Most of us hold on to things that work. A good shampoo, a nice, sudsy dish soap, a comfy pair of jeans, a routine. Faith isn’t much different. As long as it moves mountains, we’re happy to keep it. But when it doesn’t–like a bad shampoo, we tend to stop buying it. Is faith really worth standing firm in when all the mountains you try to move with it stand firm, too?
I heard a song a couple years ago with a line in the chorus that hit so close to home, I couldn’t not give it a home here. “Sometimes that mountain doesn’t move.” I was pretty sure I had some things to say about that. But now that I’m here, it seems that one line is all I actually know about mountains that don’t move. Just that they sometimes don’t. I know the feeling. The disappointment. The betrayal. But I don’t know the answers.
Story of my life. Maybe it’s the story of everyone’s. The more you see of it, the less you get it.
So when we’re told to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you,” I feel completely unprepared. Why do I keep choosing God when I live in a range of unmoved mountains the length of the Andes? Why keep clutching my faith when it seems to wield so little power? Pray when I’m so often unanswered? Hope when I’m so often let down?
I have no answers to blow any skeptic’s argument out of the water. In fact, they could probably blow mine out of the water with God’s own word.
The Only Answer I Know
If faith as a grain of mustard seed can move mountains, why didn’t this one move? Or this one, or this one?
Were mustard seeds boulder-sized at the time of Jesus? Is that why all the ounces of faith we can muster still don’t make a difference?
Why does Jesus say that if you believe, you’ll receive, but then allow a believing child’s mother to die? Or a believing mother’s child?
Did he forget to mention a few caveats?
These are questions we want answered when our mountains don’t topple. And they’re very good at toppling us instead because coupling God’s word with our contradictory reality either paints us as imbeciles, foolish humans who can’t figure out this faith thing to save our lives, or him as a chronic liar.
My own circumstances don’t very well defend him. Dead father. Unmarried. Childless. Lots of believing. Not much receiving. I’m hardly the poster child for mustard seed faith.
But that scripture doesn’t say be ready to convince whoever asks. It just says have an answer. Be convinced yourself. Know why you stand where you stand.
I think I might at least know that. C.S. Lewis sums it up succinctly.
“Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore. Only the life I’ve lived.”
That answer may not blow any holes in a cynical argument, but it’s the only one I have for why I try to keep the faith.
A Risk Worth Taking
Unmoved mountains are usually painful heartbreaks, and, to quote C.S. Lewis again, “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
I don’t disagree. The life I’ve lived says nothing brings you to God like hitting rock bottom. But the life I’ve lived says nothing makes him seem more distant, either. Pain is the birthplace of the world’s most devout Christians and its bitterest atheists. An effective megaphone when it works. A risky one if it doesn’t. Every mountain God doesn’t move is a chance he’ll lose the very soul he’s trying to awaken.
But how awake are we, how deep does our devotion go, how long does it last if it’s only won when God says yes? How sweet can the joy be if we never know the bitterness of sorrow?
I think God leaves some mountains where they are not because our faith was too weak, not because he ignored it, but because moving the mountain, at least at the time and speed that we want it moved, is a greater risk to our salvation than any anger we might indulge in when, in our eyes, he appears to abandon us. We’re easier to reach and teach in that place of disappointment because it’s also a place of desperation. You don’t start searching for something until you’ve lost it. And when you find what you’ve lost, it’s a thousand times more precious.
A momentary denial that shakes but also has the power to solidify your faith?
Or a lifetime of indulgence that never builds it?
There’s a prize in those mountains that is worth what God risks when he doesn’t move them. The prize is us. If we’ll allow it.
Standing Firm Until the Miracle Happens
I, like much of the world probably, have a picture in my head regarding mustard seeds where small faith is supposed to equal not only big but instant miracles. So when that doesn’t happen, it equals failure on my part or deceit on God’s.
But Jesus said nothing about instant.
God moves more mountains than we realize. Sometimes they just move like real ones–veeeerrry sloooowly–and sometimes they stand still while he moves other mountains so he can even get to that mountain.
Sometimes those other mountains aren’t all yours. What you want moved involves other people. Saving them is part of saving you. Moving their mountains makes moving yours possible. And vice versa. It’s not all about you, yet still all about you.
I want my mountain of singleness removed. I’ve prayed, pleaded, begged, and cried for my marriage. By all appearances, that mountain hasn’t budged in fifteen years.
But how many others have? While I’ve been waiting in apparent stagnation, what task force has been bustling tirelessly behind the scenes for me?
“Okay, she wants marriage. What needs to happen to give her a good one? Burn that dross, teach her this lesson, show her that truth, exercise this strength, overcome that weakness. Give her this experience to move that mountain of doubt, this mountain of complacency. Grow her faith here, lessen her fear there.” Rock after rock after hill after hill after mountain after mountain. The life I’ve lived has been clearing the way.
And not just for me. Another task force, or perhaps the same one, has been doing the same for my husband. Burning dross, building character, moving mountains of mistakes and weaknesses, fears and doubts. The life he’s lived has been clearing the way.
