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#100 Mountain Moving Faith - Part 3 (26/10/03) By: Robert A. Schuller Mountain
moving faith
is the faith to believe that somehow ... someway ... God is going
move the mountain! He may do it physically, where the mountains
literally are moved from one place to another. In Southern California
we see mountains come and go all the time. All of a sudden the
sky turns black and you look to the horizon and there are dozens
of earthmovers that are literally moving a mountain overnight.
That's what can happen with mountain moving
faith. Now Jesus had a brother
by the name of James, and James wrote a letter in the Bible which
is recognized today as one of the great testaments of faith. This
wonderful book found in the New Testament tells us how to live
a life of faith. In the 5th chapter he gives us three statements
that energizes our faith and gives us the ability to live the
life of faith that can move mountains. In my translation of the
New Testament all three of these statements begin with a 'P' so
they will be easy to remember. They are ... patience,
perseverance, and prayer. The three 'P's for mountain moving faith.
Listen
to this first "P" straight from James 5:7. "Be
patient then, brothers, until the coming of the Lord." Now that might be a
long time. This was written 2000 years ago and we still do not
know the day of our Lord's return. He could return tomorrow, or
it could be another 2000 years, but James continues, saying, "...be
patient then, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how
the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how
patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. Be patient and
stand firm." I believe that
patience has tremendous power. Always remember that weeds
grow overnight, but trees take a very long time. If you go to
the south end of this property, you'll see a parking lot lined
with trees at the south end of this Crystal Cathedral campus.
What you may or may not know is that I planted those trees. I
remember very clearly at the age of six years old, when my father
and I bought several 5 gallon can size trees from the local nursery.
Forty years ago, each one of those trees had a trunk about as
round as a golf ball and stood about three feet tall. I remember
very clearly that they weren't any bigger than I was when we put
them into the ground, all those years ago. Today, when you visit
this campus, those same three foot tall trees have grown to nearly
seventy-five or eighty feet. I can't even put my arms around the
trunks they've become so large. Real growth takes time
... forty years as it relates to the development of those trees.
Every year they get a little bit bigger and they grow a little
bit stronger. What happens to our faith when we live out the first
point of St. James, when he tells us to "be
patient." Patience, what a hard
thing to achieve! Do you have trouble being patient? I know early
in the morning, having patience is nearly impossible, especially
when you're late for work. I have a habit of putting my coffee
in the microwave for just a quick warm up before I jump in the
car to go to work. That minute, waiting for that coffee to warm
up, is the longest minute in the entire world. The minute never
comes, it never ends. It really is amazing how we have become
such an instantaneous society where everything has to happen now
... and things are getting faster all the time. I remember, as a child
enjoying photography, and when the roll was finished I'd take
it down to the store and they'd say, "Okay we'll send it
out and we'll have it back in four to five days." Then I
remember that great time when next day service became available.
Wow! I can get my pictures developed overnight. But all too soon
that wasn't even fast enough, so some clever inventor created
one-hour photography. Wow! This is just fantastic. One hour film
developing! Yet, what happened next? The grumbling started. We
all began to say "Oh man, I have to get in the car, drive
three blocks to the store, leave the film, then make a return
trip an hour later - how inconvenient. Isn't there something faster?
Just give me a digital camera and let me take my picture and get
it over with!" That's the way our
society is, we want it ... and we want it now! The challenge is
that spiritual things, living things, the intangible things of
life never happen instantaneously. It's a process and when we
find ourselves in pain, struggling, and wrapped up in situations
that are out of our control, so often we want and expect instant
results just like the photographs we take with our digital cameras.
When the results do not come, our initial response is to say,
"Where are you, God? You said you were going to answer my
prayers. You said You would be there. You said that if I would
say to that mountain 'move' that it would get up and move, but
it didn't work. My mountain is still here." Patience is critical.
This past year I've
had the opportunity to travel around the nation to meet many of
you who generously support the Hour of Power. One person I met
and shook hands with was a man by the name of Carl Lindner in
Cincinnati, Ohio. You may recognize the name since Carl Lindner
happens to be the owner of the Cincinnati Reds. He's also a philanthropist
and a wonderful businessman, and as we were leaving he gave me
a stack of cards with quotations that have impacted his life.
As I read through these cards, I found several of them to be deeply
meaningful to me as well. One of them said, "Nothing comes
easy - except failure." Isn't that the truth? "Failure
is easy, success takes a little longer." Be
patient. The second 'P' in our
message this morning is perseverance.
Let me continue to read from the words James Chapter 5. "...we
consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of
Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought
about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy." Perseverance. With
patience we simply have to sit and wait. With
perseverance we need to be doing something. We need to
be putting in the effort to make our dreams happen. Let me read
you another of Carl Lindner's cards. This quote happens to be
from none other than Winston Churchill: In 1956, a group of
missionaries flew to Ecuador, yet when they entered that country
to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, the natives were not very
receptive. 1956 happened to be a time when these particular natives
happened to be in a volatile situation. Consequently when the
plane landed, the missionaries were promptly killed. The story
made national news back here in the states, and the missionaries
were considered martyrs for Christendom, people who had given
their lives to sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. Well, one
of the missionaries who was killed was a man by the name of Nate
Saint. Nate was the pilot, working for Mission Aviation Fellowship,
a wonderful organization. But Nate also had a 5 year old son by
the name of Steven. Steven grew up and
become a Christian, yet at the same time he continued to carry
this incredible pain in his heart. How could God allow his father
to be taken from him at such a tender age? If God moves mountains,
why would he not spare his father? Now in his early thirties,
Steven enjoyed traveling the world. I think it was in his genes.
