Childhood books urged me, “If you believe hard enough, whatever you wish for will come true!”  Oh, how I wanted it to be so but there was always an adult around to assure me of what I had already sensed, that it just wasn’t true.  Later as a teen I discovered that “faith can move mountains” and began to pray in faith and received amazing answers.  I learned though that faith and belief, unlike “wishing upon a star,” worked only on those things that God had promised in his word.

Sola scriptura, scripture alone, was Martin Luther’s insistence that all authority for a Christian’s life was based not on what some religious leader found advantageous, not on tradition but only on the Word of God—the Bible.  Today, people tell me, “Well, I believe …,” fill in the blank with whatever they’ve been taught by “someone I respect”—therefore it must be true, without taking time to be like the Bereans who “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). Paul wasn’t threatened by people searching the Bible for themselves, so why do Christian teachers feel threatened today?  Or perhaps the person believes something because it’s convenient, allowing them to do what they want to do.

Just believing something, anything does not make it so.  Exercising faith in God, based on his word already expressed in the Bible does!

“I tell you the truth, 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.” Matthew 17:20

Let’s move those mountains of sickness, poverty, evil and unbelief!  Anyone game?