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 KJV

As has been talked about elsewhere, unbelief is the greater belief in the seen, rather than the unseen.  This is often described as more than simple a lack of faith, is a force that works against true faith as it is a “faith” in the visible, rather than in the invisible.

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And Jesus said to him, Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.

Luke 18:19

The victory cry of Israel was, “For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”  Psalm 100:5  They sang this refrain over and over, as a praise to their God who had given them them their victory.  No other words are recorded, if there were any, this was their triumph!

No one is good but God.  Even Jesus, God Himself, didn’t try to stand in His own goodness as a man.  Everything He did, He obeyed His Father, as an example.  He said that whoever does truth comes into the light so that it might be plainly be seen that what has been done has been done through God (John 3:21).

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The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

Matthew 13:10

1 Peter 1:8 talks about “joy unspeakable” and “full of glory”.  Suppose you had experienced this “joy unspeakable”, and had to explain it to someone else.  How would you do that?  Well, about the best way you could put it would be that it is, in fact, “joy”, and, it’s so incredible, it’s “unspeakable”, so that words do not even seem to do it justice.  That would be about it.  You could, perhaps, get a few more adjectives in there.  It was so “glorious”.  But, unless someone else had even seen “glorious”, they wouldn’t get it.  You would be more or less stuck, unable to explain it to them.

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For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,

Romans 14:17

I think that when it comes down to it, many people today miss  it today regarding the Kingdom.

Nearly all  probably do in some ways, perhaps, with some exceptions, but, primarily, we fail to recognize the King’s heart in coming.

Jesus said in language impossible to misunderstand that He was The Way.  Not that He came to show it, demonstrate it, teach it, or model it, but rather, that He Himself was The Way.  He was the Son of God, and the Son of Man, and no one came to the Father but by Him.

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Matthew 13:3-8

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Proverbs 4:23 says to keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issuings of life.  Jesus, when confronting Peter after His  resurrection, after that Peter had denied Him, asked Him three times, “Do you love me?” (John 21:15-17).  Three times, He asked Peter if he loved Him the way He himself loved Peter, unconditional, undemanding love.

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If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple

Luke 14:26

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  Heaven and Earth will pass away before any one of His words passes away.  Many people would like to interpret this passage into obscurity, equating it with similar, albeit, related scriptures, such as this one.

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There is only one way to walk consistently in the power of God, and that is focus.  What a man beholds, he sees that thing, and it is magnified in his imagination.

If a man set gaze upon it, he can possess it, though it is costly.

Consider the following:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Matthew 7:7

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What is one of the simplest ways to teach faith?  The Beatitudes.

Right here, the Teacher demonstrates one of the simplest ways.  As small as it is, it can grow to be the largest of all “garden plants”.

Take any dire situation you have as a Christian.  Take any lack, or any shortage, any place where your feel worn thin, and pressed hard.  Everyone encounters these, and even Jesus said that we would experience storms, even when we were built upon the rock.

Most Happy are those who are poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Matthew 5:3

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He who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought.

1 Corinthians 8:2 (paraphrase)

The most interesting thing about the gospel is that, you could have all the words right, you could say all the right things, have all the right demeanor and mannerism, you could know when to shout and how to dance, but you could be just as much of a devil as Judas was.  That’s right.  It’s what’s on the inside that counts.

You don’t have what it takes.  You never have, and you never will.  If you can do it, it isn’t God, and it needs to die.

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This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.

John 3:19-21

This is the verdict.  Light has come.  Men didn’t want it.  They wanted something different.

The difference here is important.  Jesus contrasts the two walks.  One is those who do evil.  The other is those who do Truth.

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