As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. [Mark 11:20-23 (ESV)]
The next morning, while Jesus and the disciples walked from Bethany to Jerusalem for yet another confrontation with Judea’s religious leaders, the disciples saw the tree Jesus cursed the previous day. The disciples had witnessed Jesus cast out demons and still a storm with a just a word but, when they saw the withered and dead fig tree, they were amazed. Normally, trees die slowly from the top down but this tree instantly withered from the roots up. With dead roots, no amount of water or fertilizer would revive it. Having witnessed the tree go from abundance to ruin with just a word from the Lord, rather than asking Jesus to explain cursing the tree, the disciples focused on the speed with which the fig died.
Rather than focusing on spiritual hypocrisy and the significance of the dead fig, Jesus focused on how He performed the miracle and spoke about the power of genuine faith. This wasn’t faith in something vague like positive thinking or an object; it wasn’t faith in faith or faith in the power of prayer. He made it clear that the sole object of this faith must be God! After all, faith is only as good as the object in which it trusts and God is all-powerful, ever-faithful, and trustworthy to His promises.
Pause for a moment and consider—even though Jesus was God, He was living as a man with the limitations of humanity. By saying, “Have faith in God,” He displayed both His humanity and His dependence upon God. Jesus’ power to speak with authority, forgive sins, calm a storm, heal the sick, raise the dead, provide food for a multitude, and wither that fig tree came from His faith in God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Explaining the power of faith in God, Jesus told them that, with faith, they could move the mountain on which they were standing (the Mount of Olives) into the sea (probably the Dead Sea 15 miles away). Moving a mountain is even more inconceivable than killing a tree with a word but Jesus uses this hyperbole to emphasize that what is impossible with man can be accomplished through faith in the power of God!
We tend to say that prayer changes things—but it is God who does the changing! Although we speak of the power of prayer, prayer alone has no power; the power comes from God who hears that prayer. We often lament, “If only I had more faith!” The disciples even asked Jesus to increase their faith. Jesus, however, told them that the size of their faith doesn’t matter—even a mustard seed of faith is enough! (With a diameter of 1 to 2 millimeters, the mustard seed was used proverbially to represent the smallest of things.) It’s not the amount of faith that matters—as long as we put our faith completely in God’s power rather than ours. It’s not faith that moves those mountains—it’s God! Even if our faith is not great, our God is!
The tradition of New Year’s resolutions goes back over 4,000 years to the ancient Babylonians (whose new year began in mid-March with the spring equinox). During their 12-day celebration called Akitu, they either crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the old one. To ensure the gods’ favor, they promised to return borrowed items and pledged the repayment of all their debts.
Sometime near the end of the 3rd century, the Bishop of Myra died and a conclave was held to elect his replacement. Legend has it that the bishops kept praying and voting but could not come to an agreement. In a stalemate, they prayed all night for God’s guidance. That night, one bishop heard a voice telling him that, at the hour of matins, the man who walked into the church was the one God wanted to shepherd His flock.
The above words are from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. For Lewis, those first moments of wakefulness were the most important ones of the day because they set one’s frame of mind. When God is our first thought of the day, we begin the morning with a sense of peace and power – peace because we know the day is in His hands and power because we know that through Him we can get through anything it throws at us. It’s as if an invisible barrier has been set up between us and the desires, troubles, and cares of the world in which we live.
Jesus offered fishing advice to the disciples twice after they’d spent a night of fishing with absolutely nothing to show for it and, twice, after doing as He directed, they ended up with a miraculous catch of fish. The first time, their catch was so heavy that their nets began to tear and the two boats hauling it in nearly sunk from the weight! The second time, unable to pull the net into their boat, the men had to get out and drag it into shore!
In Sharon Garlough Brown’s novel, Two Steps Forward, a character choses to pray the Hebrew word hineni during Advent. When another character calls it a beautiful but “costly” prayer, I grew curious about this word. Hineni is composed of two little words, hineh and ani. By itself, hineh is usually translated as “behold” but, when combined with ani (meaning “I”), it usually is translated as “Here I am,” “I’m here,” or “Yes.” However, like shalom, the Hebrew hineni loses the depth of its meaning in translation.
Devotions of the Heart 