Daily Devotional for Small Group Discussion: When Mountains Won’t Move

Discussion Questions 

1. When have you been told that you didn’t have enough faith, or that you didn’t pray hard enough, to bring about a certain result? When have you accused yourself of lacking faith? 

2. Jesus affirmed “faith the size of a mustard seed.” How does this impact your perspective on how much faith is “enough”?  

3. When have you experienced a mountain that wouldn’t move, as the author describes? How did God’s love make itself known during that experience? 

Jesus said to them… “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” – Matthew 17:20-21 (NRSV) 

We had plenty of faith, boatloads of hope, deep wells of love, and landline-generated phone trees that make modern online systems look lame. And still, the cancer did not move. It retreated for a time—but then it returned, stronger than ever. Our dear friend died and, for some, their faith died with her. 

Perhaps you, too, have encountered mountains that no amount of faith could move. Maybe you’re weary from banging your head against what seems impossible.  

Does that mean faith is worthless? Does it mean Jesus was clueless? Does it mean we’re doing faith wrong?  

It’s easy to fall into that dangerous way of thinking. A longtime ordained minister still remembers the colleagues who told him his three-year-old daughter might have survived leukemia if only he had prayed harder.  

But there is faith—and then there’s magical thinking. There are mountains—which will, over many eons, become as moving molehills—and then there are glaciers, whose melting we observe with anxious hearts. There are miracles of all shapes, sizes, and timeframes—and then there’s the way things work (or don’t) most of the time.  

We may hope against hope that things will work out. Faith is trusting that, even if they don’t, God’s love will carry us through somehow. Faith is realizing that, sometimes, the mountain that needs moving is us.

Prayer
When mountains won’t move, give me faith enough to see how I can. When mountains won’t move, give me courage enough to climb them.

About the Author
Vicki Kemper is the Pastor of First Congregational, UCC, of Amherst, Massachusetts.