Radical Trust: What Do You Do When the Mountain Doesn't Move...?
By any conservative estimate, there are hundreds of millions, if not billions of screens crammed into the daily lives of Americans as a whole, which we use to look at myriad images of innumerable kinds. This fact has made us a very sensory-dependent culture, wedded to the tangible.
Because of this context in which we live, for most of us faith can be a challenging thing to wrap our minds around. Faith asks us sensory-dependent folks to latch onto something we cannot see with our eyes, let alone touch with our hands, and for most of us that's a very tall order. We wonder "How can I base my whole life on what I can't see when I CAN see my bills and hunger and cancer and violence?" In the faith context, the short answer is we read the bible and it tells us that, with just a LITTLE bit of faith – faith the size of a mustard seed – we can move mountains!
But what happens when you ask by faith and the mountain doesn't move....? There are some whose theology would suggest that, if your mountain didn't move, you didn't ask correctly, or you didn't pray enough, or you didn't fast while you prayed. Even more insidious, there are some whose doctrine would suggest that your mountain didn't move because you lack faith. The simple truth of the matter is this: sometimes the mountain DOESN’T move! When this happens to us, a singular question dominates our thoughts: “What do I do now?” God’s response to this question is seen in many instances in His word, but consider just these two of what to do:
In the midst of a raging storm in the middle of a lake, when Christ came walking on water to His disciples’ boat to assist them in the middle of the night, Peter called out to Him with radical trust, saying “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water.” And at Christ’s bidding, Peter got out of the boat! (see Matthew 14:22-33)
In another setting, a group of boys have provided us with a defining example by standing on what God required instead of what culture demanded – “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. But even if he doesn't, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.” (Daniel 3:17-18) Now THAT is some radical trust!
Oh, you DO know that, even though the storm was not stopped and the fire in the furnace was not doused (in other words, God didn’t move their mountains for them in those moments!), it was radical trust that allowed Peter to walk on water and that protected those boys in the furnace so well that they came out not even smelling like smoke! We can say all the “I’m not there yet” and “God’s still working on me” we want to, but it doesn’t change the fact that you and I are called to walk in this same kind of radical trust in God as we carry the Gospel to the rest of the sensory-dependent world!