In Matthew 17, when Jesus, Peter, James, and John came down from the Mountain of Transfiguration, a man came up to Jesus and fell on his knees, asking the Lord to have mercy on his son. His son was severely demonized, which caused him to have epileptic fits, and he would often fall into the fire and water. The language used in Mark 9 indicates that the boy’s condition was extremely severe. The man explained to Jesus that he had brought his son to the disciples, but that could not help him. The response of Christ was not extremely pastoral because when he said to his disciples and those standing around that they were part of an unbelieving and perverted generation.
You have to realize that unbelief is a perverted perspective of reality to Jesus. It is important that we never determine the potential for a miracle based on the size of the condition we are confronting. The owning determining factor is the size of our God. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus didn’t try to comfort them, reminding them that God is sovereign, and sometimes things don’t work out the way we would have liked them to?
When the disciples later went to Jesus privately and asked Him why they could not cast the demon out, Jesus said “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it shall move; and nothing shall be impossible to you.”
I do believe that God is sovereign, and I also believe that he privileges us through our union with Christ to participate in stewarding the supernatural and miraculous. Our part is to believe, and it does not take much faith to release the supernatural activity of God into a situation. Just mustard seed size. God never pounds us with guilt to somehow motivate us to try harder; instead, he does challenge us to risk, as he teaches us to live by faith. When I read the story, one of the conclusions I come to is that I don’t ever want the littleness of my faith determine an outcome. Jesus wasn’t saying these things to his disciples to make them feel bad. Instead, He was offering them the opportunity to see mountains moved.
They had allowed the severity of the situation to decide the level of their faith. This happens when our eyes are focused on what adds up to our logical mind. We are in Christ, and the only thing that should determine the level of our faith is the adequacy of the KING. The only way to keep from operating in faith smaller than mustard seeds is to keep your eyes on Jesus, who is never intimidated but is always the intimidator when dealing with the oppression of the enemy.