. My name is René, one of the pastors here, and let's do some faith building. That is the name of our brand new series. You guys stoked about this? One person is over here. That was my mom. That is awesome. And listen, this is day one of our 40-day faith building experience here at Twin Lakes Church, and we thought we would start it off with something really cool.

If you are a first-time visitor at Twin Lakes, you chose a great time to be here because we are giving away lots of free stuff. For example, yeah, give it up for free stuff. Anybody excited about free stuff? That's good. Today you are all getting these brand new faith building books. I just finished writing these, and when I say I just finished, I mean this beautiful picture of the sunset that you see on the cover of these books. This is a picture taken by Amy Sweetman, our new graphics designer, and she took this last Sunday night here in Seacliff. So this is how hot off the press of these books are.

So every one of these, yeah, like give it up for Amy Sweetman. She's awesome putting this together. So you guys are gonna get this. It's got 40 daily devotionals, one-page daily devotional readings in it, and small group questions. They all tie into this small group DVD, and you can get this for free too. The book's free, the DVD is free, and the DVD has video lessons that are also available online at TLC.org, and these tie into the faith building series on the weekends and the devotionals, and we actually filmed these in our living room. And so all your questions about what the Schlippfler house looks like will be answered. It's a magical place, but you'll only see it if you're in the small group.

So get signed up today, and you can do that outside. And listen, if you're not signed up for a small group yet, there are so many opportunities. We've got small groups literally all over the county, north to south. We've got small groups in Santa Clara County. You can do it online. All you do is go to TLC.org, click on the faith building logo, and you can get all the small group materials and the videos online. Do a small group with your family that way if you don't have a chance to get the DVD.

And we have all sorts of special interest small groups. All the details are out there at the sign-up tables, but just for example, for the first time ever, we have a small group designed for people from a Jewish background because we had a couple of families come up to us a few weeks ago say, "You know, we're Christians. Our family's from a Jewish background, so we would love to interact with other families." And because it gives it brings a different dimension to the New Testament when that's your background. We said, "Great idea." And so we asked Dave Burns, who attends here at Twin Lakes, and he's a staff member up at Mount Hermon. You see him up here on stage sometimes playing piano. And we said, "Dave, you're from a Jewish background. Would you be willing to lead this group?" He said, "No, we forced him." No, he said, "Yes!" And so we got that started. Isn't that exciting? Aren't you guys stoked about that too?

All kinds of great stuff coming up. And of course, each weekend service also ties together to the book and to the small group lessons and to the memory verses the songs that Trent Smith is going to be teaching you tie into faith-building. Why? We want the next 40 days to be an immersive faith-building experience because we are in dire need of faith in our society today. Would you agree that our world is in a crisis of confidence right now? I mean, you turn on the news, you turn on the radio, and it feels like optimism is leaking and pessimism is peaking. You know what I'm talking about?

I mean, it's like there's this low background hum of just discouragement and even anger everywhere I seem to turn, everything I seem to listen to. And what's the solution? It's faith. Like we saw last weekend during the preview series, faith increases your joy and your hope and your confidence and your capabilities. Faith changes your future. So let's kick the whole thing off with week one this morning. Grab your message notes that look like this and let's talk about moving mountains through faith.

Let me ask you, do you have a mountain in your life right now that seems impossible to move? Maybe it's a mountain of illness, maybe it's a relationship with one of your kids or your spouse, maybe it's a mountain of some sort of an addiction or some challenge you're facing at work or at home. There's some mountain that just thinking about it, it seems so impossible to get around in your life. You're so discouraged. If Jesus were sitting right next to you and he had a chance to put his arm around you, what would he say to you about that mountain?

Well, you don't have to wonder because in one of the most famous verses in the Bible about faith, Matthew 17:20, Jesus says this, and we're gonna put it on the screen here and I'd love for us all to read this out loud. This is actually our memory verse this week in the faith-building series and it's also the verse we're gonna be studying this morning. So let's all say this together. Let me hear you. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, "Move from here to there and it'll move." Nothing will be impossible for you.