Until all at once, when we’re what and where we need to be for ourselves and each other, that biggest of mountains finally crumbles.
One prayer of faith may not move a mountain. It might take thousands. But each one is a strategically placed stick of dynamite. When all is in order and everyone in their proper place, where blowing the mountain won’t come at a steep price to you or anyone else–instant miracle. That immovable hunk of rock you’ve been staring at all these years? Gone in a matter of seconds.
The miracle is quick. The journey to it isn’t always. But without the journey, there’s no miracle at all.
The Pain is Part of the Happiness
My wait has been bitter. I mourn my husband and children just as other families in my community right now are mourning recent losses. What’s worse? To love someone and then lose them? Or to love someone you never even had to lose? To lose someone’s arms around you? Or to never have them around you in the first place?
It all hurts. It’s all heart-wrenching emptiness.
But what an enormous role it plays in our happiness.
The movie Shadowlands tells the story of how C.S. Lewis met, married, and too soon lost his wife. After being diagnosed with bone cancer shortly after their marriage, she recovered enough to enjoy a brief remission, during which they took a belated honeymoon. C.S. Lewis, or Jack, as he preferred to be called, reflected then that he was happy. Being there with her, not looking for anything else anymore, not looking for the next thing around the corner. What he had was enough.
She gently told him it wasn’t going to last.
“We shouldn’t talk about that now,” he said. “Let’s not spoil the time we have together.”
“It doesn’t spoil it,” she said. “It makes it real.”
They both knew she was going to die. Ignoring it didn’t change it. Facing it didn’t change it, either, but instead of shrouding the sweet with bitter, it made the bitter sweeter.
“What I’m trying to say,” she said, “is that the pain then is part of the happiness now.”
It works both ways, as Jack concluded at the end of the movie. “The pain now is part of the happiness then.”
Then as in the past. Then as in the future.
Pain is part of the happiness that was, and that is to come.
I Stand Firm Because I Can’t Help It
It’s easy to feel forsaken on an unmoved mountain, but I think that’s where God watches us most intently. Loves us deepest. When he knows our hearts are breaking.
That’s hard to see, though, so those are also the places we watch and love him least. When he seems not to care at all about our hearts.
Why stand firm with the being who could have moved this mountain and didn’t?
Let me borrow one more answer from C.S. Lewis. In the movie, about the time his wife went into remission, a colleague told him, “I know how hard you’ve been praying. Now God is answering your prayer.”
He answered, “That’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.”
If we only pray to be answered, we will be disappointed. Because we’re not always answered, and not all answers last. They didn’t for C.S. Lewis. His wife died.
Faith has to go deeper than the answers we expect from it. It has to be faith in God, not in what he gives us.
Life has taught me little about his mysterious ways, but much about myself. I’ve given up praying more than once, but have come back to it every time because I can’t help it. Because I’m helpless. Because the need flows out of me all the time. However small my portion seems sometimes when I stand with God, it’s missing altogether when I don’t.
I have no answers. Only the life I’ve lived. Which has left me one answer.
It’s not about knowing why. It’s about knowing God.
God bless you in the heartbreak of your unmoved mountains. I pray something here shines a light of hope on them and strengthens your faith in the God who has left them where they are for a reason. I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Thank you for being here.
If this resonates with you, these might too:
Choosing God When It Feels Like He’s Not Choosing You
Is Effective Prayer Like a Loaf of Sourdough?
Planting Seeds of Faith: Lessons from Our Garden
Scripture References
Pin it for Later
Well, you have done it again. I know your not writing to get gain or fame, someday, your wisdom will be heard by many. I appreciate your prayer. I recently finished Season three of The Chosen. It has stirred my emotions in ways that I’m not use to. The many things that have to take place in order for pur prayers to be answered is a miracle and blessing. Though hard to see at times. I pray for you, and your mountains. GOD BLESS
Thank you!
Love this! I’ve come to realize that my God wants a relationship- not a needship. And I need that too- someone who won’t take away the hard, but who will walk beside me through it, and work for me when I am exhausted beyond reason, pulling strings behind the scenes that I sometimes don’t see until years down the road, and I realize all my prayers really were answered… in the way that I truly needed them to be, and not in the way I usually expected in the hard moments.
One day I felt like Heavenly Father was trying to tell me it wasn’t about the top of the mountain at all… but it was about the climb itself and every step towards change, no matter how scary it could be. It’s not usually fun climbing a mountain, but I find myself stopping more to appreciate the flowers along the way now. The moments of beauty inside the burning and struggles. The little things.
Anywho loved reading your stuff. ❤️
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Aubri. This is a good reminder for me. I am such a doer, so extremely task focused and impatient to get things done that it’s no wonder I have such a hard time taking my eyes off the top of the mountain, setting aside the frustration and pain of not being there yet, and appreciating the flowers along the way. It’s a lesson I desperately need to learn: appreciating the journey as much as I will its completion. Really, it’s all those beautiful painful moments along that way that make the completion so wonderful.