Growing Your Faith to Greatness
David W Palmer
Having committed himself to making his apprentices competent at fishing for men—if they followed him—Jesus found that he needed to put a lot of training into their faith. When he took them on as apprentices, they seemed to begin with much faith; but he was unswerving in his pledge to bring them to great faith.
The first time he sent them on a faith assignment to cross the lake on a word from God; he assessed them as having “no faith”:
(Mark 4:40 NKJV) But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?”
His second assessment task to cross the lake on a word from God ended with Peter taking a few steps on water. Peter began to imitate what he saw Jesus doing; consequently, Jesus assessed him as having “little faith”:
(Matthew 14:31 NKJV) And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
While this was an improvement, it still wasn’t up to the standard needed for competence at fishing for men; the disciples would need great faith. We may feel that having this level of faith is impossible. But we know it is possible to have the Master assess us as having “great faith,” because a Roman centurion and a Gentile woman achieved that assessment:
(Matthew 8:10 NKJV) When Jesus heard it, He marveled, and said to those who followed, “Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! (See also Luke 7:9)
(Matthew 15:28 NKJV) Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
If two un-born again Gentiles can achieve great faith, we need to receive their example as a challenge for us to reach their level of competence in our own faith.
Maybe you feel today that you should be content with the “measure” of faith God gave you at your new birth—because religion says that we are simply stuck with the “measure” that God measured out to us (See: Rom. 12:3). What’s more, the religious spirit constrains us to believe that our faith will always be as minuscule and insignificant as a mustard seed. However, we also note that the Holy Spirit added that it is possible to have our faith grow, and that it can “grow exceedingly.”
(2 Thessalonians 1:3 NKJV) We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is fitting, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other.
From the passages we have looked at today, we can see that our faith can begin at zero competence, grow to little faith, or grow exceedingly to become completely competent—assessed by Jesus as “great faith.”
This brings us to today’s reading. In it, we see that Jesus—wanting to bring his apprentices to competence by growing their faith from small to great—takes the opportunity afforded by the fig tree episode to train them some more:
(Matthew 21:18–19 NKJV) Now in the morning, as He returned to the city, He was hungry. {19} And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, “Let no fruit grow on you ever again.” Immediately the fig tree withered away.
We should always note at this point that Jesus lived by faith himself, that he spoke to the tree, and that he said it loudly enough for his disciples to hear him. By the next day, it had withered:
(Matthew 21:20–21 NKJV) And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither away so soon?” {21} So Jesus answered and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ it will be done.”
Wow! Great faith can do amazing things for us—even move mountains. (We saw in yesterday’s reading that faith is crucial in many vital areas of successful Christian living.) So, exactly how do we get our faith to grow? Again, we look to our Lord and Master, Jesus, to provide the answer—as expanded and expounded by the Holy Spirit:
(Luke 17:6 NKJV) So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
The first revelation begins here: “If you have faith as a mustard seed.” This is an interesting concept; if it wasn’t for Jesus’s other teachings on the mustard seed, we could conclude that we need only a tiny amount of faith to move a “mulberry tree.” However, if we subsequently couldn’t move anything with our faith, we would believe that, instead of having mustard seed faith, we simply had no faith at all. This would be very misleading.
Thankfully, we have some more teaching from the Master about this tiny seed and its potential. From it, we can see that—under the right conditions—even if our current measure of faith cannot move a mushroom, it can grow to mountain-moving greatness:
(Mark 4:31–32 APE) “It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the herb seeds on the earth. {32} And when it is sown it comes up and becomes greater than all the small herbs and produces great branches, so that the birds will be able to perch in its shade.”
What does Jesus say we need to do with the mustard seed to release its potential to grow to greatness?
First he says, “When it is sown …” So we must sow our faith to see it grow. In other words, we must begin to put it to work on some project or other. For example, you could begin by believing for a healing, some finance, a loved-one’s salvation, or for the solution to a work problem. As long as you get committed to believing God for a specific result, and as long as you depend entirely on your faith for the outcome, you have sown it.
Second Jesus says, “In the ground.” This implies that the seed must be left underground and out of sight for it to flourish. If you dig it up to see if it is growing, you will kill it. For it to grow as designed, it must be below the surface, where you cannot see it, feel it, touch it, smell it, or taste it etc. It grows without you knowing how (See: Mark 4:26–29). In other words, like a farmer who plants a crop, you have simply to believe it is growing. The farmer knows by experience that the seeds he sows will grow; we have to humbly trust that our faith is growing too—simply because God said it will grow if planted in rock-free soil, watered, kept weed-free, and, after the shoots appear, given plenty of light.
So, if you have already begun a faith project, keep thanking and praising God that not only your project is coming to pass, but that also your faith is growing—even though emotionally you cannot feel it developing, and intellectually you don’t know how it grows.
Next Jesus said, “But when it is sown, it grows up.” This is his promise; if we sow it, it will grow. But, if we keep it on the shelf or in a jar, it will forever remain a tiny seed—albeit incorruptible and packed with enormous potential for greatness—but sitting idle and fruitless until sown.
We note also that when our faith is sown like a mustard seed, we risk the possibility of it failing. If it does, we may feel that we lose the only tiny seed we will ever have. Yes, faith is a risk; but we must remember: “without faith it is impossible to please him” (Heb. 11:6 NKJV). So our loving Father is pleased if we try to grow our faith, even if we fail in our early attempts. After all, what loving parent would give up on a child because it fell on its first attempt to walk? Listen to what the Holy Spirit says to encourage us in this:
(2 Corinthians 9:10 NKJV) “Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness.”
Wow, not only does God promise to supply more seeds to those who begin sowing, he promises emphatically to “multiply the ones you have sown.” What’s even more exciting is that, at the same time, he promises to “increase the fruits of your righteousness.” God is saying between the lines that our attempts to sow and grow our tiny mustard-seed-faith gives us “righteousness”—or puts us in right standing with him; and it can lead to great fruit.
Today, I encourage you; even if you feel you only have a minuscule amount of faith, put it to work. (Any thought that you don’t even have that minuscule mustard-seed-sized faith is an absolute lie; you simply cannot get saved and receive the new birth without faith. So you must have “the measure of faith” that God gives, even if it is the size of a mustard seed.)
Sow your faith, exercise it, and feed it—by hearing and hearing God’s word. In particular, ensure you are feeding your faith with the fertilizer of God’s living promises in the exact area needed for the project into which you have sown it.
Your faith can grow from little faith to great faith; you can become completely competent at fishing for men.
(2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV) “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