Now, what's that all about? Some of you are thinking, "That's like a great new rock knee Vince Lombardi pep talk in the football locker room, but it doesn't work." Some of you thinking, "I've tried this and it's not true." Some of you, perhaps like me when I was younger, actually did pray for Tahoe to move closer to Lascatus. I did for skiing purposes. Didn't happen. But more seriously, some of you have been praying about one of those mountains you just thought of and nothing seems to be changing. And you're going, "What? Why doesn't it work for me? What did Jesus really mean when he said this? Nothing will be impossible. Really does that mean I can launch myself off a ceiling and fly around the room here? If I only have enough faith and a little pixie dust, you know, what's this all about?"

Well, that's a great question. I have no idea. Let's close in prayer. No, just kidding. I think I know what Jesus was talking about and it's interesting because this is not some isolated saying of Jesus. You can't excuse this away by saying maybe the translators got this wrong. Maybe somebody misheard him. Maybe when they were writing the Gospels like they wrote it down. Let's just concentrate on things that were really important and just skip over this verse because we don't really know what this means. No, this is something Jesus talked about a lot.

Let me just show you a few of the instances. Mark 11, totally different setting. "Have faith in God," Jesus answered. "I tell you the truth. If you say to this mountain, 'Go throw yourself into the sea and do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will happen it will be done for you.'" Matthew 21, Jesus replied, "Truly I tell you, if you have faith and don't doubt, you can say to this mountain, 'Go throw yourself into the sea and it'll be done.'" Luke 17, in yet another context, he says something very similar. "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'll obey you.'" So this is not some obscure saying.

We can't look at Matthew 17:20 or the verses like it and go, "Wow, Jesus, you know, talking crazy again." Sometimes when he doesn't get enough sleep, you know, his filters are off. He says, "Weird stuff. Let's just focus on his other sayings." No, this is something Jesus said over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. This is something, there's some truth in here that's really important to Jesus that's essential for him to get across to you and to me. So what does it mean?

Well, this morning what I want to do is give you some kind of discovery channel moments is what we call them here and what we want to do is give you some historical background, some maybe lost or forgotten history that might help explain this and then we want to show you how this is gonna make an amazing difference in your life today. So let me start by asking you this. When Jesus says this, had anyone ever actually moved a mountain? Well, yes, and it dominated the landscape. Anytime they were in Jerusalem, the disciples would have seen it. Even today, if you go to Jerusalem, you can still see its silhouette from any of the hills in the city.

When I was there last year, I could see it from the opposite side of the Dead Sea, from another country, the country of Jordan. It's huge even after 2,000 years of erosion. It looks like a volcano but what you're looking at here, that was a mountain that a man moved. It's called the Herodium and you might remember we talked about this last fall during the Jesus Journey series. This was once just a small little mound, just a ripple really in the landscape and next to it there was a small mountain but King Herod, you'll remember that was the king, probably insane but very powerful, who ruled Judea when Jesus was born. He wanted that mountain moved.

He said, "Yeah, you know, I want to build a palace and I want my palace there, not there." And so what he actually did was he literally had thousands of slaves shave the top off the neighboring mountain and pour thousands upon thousands of tons of filled dirt on this mountain like a kid building a sand castle on the beach and then he scooped out the top so it looked like a volcano. Now you're just seeing the ruins here but in its glory there was a castle on top with a 10-story high tower but the point is when Jesus talks about moving a mountain, yet one person had done it.

The most powerful, most connected, most manipulative and conniving person that they'd ever known in their lifetimes. And by the time of Jesus, now Herod died when Jesus was just a little boy, but the mountain was still there and by the time of Jesus the phrase "powerful enough to move a mountain" became a common phrase used to describe the ability of any powerful and connected person. In fact in Jesus' day the Jewish rabbis used a phrase to describe people who were so clever, so powerful, so connected that they could solve seemingly impossible problems. They called them "Rooters up of mountains." You could find this in all the rabbinic literature often in the first century. That meant those guys could tackle any problem. They're not afraid of any problem.

And so Jesus is using this very familiar image of the mountain Herod moved and the saying it inspired, "A router up of mountains." And he's saying that kind of power, Herod-like power to tackle anything is child's play to God and to people who believe in God. Jesus says nothing will be impossible for you, but here's his twist. To be a "router up of mountains," you don't have to be like King Herod. You don't have to get any bigger or any stronger or any more powerful or any more connected or any more politically savvy or any cleverer than you are right now. The twist Jesus extends to the saying is all you need is faith.