As a missionary his father traveled extensively, and thus Steven
grew to love the adventure that traveling brought. Well, one of
the places he'd always wanted to travel to was a place called
Timbuktu. Steven, like most of us, had heard the name used in
conversation form time to time, but he was shocked when he discovered
that there really was a place called Timbuktu in Africa. It wasn't
long before he was planning his next adventure to visit this far
off place. Getting to Timbuktu
was quite an ordeal. Being in the middle of the Sahara Desert
the only quick way in or out seemed to be catching a ride on a
small, single-engine bush plane being operated by UNICEF. UNICEF
agreed to give Steven a ride to Timbuktu as they were in-route
to retrieve two doctors who'd been there for quite some time working
with the local population of roughly 10,000 people. They also
explained that they would not have room for Steven on the return
flight, as his seat would be occupied by one of the doctors. Steven,
the adventurer, decided to go anyway, calculating that at the
very least he could hitch a ride on some kind of vehicle back
out of the Sahara. Upon landing, Steven
soon found himself, as he describes it, "in one God-forsaken
place." There was nothing but desert for hundreds of miles
in every direction. The homes in the village were little more
than mud-huts, and the indigenous people very primitive. So here
Steven is, walking the community of Timbuktu, when he realized
that Westerners were not very welcome. The stares were cold, and
the body language of the villagers told Steven that it was in
his best interest to find refuge, and find it fast. He wasn't quite sure
what to do when he remembered reading about an old church that
some missionaries, years before, had established. Perhaps someone
there might be able to help him. Eventually, through a lot of
patience and perseverance, Steven was able find an interpreter
and discover the location of this church. Upon arriving, Steven
met the lone occupant of the church, a man not much older than
himself. With the aid of the interpreter, Steven soon began to
hear the man's story. The man told Steven
that there weren't any Christians in Timbuktu. Christians weren't
welcome. But, as a young man, he had been given an opportunity
to become a Christian by some traveling missionaries. These same
missionaries gave him a writing pen, which had never been seen
in the village before. Yet when his family found this pen, they
immediately realized that he had been communicating with the missionaries
and became extremely angry, to the point of trying to end his
life with poison. In the attempt to poison his food, his younger
brother was actually the one killed. The man told Steven that
when his brother was killed and he was spared, the village became
frightened of him, fearing that the hand of God was with him,
protecting him. The man was banished to the church to live his
life in solitude. "How can you live
in such isolation," Steven asked. "I read about
a group of missionaries who came to Ecuador and became martyrs
for Christianity, men who believed so deeply, that they were willing
to give their lives for Christ." Mountain
moving faith ... how
does it happen? It happens with patience.
It takes time. Thirty years for Steven. It takes perseverance,
constantly taking the steps ... day by day ... little by little
... doing what we can do and never, never, never giving up. Another little quotation
card that I received form from Carl Lindner: How do we find mountain
moving faith? You don't. You can't
find it anywhere. There is no place you can go to suddenly
discover mountain moving faith. You
have to grow it. You plant a seed,
and water it, and nurture it, and then you have to wait ... patiently
wait while it grows within you. The three
"P's" of mountain moving faith: we've learned
about patience, we've learned about
perseverance. And now the final "P" is prayer.
James 5 continues by
saying, Prayer
... We nurture
the seeds we plant with prayer, then we have to patiently and
earnestly wait to watch the incredible mountain moving faith that
soon begins to grow. David and Diane Blessing
were blessed with a baby girl named Danni on March 10, 1991. The
only problem was that the Danni was premature by several months,
so premature that the doctors said that she didn't have much of
a chance of surviving and even if she did, the risk of brain damage
was very high. They were also told that they could not touch their
baby, as the nervous system had yet to fully develop, and any
touch could cause the baby extreme pain. The months passed,
and to everyone's delight the miracle happened and the doctors
were wrong. Danni grew to be a healthy and happy little girl,
completely free of any of the dreaded infirmities the doctors
had predicted. Then one day, when Danni was five years old they
were sitting in a stadium waiting for a football game to start
and they could tell that the rain was coming. You know that smell
in the air when the rain comes? Diane turned to Danni and said,
"Do you smell that?" Danni replied "Yeah, I smell
that. Oh, I love that smell, Mommy." "It smells like
rain, doesn't it sweetie?" "Actually, it
smells like God when you lay your head on his chest. That's what
I smell, Mommy." Today it is time for
you to smell the freshness and the presence of God, to realize
that with God all things are possible. Through patience,
through perseverance, and through
prayer, the mountain
moving faith will come to sustain you. With God all things
are possible. Amen
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