February 01, 2026

EXTRAORDINARY FAITH:

A FAITH THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS

February 01, 2026

Senior Pastor Jonathan Falwell

Do you ever wish your faith were so firm you could literally move a mountain if it were necessary? Possibly it is that strong, but perhaps your mountain wasn’t one made of dirt. Maybe it was moved when you and your spouse decided to pay your home off ten years early. Sometimes your mountain is a strong-willed child who gave you fits for the first twenty years—but you hung in there, disciplining in kindness, training in righteousness, and in their twenties or thirties, they rewarded your heart by serving in a church, going on short-term mission projects, and having a godly home. You moved a mountain of will, didn’t you? But moving a mountain, as Christ illustrated in Matt. 17:20 means there is an eternal reason why it needs to be moved. God does all things for a reason—He does it because the result will justify the action. As the pastor said today, maybe the faith of the disciples was weak because they had part of their focus on their own ability to heal the demon-possessed boy. Our faith is in Christ, who can do anything, and we can do anything through Him; but the glory of the heavy lifting all goes to Christ. ‘Whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.”

Focal Passage: Hebrews 11:39-40, Matthew 17:14-20.

The doubts of the faithful:

  • Read Matthew 17:19. How is your faith different from the faith the disciples had when they were with Jesus? Do you think having the Bible in its entirety gives us an advantage over the people who saw Jesus performing miracles? Explain your answer.
  • Why did Jesus reprimand the disciples for their ‘little’ faith? Do His words seem harsh? Keep in mind, they had tried to heal the boy, but couldn’t; if their heart attitude was wrong, would His words make more sense? What did He say was needed for this problem?
  • In our lives, how often do we attempt to exercise faith without proper preparation? When has a ministry been so important to you that you fasted prior to acting? When/If you fast, how encompassing is it? Do you commit to leaving off something that is not a problem?
  • What are some areas where we allow doubt to creep in? Is our doubt ever about Jesus’ ability, or is it about ourselves? Does it ever get trapped by our thinking, “perhaps He does not want me to do this”? Again, what parameters must be in place for our faith to move a mountain and for it to be justified?
  • When an idea or ‘something’ comes into your mind to do for someone, what are the reasons why you don’t carry it through? What if it’s from God? How can you tell?

The focus of our future: 

  • Read Matt. 17:20a. Do you ever ask yourself if you are further along the path of knowing God better now than you did a year ago? If you answered ‘no’ to that question, what would be the obvious next step? Why is that something every Christian should do as a self-examination?
  • There are other questions that you need to ask yourself: How important is God to you? Do you care whether you know Him better each year? Which do you spend the most time doing: prayer, Bible reading, or serving specific ministries? Busyness does not necessarily reflect a greater faith.

The faith that changes everything:

  • Read Heb. 11:6 and Matt. 17:20 b. When the disciples saw they could not cast out the demon, what attitude do you think they showed when they asked Jesus why they couldn’t? Would it have been humbling to ask this? When Jesus replied, would they have been ashamed or embarrassed—or something else?
  • Have you ever had a moment when you failed? If Jesus responded to you that your faith is small, what would be your immediate desire? How can you take small steps to begin building a life of faith that can move a mountain?
  • What are the three main ways we can intentionally fill our hearts and minds with a mountain of faith?

Close: 

We often forget God promises He will never leave us. It is through intentional training of our minds that we reach a point where an awareness of His presence permeates our days. Why is this important? Because if we can go hours without thinking of Him, what were we doing during that time? How are we walking with Him constantly if we can forget Him for long periods? An analogy might be caring for a little child who can be mobile during both day and night. There are not many minutes in those twenty-four-hour periods that you literally forget you have the child.

Job’s story is crucial to understanding how limited our faith is. He lived his life with a testimony before God that he was ‘blameless.’  In fact, if we were as perfect in our lifestyle as Job was, we would probably pat ourselves on the back. Our faith—we would think—is rock solid. Yet, when a time of testing came, Job failed. Perhaps ‘failed’ is too strong a word to use, but after chapters in which Job spoke of God deserting him, leaving him on his own, God initiates a time of ‘reasoning together.’ And it revealed Job had only scratched the surface of faith. Read Job 38-42 (often), to remind yourself how your wisdom pales beside God! His omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence—His all-presence, all-knowing, and all-powerful characteristics—cause us to realize how very little we truly understand God. Our faith has to begin with the small things: knowing He will never leave us—and believing that. Knowing we can’t go anywhere that He is not there, nor can we mess up so badly that He can’t fix it, or understanding His faithfulness to us. Take the small steps faithfully. Believe the promises wholly. He will never fail you, and you will grow in faith.

By Sandy Day

February 01, 2026

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