Encouragement: Do not doubt

 Today I bring you encouragement from Matthew 21:18-22

Now early in the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry.After noticing a fig tree by the road he went to it, but found nothing on it except leaves. He said to it, “Never again will there be fruit from you!” And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it they were amazed, saying, “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?” Jesus answered them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. 22 And whatever you ask in prayer, if you believe, you will receive.”

Biblical Studies Press. (2006; 2006). The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Mt 21:18-22). Biblical Studies Press.

These few verses are packed with things to ponder. What I want to focus on today is verse 21. Jesus says "if you have faith and do not doubt..." I had never noted that before, that you can have faith to move mountains but if doubt creeps in then the mountain may not move.


So it is not a matter of how deep your faith is that stands in your way, but just that doubt has entered into your field of focus. We see the same message in the story where Peter takes a few steps on the water and then notices the wind and the waves and he started to sink. Again circumstances around you that allow doubt to creep in.


The world we live in is one of doubt and despair. So much of the news we watch is bad news, this bad news conditions us to have a doubting attitude to the world around us.

Jesus is the good news. Jesus tells us here to exercise our faith and not to doubt or let doubt creep into our thinking and in that frame of attitude "What ever you ask in prayer, if you believe, you will receive."


Amen