Just a little bit in a God who was far more powerful than King Herod. He says you have that and you can tackle anything. You don't have to be afraid of anything. You don't have to be intimidated by anything. You can be a "router up of mountains" with faith in the mountain-moving God. Now let's drill down just a little further into the specific context of Matthew 17. I don't know if you remember a few weeks ago I told you the first part of the story. A desperate dad comes up to Jesus with his son, a little boy that Matthew describes as an epileptic. And in the Gospel of Mark which tells the same story, Mark adds some details that Matthew leaves out.

Mark says the boy was also hearing impaired, deaf, and mute. In the Old King James, "deaf and dumb." And so this is a kid who's facing some real serious challenges, right? He's an epileptic, he's hearing impaired, he's mute, and it gets worse. This dad comes up to Jesus with his boy and he says, "Lord have mercy on my son. He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples but they couldn't heal him." Now it tells me two things about this family. Number one, this dad and his son were very poor. How do I know that? Because they apparently had to huddle around open fires at night to stay warm.

Families with homes in Israel didn't have open fires in the homes. They had hearths. They had little clay furnaces to keep warm. But these guys had to be around an open fire and this boy often falls into the fire so that tells me they were poor. That tells me no money for doctors. Second thing this tells me is this boy was scarred physically. He fell into the fire, he was burned. And so you add to all of the impairments that he already had now severe ostracism in his society because you might remember that in Jesus' day the Pharisees that introduced a level of exclusivity to the temple and to go to the temple to pray or to get priests to pray for you, you could not have any physical deformity.

If you were physically disabled in any way you were not allowed to go up to the temple. So not only do they not have enough money for doctors, they cannot even go up to the temple to pray because this boy has burn scars. And so this poor dad who brings his little boy up to Jesus is desperate. He's out of options. He's facing an immovable mountain. He has nowhere left to turn. And so he goes up to Jesus and says if you can do anything take pity on us and help us. Now watch this. "If you can," said Jesus, "everything's possible for one who believes." And immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe. Help my unbelief." I love that verse. This is one of my favorite verses in all of the Bible.

Show of hands, how many of you can relate to this verse? I believe. Help my unbelief. You know, I know. Maybe. You know. I love this verse so much and I'm gonna be getting back to that verse today but Jesus heals the boy and the disciples go, "That's awesome but why couldn't we do that?" And that's when Jesus says, "Well because you have so little faith." And he says, "I tell you, you have mustard seed faith, you can move a mountain." So in applying this saying, which he said frequently, to that kind of household drama, a dad up against a financial and religious and medical obstacle with his little boy, Jesus is applying this saying to your daily life.

He's saying to you and to me, "Don't you ever be defeated by any mountain no matter how large it looms." Not a mountain of fear, not a mountain of failure, not a mountain of despair, not a mountain of discouragement, not a mountain of guilt, not a mountain of challenge. Don't ever be defeated by any mountain because that mountain can move. So I've got three questions for you. Flip your notes over to page two. Question number one is this. Do I believe God still moves mountains? Ask yourself, "Do I believe God is still in the mountain moving business?" Because you know after he says, "Faith can move mountains," in Mark 11, Jesus says this, "Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe." So that begs the question, "Do I believe this?"

Now as your pastor, I want to help you believe this. And so each week in this faith series, you're gonna be hearing more and more faith stories, some live, some on video, some I'm gonna be reading you. And this morning I want to read you some emails I've gotten about mountains that have moved right here at TLC. Eight years ago now, eight years, I preached a message on this verse and I said, "You know what? Pray about mountains in your life and then I'd love it if you would send me emails about how God moved those mountains." And I got to tell you one of the best things about being a pastor here at Twin Lakes Church is that for the last eight years I've gotten just a mountain of emails that I've put into a special folder on my desktop, on my computer, just encouraging folders about how God has moved mountains.

And I just literally at random on Friday just grabbed a couple of those emails and let me read some of those to you. These are mountains that are moving here. This isn't stuff that happened 2,000 years ago in the Bible. One man wrote, "I was in an electrical explosion when I arrived at the emergency room. The main doctor from the burn unit explained I would likely need skin grafts. Well about this time, news about my accident reached the prayer partners at Twin Lakes and I can almost tell you when that was because a feeling of peace came over me that I cannot explain. The next morning when that same doctor examined me, he asked if I was the same person that he had seen the day before. He was totally amazed at how well my arm looked and he told me I wouldn't have to have skin grafts after all. And then I told him, you know after I got to the hospital, Twin Lakes Church had started praying for me and he stared in disbelief and couldn't find any words to say. Isn't that awesome? You see healings still happen. God still moves mountains.

