Sometimes when I don’t know what to pray, when I’ve got no clear direction for prayer, the lines of a song come to mind. Recently this one’s been chasing me:

“Jesus, He can move the mountains/My God is might to save…”

At the same time, I have been watching a natural mountain being moved.

This summer highway crews have been working to widen Highway 55 on Goose Creek Grade between New Meadows and McCall. The road winds for several miles along a canyon wedged between a mountain’s facade and the river curling underneath lip of the road.   The canyon road is much too narrow for the monster -sized semis and logging trucks going through McCall and New Meadows. It is also dangerously curvy, inviting irritable drivers to tailgate my back bumper or shoot by my car like bats out of a cave on the single, very short passing zone.

So far construction delays have been mercifully short. While waiting at the traffic light or for the flaggers to direct cars, I’ve watched an extremely complex project. My grandsons would love the dump trucks, tall cranes, bulldozers and drilling machines taking down pieces of the mountain or the yellow loaders creating the new roadbed atop the river.  Men and women in hard hats and bright green highway gear are everywhere, directing traffic flow, running machinery, overseeing and planning, watching the rock coming down and the new roadway taking shape. Safety for all the workers and motorists coming through is a major concern. Moving mountains is dangerous work.

When Jesus was teaching his disciples about faith and the kingdom of God, He often referred to mountains. They represent obstacles and circumstances which block our lives, the trials which impede us from living fully in God’s kingdom of light and grace. At least three times in the Gospels, twice in Matthew and once in Mark, Jesus said that faith, even as small as a mustard seed, would not only move mountains but would throw them into the sea.

And Jesus answered saying to them, “Have faith in God. “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. “Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.… Mark 11:22-25

Jesus immediately adds that forgiveness is a requirement when we pray to move mountains.

“Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. “But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.” Mark 11:25-26

Without forgiveness, the mountains remain impassable, daunting and dangerous. For us to forgive others, we have to accept the Lord’s forgiveness and come to the cross. He moves our mountains. It is not we who move the mountains of God.

The truth is that the Idaho Highway Department cannot de facto move an entire mountain. Even with all of the money, equipment and personnel involved, despite all the safety precautions, the best that they can do is to move a very small portion of granite necessary for the project. To move more than has been surveyed and deemed safe would be dangerous. It could destabilize all of the surrounding land and prove disastrous.

No human is exempt from running into the immovable mountainside of life at some time or another. I’ve run smack into the rock faces of grief, loss, insecurity, health and broken relationships so often I bear the fracture marks in my heart because I tried to be a mountain mover on my own. I never felt safe at all.

Jesus told us what’s needed to cast down our mountains. The prophet Zechariah foretold what Jesus would do:

Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts. Who(What) are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain; and he will bring forth the top stone with shouts of “Grace, grace to it!”‘”…Zechariah 4:6

Neither money nor man power will budge an inch of the high mountains before us. We don’t need high tech drilling equipment or more trucks. Surveying the situation one more time is pointless. Finding one more  way around the roadblocks leads  into dead ends.  That tiny mustard seed of faith in the Lord and in His promised Word will do the impossible, even to casting out intractable demons for when Jesus moves a mountain, Satan’s kingdom gets thoroughly destabilized. It’s time to take off our self protecting hard hats and put on Christ. His is the helmet of salvation, keeping us free and safe from the enemy. Only Jesus Christ in the power and might of the Holy Spirit can move the entire mountain, even that which we cannot even see. He tells us…

“You will say to this mountain,’ Move from here to there’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” Matt 17:21

Therefore, do no doubt, but have faith. Pray and believe you are heard. Forgive as He forgave. Speak to the mountain in Jesus’ Name and watch it come down like an avalanche, dissolving away to nothing.

Friede Gabbert