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Faith or Presumption

"If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."¹

I remember reading years ago in Reader's Digest about a company who glued a mustard seed to a brochure that was advertising the product they were manufacturing. Beneath the mustard seed they had words to the effect that: "If you have faith as much as a grain of mustard seed in our product, it will produce profound results for you."

Some months later a customer wrote back to the company saying, "You will be interested to know that I planted your mustard seed and it has already grown into a very robust plant bearing healthy tomatoes!"

There's a fine line between faith and presumption. We all have "mountains" in our lives that can only be removed by strong faith and a lot of hard work. Your "mountain" may be a bad habit, unresolved resentment, an addiction, or a toxic person in your life who is destroying you. We know it is God's will for us to deal with and overcome our "mountains" whatever they might be.

Sometimes, however, we want to do something for our own ends, and to justify it we say it is God's will, or God is leading me, or God told me to do such and such. When we do this, it is not faith but presumption.

True, we need faith to do what God wants us to do, but we need to be certain that our faith is in the right seed!

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help me always to be real, to examine my motives and discern the difference between faith and presumption, and please deliver me from the sin of self-centered presumption. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

1. Matthew 17:20 (NIV).

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