In fact say that phrase with me. Say, "God still moves mountains. God still moves mountains." Now sometimes he doesn't heal the disease. We all know that but he still moves mountains with provision. In amazing ways like this one woman wrote me, "After two major health issues in my husband's life within about a year, I was at church one Sunday in the parking lot thinking about how we were running short on funds. I prayed about it and the next morning after my morning walk, I found an envelope in my shoes on my front porch with ten one hundred dollar bills and the signature, "Love in Christ." God, say it with me, God still moves mountains.

Now sometimes when we don't believe that, no he doesn't, no he doesn't. You know why? It's because we have this image of God as sort of a grumpy grandpa. You know there's good grandpas who are very generous but sometimes there's grandpas that are like, "Kids these days have it easy and so they don't want to give their kids anything." Right? And we sometimes think God's kind of a grandpa like that. You know he doesn't want to give me anything but look what Jesus said, "If you then though you are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?" He's a good dad.

Now again this doesn't mean you always get what you want. I must still surrender to God's perfect will but even in that I'm confident he's gonna move a mountain. Let me give you an example. Look at Jesus Christ's perfect prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane the night he was crucified. This is from Mark 14. Let's just go through this line by line. Look at this. Jesus says, "Abba, Father," that's how he starts. You know what Abba means? Papa, right? Daddy. Daddy, Father. Dad. I mean that's pretty intimate, right? He's not a remote God. It's not like, "Oh, Galactic CEO," you know? It's, "Daddy, Papa, Father. Everything is possible for you." Man, he had faith that God could do, the Father could do anything. That's pure faith and then he tells him what he wants. "Take this cup from me." Even Jesus, you know, didn't want to get tortured and killed. Who wants that? Only a weirdo. Jesus didn't want it. "Take this cup from me." Yet, not what I will but what you will. He's like, "But God, you know, you're sovereign so you do what you want." Perfect prayer.

And now think of what happened. Did God take the cup from Jesus? No. Jesus was crucified on a cross, the most brutal execution method ever. But think of that cross. The cross has changed from a symbol of horror and torture and total despair that the Roman government would put up to just incite fear in the hearts of people. And that cross now has turned into a symbol of hope and love and joy. And probably hundreds of people here this morning are wearing crosses around their necks. How does basically the equivalent of an electric chair or a torturer's rack turn into a symbol of hope? Because God still moves mountains. And yes, Jesus died on that cross but he died to pay for your sins and for mine.

So now we can enter into the boldly into the presence of God forgiven by his grace. And then God rocked the stone from the tomb so that Jesus is alive and living and present with us today. This amazing way that God moved that mountain in ways none of us could have ever imagined. And he does the same thing today. Even through illness, even through death, God is able to change those things that bring despair and discouragement and he's able to turn even those things into things that he uses to bring hope and to bring new life.

So here's the deal today. Are you willing to trust God enough to start praying for some mountain in your life to get moved? Do you have that much faith? That leads right to question two. Ask yourself, if God could move one mountain in my life, what would it be? If God could move one mountain in my life, what would it be? What's your mountain? Just in the space there in your notes, just write something down. Write down what's your mountain? What's your big challenge in life? Maybe it's a work goal. Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe you just want to write down like the initials of the person next to you really, really small so they can't see it. I don't know what it is in your life but just kind of write down some reminder.

I'll help you. Maybe your mountain's your kids. How many parents do we have here today? Raise your hands. How many parents? Okay, you guys can relate to this. Maybe you feel like the worn-out mom. After church one Sunday there was this worn-out mom and her four kids are climbing all over the pews and causing a racket and somebody laughed and asked her, "So would you still want to have four kids again?" And she smiled and said, "Sure, just not those four. Maybe you can relate to that." But maybe your mountain is your marriage or maybe you're facing a mountain of financial pressure or maybe it's illness or maybe it's some other anxiety or school or work pressures.

