Transcription
See if you can find that, Jamie. Here, here it is. Listen to this.
"Stay with me here, okay? Matthew 17:20 says," he said to them, "because of your little faith, for truly I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you."
So, I have heard this particular scripture uh preached more times than I can count in the past six years. And I um love the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are the books that I read on a regular basis. I love when Jesus was here. I love to hear what he has to say.
Every time I have heard this preached by a pastor, I have heard it preached, "Faith the size of a mustard seed." Anyone else? Anyone else heard "faith the size of a mustard seed"? "All you need is a little faith. That's all you need."
When the disciples asked Jesus, "Why couldn't we cast out the demons and you could?" And he said, "Because of your little faith."
So, I take this all the way back to the Greek because I'm like, where did they get size? And the Greek word in that scripture is hose. H O S. And it means like or as, not size. In fact, the only version that I could find that says anything about size is in the New Living Translation.
So then I started doing research on what makes a mustard seed so special. The mustard seed is tiny and mighty. So when planted, it can grow into this massive tree and bush that allows birds to perch in it. And and then when it grows, the roots grow so deep and spread so wide that it overtakes the things around it. It's almost impossible to get all the roots out. It will thrive in the toughest situation.
So when Jesus spoke to the disciples and he said to them, "Because of your little faith," it was the fault of their little faith. And then he says to them, "If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could tell this mountain to move and it would move."
So what if all these years that I've been reading the Bible, Jesus has always been talking about having the type of faith that when planted sprouts massively and is rooted so deep in God that it spreads to everyone around it and continues to thrive no matter how hard the situations are. What if that's the kind of faith that can move a mountain? What if that was what he meant all along?
How many other scriptures in in the Bible am I reading incorrectly because I've listened to a pastor preach it one specific way. And when I'm reading the Bible, I'm reading it without intention. And and I read it and I don't process what I'm reading because I've read it over hundreds of times. So, I just read it with zero intention.
I'm going to need a lot more time to read my Bible.