Faith That Moves Mountains

Faith can move mountains.




Joel Kontinen

“Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.” (Mark 11:23).

Faith is one of the key words of the Gospels. It can achieve incredible things. Time and again, Jesus taught about the significance of believing, of having faith.

"Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted,” (Matthew 15:28), He told a Canaanite woman who believed He could and was willing to heal her very sick daughter.

Jesus also praised the great faith of a Roman centurion (Matthew 8:10), who saw Him as the One who had authority over sickness, even at a distance.

In contrast, Jesus often rebuked those who failed to believe. “Men of little faith,” He would say to the disciples once and again when they doubted Him.

It was not just any kind of faith that Jesus meant, but faith in Him. The Letter to the Hebrews gives us a brief definition of faith:

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1, NIV).

Faith is essential:

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Heb. 11:6).

Faith in the Bible as God’s self-revelation made modern science possible. The pioneers of science, for instance Robert Hooke, Sir Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur, believed that a rational Creator had created a rational universe that obeys natural laws that could be studied.

Some Christians have succeeded in exercising the kind of faith that is not deferred by seemingly impossible hurdles. British evangelist Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947), who is known as the Apostle of Faith, fits nicely into this category. God used him to touch and heal countless lives all over the world.

What Makes Christianity Special?

Marco Palmezzano: Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 1490), public domain.



Joel Kontinen


We seem to have a universal need for searching for answers to life’s ultimate questions.

Christianity gives us answers to the big issues humanity is facing, such as why there is so much suffering in the world and what is man’s ultimate destiny.

It shows why we differ from all other living beings. Created in God’s image, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” as Psalm 139:14 puts it. Our bodies are full of amazing molecular machines that display our Creator’s handiwork and cannot be explained away by evolution.

Other religions and humanistic ideologies fail to give us satisfactory answers.

Christianity also differs from all other religions that we know of in another very pertinent way.

Non-Christian religions focus on what we should do to please God. This often involves various kinds of rituals, such as sacrifices, observing holy days and perhaps fasting.

In contrast, Christianity has to do with trust. We trust that God has already done everything that is necessary for our salvation.

Salvation is necessary because we are all tainted with the sin nature that we inherited from our earliest ancestors. Their disobedience brought death and suffering into the world.

This shows why there is so much bloodshed and suffering in the world. Only the Judeo-Christian worldview can explain why things all too often go awry.

All we need to do is to believe that Jesus Christ came to earth to atone for our sins. He was willing to die on a wooden cross for our sake.

After seeing what God had done, the jailer at Philippi asked the apostles Paul and Silas what he should do. They replied: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

But God has more in store for us. We are not meant to be armchair believers but true disciples who want to share the good news of salvation to a world that desperately needs hope.

Scripture quotations from the New King James Version (NKJV).