He replied, “Because you have so little faith. 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 will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” – Matthew 17:20

Have you heard this verse before and thought something along the lines of “Well if something as small as a mustard seed has that much faith, I guess I barely have any faith at all!”?

I know I have. Faith is such a commonly used word in Christian communities, but I would imagine it is safe to say that 99% of the world’s pastors, preachers and spiritual leaders don’t have the faith to move a mountain “from here to there”, combined. So where does that leave you? You probably aren’t considered a spiritual leader by your peers. Just how tiny is your faith?

It is actually much greater than you’ve ever given yourself credit for. Now, how can I say this? I can’t possibly know you or where you are at in your spiritual growth. That is true. But regardless of where you currently are in your spiritual life, I can almost guarantee you that you have greater faith than you credit yourself with.

First we should begin by identifying what faith even is. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary provides three base definitions, and the second one is “Belief and trust in and loyalty to God”. If you believe that God is real, you are already 33% done. Belief is a choice (that also has multiple definitions in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary) and an easy one to make. Trust, on the other hand, is more difficult. For “whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.” I have put to practice that, in order to trust God, you have to trust the least of these as well. And that is very difficult. I’ll write up a proper guide to that sometime in the future. Loyalty is probably the best one to work on for now. Loyalty is the “quality of… giving or showing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or institution”. If you can give or show firm and constant support or allegiance to God, then you are now 66% done!

Now think about that. With two relatively easy steps, your faith is already 66% complete. In other contexts that might not seem particularly good, but for the case of faith, that’s significantly larger than the “smaller than a mustard seed” worries we might have had three minutes ago. A lot of people have this amount of faith, but because they don’t believe in themselves to be that faithful, it doesn’t get much farther than the parking lot of a church. Let’s not forget that a mustard seed has no choice but to do what it was made to do. You do have a choice. If you are choosing to believe in God and stay loyal to Him, than you are already doing better than the mustard seeds of the world. So go out there and be faithful! I know you won’t fail.