Small Faith, Big Impact: What You Need to Know

So one day Jesus said to the disciples, if you have the faith of the grain of a mustard seed, which is a little itty bitty seed, you'll be able to say to that mountain, move, and that mountain will move into the sea. Or you'll be able to say to the mulberry tree, move, and it will be cast into the ocean. Now to ask you a question. Have you ever known anybody in your whole life, ever, who could speak to a mountain and make it move into the sea, or speak to a mulberry tree or bush or any other tree and tell it to be uprooted and to be thrown into the sea and it happened? Well, neither have I. So one of two things is true. Either Jesus wasn't telling the truth, or nobody ever has lived that had enough faith to be able to do that, or it's possible that there's one other alternative. And that's what I'm going to share with you on today's podcast.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rohm, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rohm.

Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rohm. And I'm just. Sometimes things bother me and they bother me usually when I'm confused, when I don't understand something, when somebody says something, or I don't understand a word or a phrase or a concept. I'm just not the kind of person that goes, oh, well, I guess everybody. I used to be like that. But I mean, when I was in high school, I heard so many words that I didn't know what they meant. And I just didn't say anything because I didn't want anybody to laugh at me or make fun of me because I didn't know what was going on. But you know, as I've gotten older, I've come to the realization that if I don't know what's going on, it's not going to be long before everybody notices that I don't know what's going on. And it could lead to a real big mess. So years ago, when I first heard this story, the disciples one day said to Jesus, increase our faith. And he said, no, I'm not going to increase your faith. If you have an itty bitty teeny weeny faith the size of a grain of mustard seed, which is the among the smallest of all the seeds, you'll be able to say to a mountain, move, and it'll be cast into the sea or to a mulberry bush. Mulberry tree move and it'll be thrown into the ocean, into the sea. Yet I remember sitting there thinking, you know, I never seen anybody do that. And that must mean my faith is smaller than the smallest seed among seed groups. I mean, the mustard seed's kind of small. And. Wait a minute. Not only do I not have that kind of faith, I never seen anybody who did.

Something's going on here. It bothered me. It bothered me so much, I started thinking about it and reading on it and praying about it. And the craziest thing happened. I got the answer one night by listening to a story that a friend of mine told. And I'm going to tell it to you right now. I have a friend named Ron. He lives in Texas. Ron went to visit his friend Richard, who lives in Minnesota. Now, Minnesota is cold, as most of you know, and Texas, well, it's pretty hot. Minnesota is in the very northernmost part of our country, and Texas, of course, is in the south. So Ron got on a plane, he flew to visit his friend Richard for a few days, and he was in the wintertime. And when Ron got off the plane, Richard picked him up, and they drove to Richard's house. And Richard said, boy, I've got some big surprise for you. Got some big news for you. Tomorrow, we're going ice fishing.

