A small congregation in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains built a new sanctuary on land that had been lovingly willed to them by a church member. Ten days before the scheduled dedication service, the local building inspector delivered troubling news to the pastor: the parking lot was too small for a building of that size. Until the church doubled its parking capacity, they would not be permitted to use the new sanctuary.
The problem was obvious and overwhelming. The church had used every inch of available land—except for the mountain rising directly behind the building.
To create more parking, they would literally have to move the mountain.
Undaunted, the pastor stood before the congregation the following Sunday morning and made an unusual announcement. That evening, he said, he would meet with all members who had “mountain-moving faith.” Together they would pray, asking God to remove the mountain from behind the church and to somehow provide the funds needed to have the new parking area paved and painted before the dedication service the following week.
That evening, at the appointed time, 24 of the church’s 300 members gathered to pray. For nearly three hours they cried out to God, asking Him to do what seemed humanly impossible. At ten o’clock, the pastor concluded the meeting with a final “Amen.”
“We’ll open next Sunday as scheduled,” he told them confidently. “God has never let us down before, and I believe He will be faithful this time as well.”
The next morning, as the pastor sat working in his study, there came a loud knock at the door. When he called out, “Come in,” a rough-looking construction foreman stepped inside, removing his hard hat as he entered.
“Excuse me, Reverend,” the man said. “I’m with Acme Construction over in the next county. We’re building a large shopping mall, and we’re in desperate need of fill dirt. I was wondering—would you be willing to sell us a portion of the mountain behind your church?”
The pastor listened in stunned silence as the foreman continued.
“We’ll pay you for all the dirt we remove,” he said, “and if you’ll let us have it right away, we’ll pave and stripe the entire exposed area at no cost to you. We can’t move forward on our project until the dirt is removed and allowed to settle.”
The little church held its dedication service the very next Sunday—just as planned. And interestingly enough, there were far more members with “mountain-moving faith” in attendance that day than there had been the week before.
Mark 11:23–24 “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