I'll take a risk here and tell you what my mountain is. I almost thought I'm not going to talk about this all during the sermon because it involves the 2020 Vision Project and I thought I'm just going to talk about all of this at the little brunch that we're doing after the service. But I figured I'd just take five minutes to talk to you about this now because I really want you to feel what I feel about this. And because my mountain is really our mountain as a church and because I have what I think is a pretty exciting announcement to make in a couple of minutes about this.

But here's the thing. What's the mountain we're facing as a church? We really want to make a difference as a church, right? We're not just about this weekend. We want to make a difference that outlasts us, a positive impact in Santa Cruz County and the world. And if you want to make a difference that outlasts you, obviously the key to that is reaching young people today. Did you know that 85% of all people who make a commitment to follow Christ do so between the ages of 4 and 14? And so we need to do our best to reach kids in that window.

But here's the giant problem here at Twin Lakes. That very age group, our youth and our kids are crowded into makeshift space. We've got great programs but they're overcrowded. They're falling over each other. They have to set up and tear down every single week. Our kids, elementary, junior high and high school, they're operating like a church plant where they got to set up and tear down all the time. They don't have any permanent space here. They share space with everybody else. And so for many years, literally for 40 years, what we have dreamed of as a church is building a children's building where the sand volleyball courts are now down by the gym and moving the elementary school kids into that, moving the teenagers into the gym and making the gym into a youth center seven days a week for the teenagers so the kids and the teens can have their own space.

And we've been staring at this mountain for 40 years going, "Well, we'd really love to do that, but it's so hard and we've got other priorities. There's other stuff to do and for good reasons sometimes I think we've got no..." That's just not the right time yet. But then in March, you'll remember during Vision Day, we said, "You know what? We're gonna put a survey online and just ask you as a church, do you think we ought to do this?" We had paper copies of a two. About 750 people responded to the survey, which is a high turnout for a survey, and we just posed the question, "Should we at last proceed with this building and complete the master plan?" 98% of you said, "Yes, let's go for it." 98%. The other 2%, I told my mom and her friends, "Look, everyone's for this, so we're gonna move ahead." No, just kidding, that's not true.

But you said, "Let's finally build this building and not just here in Santa Cruz, let's also build a community center for these kids at Little Flock Orphanage in India." And we call this compassion first, because no matter how much we raise for us, the firstfruits are going to go to help build, actually to completely fund this building at Little Flock Orphanage, which I'm very stoked about. Do you like that idea, by the way? You know, that's a Twin Lakes Church tradition. Every building, every single building you see here on this campus has a double somewhere on a foreign field. That's the way this church has always rolled. We've always built a foreign field building while we built a building here on campus, so we're gonna continue that tradition.

And we thought, "You know what? Let's also just give a massive amount of whatever we raise for this building to Second Harvest Food Bank as well. Let's bring in food and peel off some of what we raise for the 2020 vision and give it to Second Harvest this fall." So this is all a huge mountain for all of us as a church. But let me make this personal, and here is where it's a massive mountain for me. The experts tell us, and we've had a lot of experts look at this, the experts tell us that all the things I talked about are going to cost us $10.75 million. $10.75 million.

Now that may sound to you like a lot of money, but you know what? It's a lot of money. It's just a giant amount of money. And this has just been giving me so much anxiety because if you're visiting, you may not know. We never talk about money really in church here. I don't like talking about money. And if we proceed with this, I'm gonna have to. And this is just cost, just giving me stomach aches every day. I'm thinking nobody comes to church going, "I hope they talk about giving today." You know, it's just a drag. And so I wake up at three in the morning one night like I always do. So worry about this. We're not gonna reach it anyway. It's too big of a number. How am I gonna talk about this in church?

And so I decide to actually practice what I preach. Occasionally that's a good idea for a pastor to do. You know, when people come up to me and say, "Pastor, I'm worried at night." You know, I usually say something like this, "Well, it's this simple. Just keep a pad of paper by your bed and write your worries down so you don't lay there rehearsing your worries over and over in your head." Because you know, a lot of times you stay awake with worries because you're worried that you're gonna forget your worries when you wake up in the morning. You know what I mean? Like, "But if I go to sleep now, I won't remember this in the morning. I gotta make sure I memorize it." You know? And so you stay awake going over and over your worries. So I said, "Just write them down on a piece of paper so that when you wake up you can go, 'Oh yeah,' and start worrying." You know? But at least you got some sleep.