Rod said, we're going what? Richard said, we're going ice fishing. There's a lake here, and it's frozen, and we're going to go out on the lake and fish. It's great. I do it all the time, and I want to teach it to you. And we are going to catch some fish. We'll have them for dinner tomorrow night. It's going to be an awesome experience. Ron said, I was sitting there thinking, I've heard about stuff like this. People get out on the lake, and the lake cracks and people fall through the ice and they freeze to death and drown. And Ron said, I just wasn't really excited about Richard's big new idea. Ron said, I didn't sleep all night. He said, I tossed and turned and rolled over and thought to myself, what? What? What if we die tomorrow? What if we get on the ice and the ice breaks? What if we freeze to death and what if we drown? I mean, he said it was terrible. So anyway, the next morning they got up, and Ron said, I was kind of had a cup of coffee to try to wake up a little bit, but I was really worried. And he said, richard, why don't we just stay home today and visit and talk. I haven't seen you in a while. Richard said, no, no, no, no. We're going ice fishing. This will be a great experience for you and I can't wait. You'll love it. You'll be able to tell your friends about it. Plus we're going to catch some fish and we'll have them for dinner tonight. Ron said, okay. So he said they got in his truck and they drove out to the lake. And he said, I thought we were going to park. Oh, no. Richard drove out on the lake. Ron said, I really got nervous then. He said, but I did notice that there were other trucks and other vehicles out on the ice. And Ron said, richard, what if the ice breaks? Richard laughed and laughed. He said, this ice isn't going to break. He said, can't you look around and see all other trucks that are out there? Can't you see all other vehicles? And then to make matters worse, Richard unloaded the back of the truck. He had a 55 gallon barrel and he started putting wood and paper to make a fire so they could stay warm. So here's this 55 gallon container with wood and paper and he's making a fire that's sitting on top of the ice. Ron said, this, this has gone from bad to worse now. I'm really concerned. Anyway, pretty soon he got out a big drill and kind of drilled out into the ice. And Ron said, oh, here he comes. I can hear it cracking any money minute. So it's going to crack. The truck's going under, we're going under. We'll all be dead. We, we don't have fish for supper. We're going to have a funeral home for supper. Anyway, he said, I watched him and he was just happy. Richard's happy as he could be. He's whistling, carving into the ice with the big drill. Then he got the fishing gear out and started fishing and put the bait on the hooks and showed Ron how to do it. And Ron said, you know, I really, he really wasn't into it that much, but I like Richard and, and I could see that he kind of knew what he was doing. So after a while he said, I, my fear began to subside and we were out there for several hours and we caught a lot of fish and it was a lot of fun. And I'd go over to the barrel and warm up a little bit and then I'd fish some more and then I'd kind of feel and look to see if the ice was cracking really so funny. Ron said, I even tried to figure out how far it was from our truck to the shore in case I saw the ice cracking. I. I could run as fast as I could and dive on the shore so I could be safe. He said, I was pretty miserable all day, even though I was trying to enjoy it and trying to learn something new and trying to have a good experience with my friend Richard. So he said, anyway, at the end of the day, we had all these fish, we loaded up, we put the fire out, put the barrel back up on the truck, loaded up, and we. We went home. He said, and Richard cooked a great dinner, and the fish was awesome, and we had a good time. Ron said, something unusual happened that night. He said, when I. When I laid down in bed, he said, I kind of heard God speak to me. And he said, I really wasn't expecting that. But he said, God just sitting quiet in my heart. Not out loud, but he said, in my heart, I heard God say, hey, Rod, I want to ask you a question. And he said, I was laying there and said, well, you know, what is it? And he said, I just kind of heard God say, I want to ask you something today. Richard had great faith in the ice, didn't he? Ron said, he sure did. He had great faith in that ice. I mean, he's driving on it and cutting it and cooking on it and making a fire on it, just having a big time. And he said, and hey, Rod, you had. You had little faith in the ice, didn't you? He said, you better believe it. I scared to death. I just knew that ice was going to crack and we're going to fall in and drown and they'd never see us again. And then he said, God said the most unusual thing. Just in his heart. He said, so, Ron, I want to ask you a question. Richard had great faith in the ice, and you had little faith in the ice, Is that right? And Ron said, yeah. I was laying there thinking, that's true. Richard had great faith in the ice, and I had little faith in the ice. And then God asked him the final question. He said, hey, Ron, which. Which of your faith. Richard's great faith or your little faith, which of your faith held you up?

And Ron said, I thought for a minute, and I said, well, neither one of our faith held us up. What held us up was the ice. And he said, it was like scales fell off my eyes. I saw it. Richard had great faith in the ice. Ron said, I had little faith in the ice. But in both cases, it was not Our faith that held us up. It was the ice that held us up. And I heard Ron tell that story, and I thought, that's it. When the disciples ask for more faith, I will kind of paraphrase. So the way I understand it, when the disciples said, lord, increase our faith, give us more faith, what Jesus was saying is, you're not thinking about this, right? It's not the size of your faith that matters. It's who your faith is in. Because there is one greater than you that can speak to a mountain and cast it into the sea, can speak to a mulberry bush or mulberry tree and uproot it and cast it into the sea. You can't do that. But the one in whom you have your faith, he's able to do that. The one.

