Faith and Miracles
A small congregation
in the foothills of the Great Smokies built a new sanctuary
on a piece of land willed
to them by a church member. Ten days before the
new church was to open, the local
building inspector informed the pastor
that the parking lot was inadequate for the size
of the building. Until the church
doubled the size of the parking
lot, they would not be able
to use the new sanctuary.
Unfortunately, the church with
its undersized lot had used every
inch of their land except for the
mountain against which it had
been built. In order to build more parking
spaces, they would have to move
the mountain out of the back yard. Undaunted, the pastor announced the next Sunday morning that he would meet that
evening with all members who had
"mountain moving faith." They would hold a prayer session asking God to remove the
mountain from the back yard and to somehow provide enough money to have it paved
and painted before the scheduled opening
dedication service the following week.
At the appointed time, 24
of the congregation's 300 members assembled for prayer. They
prayed for nearly three hours.
At ten o'clock the pastor said the final "Amen."
"We'll open next Sunday as scheduled," he assured everyone. "God has never let us
down before, and I believe
He will be faithful this time too."
The next morning as he was working in his study there came a loud
knock at his door. When he called "come in," a rough looking construction foreman appeared, removing his hard hat as he entered. "Excuse me, Reverend. I'm
from Acme Construction
Company over in the next county. We're
building a huge new shopping mall over there and we need some
fill dirt. Would you be
willing to sell us a chunk of that
mountain behind the church? We'll
pay you for
the dirt we remove and pave
all the exposed area free of charge,
if we can
have it right away. We can't
do anything else until we get
the dirt in and allow it to settle
properly."
The little church was dedicated the next
Sunday as originally planned
and there were far more members with
"mountain moving faith" on opening Sunday than there had
been the previous week!
Would you have shown
up for that prayer meeting? Some people say
faith comes from miracles. But others know:
MIRACLES COME FROM FAITH!
" And Jesus said unto them, Because
of your unbelief: for verily I say
unto you, If ye have
faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye
shall say unto this mountain,
Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove;
and nothing shall be impossible unto
you. Matthew 17: 20 “