So I decide, "I'm gonna practice this." So I get up out of paper and I write out my worries and I start by writing out 10.75 mil at the bottom I draw a line under it. And then I thought, "Well, how in the world could we ever even reach this mathematically? How is it possible?" And so I scratch out a chart and we actually put a version of it in the brochures that you're gonna get today after church on the back of the pledge card. The math is corrected a little bit for my midnight math, but I thought, "You know what? Let's say we ask for pledges to this project over four years and let's just say that three people in the church can each give a million. I mean, look, I'm just imagining. I may as well imagine good things. We'd be third of the way there.

Hey, this is easy. Let's just say two other people gave half a million each over four years. That's another million, right?" And I thought, "Well, obviously that's not the whole way we're gonna fund this." So every amount is key and so I made a... I put all kinds of amounts down. For example, let's just say 20 families pledged 25,000 over four years. That's another half a million, 25,000 total over four years. So that adds up to half a million dollars all the way to like if 300 people just gave ten and a half bucks a month to this. That's another $150,000. That really adds up to $10.75 million from just about 1,100 givers. And that's theoretical. I mean, we have 3,500 people in church here. So theoretically, mathematically, it's possible.

So I looked at this little chart and I started kind of praying about this. And I think that's what Jesus meant when he said, "Have mustard seed faith." Can you just sort of kind of pray about it? Okay, I can kind of pray about this. God, I don't think it's gonna happen, but let this mountain start to move. Well, I'm happy to say that that mountain is actually moving because in the last few months, though we haven't even really publicly asked for it, about a hundred different people have come up and given different pledges, ranging widely from a million at the highest to six dollars at the lowest and every amount you can imagine in between. And so you know that total 10.75 million? I can tell you, as of this morning, about a hundred people have already pledged or given a total of $4.25 million as we stand right now. Is that not awesome? That mountain is 40% moved before we even start.

And so what I want to ask you to do is this, when you leave, here's what you guys are gonna get when you leave. You're gonna get a grocery bag that looks like this. It says 2020 Vision on the outside. And that's to remind you to bring in food for the Second Harvest Food Bank. And then inside of that bag, you're going to find one of these brochures. Please read it. It has a lot more details and great stories and stuff about this whole project. And then inside of this, there is one of those pledge cards. And what I want you to do is to take that pledge card and put it somewhere where you're gonna see it over the just the next seven weeks and just pray about how God might want you to provide maybe one of these amounts on the back or something else.

Just pray about it. Then the weekend before Thanksgiving, November 23rd and 24th, that's Commitment Weekend. And we're all gonna be bringing in our pledge cards, what we believe God's going to enable us to give over our regular giving for the next four years. And we're gonna give our pledge cards in the offering. And also during that service, the little kids are gonna come in because today all of the little kids in church, after all it's gonna be their building, they're also getting these little piggy banks that says 2020 Vision. And in that service on Commitment Weekend, they're also going to come in. It kind of chokes me up just to think about it. And they're gonna give what they've collected, you know, as they've sacrificially given.

And we were going, "What about the youth?" Because they'll have a youth center out of this. They don't want piggy banks and they want something cooler than some envelopes. So we are giving all the junior hires and high schoolers Pringles cans today filled with Pringles. And we're telling them, "Eat the Pringles, they're on us." And then slap this label on it that talks about 2020 Vision and put your savings that you want to contribute in there. And they're gonna be bringing these things in on Commitment Weekend too. And then the next weekend, we're gonna be announcing what the Lord has provided, how far the mountains moved, and what direction. And we're gonna celebrate and that'll be it. We're not gonna do an endless campaign with some thermometer on the wall that creeps slowly up for a decade, okay? We're gonna do this in seven weeks and then it's done. Are you guys into that? Do you like that idea of just doing it quick?

And by the way, I will not know what you give unless you tell me. I won't know. I never know what you give. I don't think it's a good idea for pastors to know what people in church give. I just think that can get kind of weird. Kind of like the joke you might have heard. I don't know if I should tell this, it's kind of corny. It's a pastor humor. But one time there's a pastor, the IRS calls him up, have you heard this one? And they say, "Is this first Presbyterian church?" Pastor says, "It is." "Is this Pastor Jones?" "I am." "This is the IRS. Do you think you can help us?" "I can." "Does John Jackson go to your church?" "He does." "Did he contribute $100,000 to your building campaign?" "He will." You know, maybe it just can get a little bit weird, so I'm not gonna get into that.