That you have placed your faith and trust in, he can move mountains, he can move trees. He can do anything. So you're focusing on the wrong thing. As one of my friends says, you're putting the emphasis on the wrong saliva. In other words, you're trying to get your faith increased when what you really need to do is focus on who your faith is in. Now, listen, I hope this helps you as much as it helps me, especially if you have a lot of C in your personality and you're trying to figure things out. Listen, my faith in money is in the bank or investments. My faith in health is in my physician or in my pharmacist. My. My health and travel is in the pilot of the plane. My health in history is in the recorded history books and the pictures of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. So I have faith in different things that give me different results, but none of those things, whether it's in the bank or in the medicine, in the medical field of medicine, medical field, or in traveling faith or in historical faith, none of those are saving faith. You see, saving faith is where you put your faith and trust in a person. That's where your faith is found. It's not found in your good deeds, your church membership, your baptism, or anything else you've ever done. Your faith is found in a person, and that person's the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You might say, well, how do you call on the name of the Lord? I'll give you an example. It sounds like this. God, I want to put my faith and trust in Jesus. He died. He paid for my sins. He arose from the dead, and I'm trusting in him. That's where I'm placing my faith. My faith is not in the church. My faith is not in any religious person. My faith is not in my own good deeds. My faith is in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ who loved me, died for me, arose for me, and has gone back to heaven to prepare a place for me that when I die, I can come to heaven too. Now, friends, let me just share something with you from the bottom of my heart. I am not the smartest person you will ever meet. And I'm not the dumbest person you'll ever meet either. And if God wants to give me the gift of eternal life, I'm going to take it. And then that happened to me many, many years ago when I. Just as a. As a young person, as a child, I just got on my knees and I said, God, I believe that Jesus died for me. And I asked him to be my savior. Thank you. That he arose from the dead to prove he could bring me back from the dead one day. That's how I did it. It wasn't any magical prayer. I didn't hear lightning. I didn't have a tingle down my back. It was just a simple prayer. God, I'm calling on you that you would save me. My faith and trust is in you. Now listen, and listen carefully. Since that time, I'm going to throw a curve at you, so I hope you're listening. Since that time, I've had one job, one responsibility, one activity, and you know what it is. Get to know the ice. Say what? Yeah, the reason Richard could drive his truck out on the ice and cut it with a drill and fish and. And have a fire and be totally at peace. Because he knew the ice. The reason Ron was a wreck all day is because he didn't know the ice. He wasn't familiar with the ice. And what Richard did. Through a long series of conversations and laughter and fun, he got Ron to trust the ice a little bit. And by the end of that day, Ron knew the ice a little bit better than he did to start with. So I hope you understand what I'm saying. I've gotten to know the ice over the years. I've gotten to know Jesus by reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, by watching movies, by listening to people preach and teach, by doing things that have helped me come to have a better understanding of what it means to have my faith in the right place. See, my faith is not in myself. My faith started my education. I've graduated from five colleges. My faith is not in my business. My Business is wonderful and I love it, but my faith is not in my employees, although they do a great job. My faith is not in my wife, although I won the wife lottery. My faith's not in my kids or my grandkids. My faith for salvation is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died, paid for my sins, and arose from the dead. And when I simply put my faith in him as an. And I did it through prayer, as an act of faith, where prayer didn't save me, but just Jesus saved me when I said, I trust you, I call upon you. I believe in you. My faith and trust is in you. Friends, if you see me in line in heaven and God walks up or my name is called and I have to go up and God says, why should I let you into heaven? It's going to be a very, very short answer. Because Jesus died and paid my way and arose from the dead, and I want to come into heaven based on what he did for me. My faith and trust is in Jesus, just like my faith and trust is in the ice. I've gotten to know him, and you understand what I mean by that. It takes time. It took time for Richard to get to know the ice. It took time for me to get to know Jesus, to get to know him intimately, to get to understand his heart, how he feels and thinks about things, and how I can seek him because he's the one that controls the universe. He's the one that can move a mountain, can move a mulberry tree, and can move your heart in the right direction. I hope today's thoughts have been helpful for you. I promise you this is one of the most important concepts I know. I don't live with any doubt because I don't look at the size of my faith. I have no idea how big my faith is, but I have a hundred percent confidence in whom I have placed my trust. And that's what makes all the difference in the world. If you, if you haven't done it, do it right now, just simply as an act of faith, say, God, I call on Jesus to save me. I want to get to know him. I want to get to know the ice. Forgive my sins, give me a place in heaven because Jesus died and rose again for me and I call upon him to save me. If you do that, I'll see you in heaven. I'll be in the middle section, down close to the front. I'll save your seat. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. Hope this podcast has been helpful. I look forward to talking to you again on another podcast real soon. Thanks so much. Bye. Bye.

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