But I believe God is still in the mountain-moving business. Do you? Say it with me. God still moves mountains. So here's the final question. Number three, whatever your personal mountain is, ask yourself, "Am I focused on the mountain or the mountain-moving God? Is my attention fixated on my problem or the God is able to make it move?" Because I can tell you from my experience, if I'm focused on the mountain, I get overwhelmed, I feel anxious, I feel inadequate, I get grumpy, all my joy deflates. But if I focus on the mountain-moving God, I remember it's not about me or how powerful or Herod-like I am. It's about God.

Remember Jesus said, Matthew 19:26, read this out loud with me, "With God all things are possible." See, faith is not the absence of fear and doubt. Jot that down. Do you understand that? Is it possible to be filled with faith and doubt at the same time? Absolutely. You can have faith that God wants you to do something and still be scared to death. Faith is not the total absence of fear. Faith is going ahead and doing what you're called to do in spite of your fear. Remember the man who brought his sick son to Jesus. Remember that great line that he had? "Lord, I believe." Help me with my unbelief. "Lord, yes, I believe, but I also have a lot of doubt." And Jesus goes, "That's enough."

Sometimes people say to me, "You know what? I can't commit to Jesus until all my questions are answered. I don't want to commit to Twin Lakes Church until all my doubts are gone. I don't know about moving forward with this project or ministry until all my uncertainties are certain." You know what? That's just not how life works. God doesn't, listen, God doesn't call you to certainty. God calls you to commitment. Certainty is rarely attainable, but commitment is always attainable. That's why Jesus says, "Just faith as small as a mustard seed is all you need." You know how small a mustard seed is? When you came in, you all got a little card in your bulletin with a picture of a mountain on it. Take it out right now. Look at these cards.

Because taped there, one card at a time with scotch tape by our amazing staff and volunteers, is an actual mustard seed. Look at how tiny that is. Some of us over 40 cannot even see this thing without glasses or arms that are 20 feet long, right? So it's so tiny. So here's a picture of it magnified. Look at that. Mustard seeds are so small that according to the Mustard Museum, yes there is one, there are 185,000 mustard seeds in a pound. I mean when we ordered mustard seeds for these cards, the smallest amount we could order was five pounds. So I have about 800,000 extra mustard seeds. Available to you for a small donation to the building fund. But anyway, look Jesus is saying you don't, listen, you don't need mountain moving faith. You just need mustard seed faith in a mountain moving God.

This is important because we tend to get this reversed. We think that the verse says you need mountain moving faith for mustard seed sized results. That's how it feels like life works sometimes. You get this much, right? But he's saying you just need mustard seed faith because that's all you got. So you got to start with what you've got. Do you have enough faith to move ahead and stay committed? Great. Then God can do great things through me. You could summarize all the verses this way. Here's a faith equation. Small faith plus huge God equals big effects. Mountain sized effects. And so here's what I want you to do. Take your little card and write on it what you wrote in your notes that's your mountain that you're facing right now. Just write that on there.

And then tape this up like to your bathroom mirror somewhere where you're gonna see it every day for like the next year. And ask yourself every day, is my attention focused on the mountain or do I have mustard seed sized faith in the mountain moving God? Because God can do great things in you and through me because, say it with me one more time, God still moves mountains. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your promise that you're a mountain moving God. And Lord all of us could probably pray that Maryanne's prayer right now in our hearts. Lord I believe, help my unbelief. I believe in you Jesus but I do have my doubts. So thank you God that you don't expect perfect faith. You never ask for perfect faith, just mustard seed sized faith. Because sometimes that's all we've got. But we bring it to you and ask you to increase it. Move my mountain God. I expect you to do great things in us and through us. Lord my prayer is that throughout these 40 days of faith we grow in faith every one of us. However you want us to grow. If anybody walked in this morning filled with fear, God began replacing that fear with faith today. And God we just want to ask your blessings on the 2020 Vision Project. We don't want to do anything outside your perfect will. So we are asking you to guide us even through this pledge drive and we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.