He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”
Luke 17:6 NIV
While in South Korea, Pam and I had the privilege of visiting prayer mountain, which began over 50 years ago on a remote area near the North Korea border. The founder, Dr. David Cho, encouraged his congregation to go there to pray and pour their heart out to God.
Our guide, Samuel, told us that they had a saying to capture how people ought to pray. “To get your answer, you will have to up-root a tree”. He said this meant they would keep coming back to the same exact spot to pray until their prayer was answered.
Two days later I read this verse in Luke and laughed out loud. There’s a mulberry tree being uprooted! Sitting on that hillside and looking at all the trees, gave me a very different image of the difficulty of uprooting a tree.
At my home, I have used a pick axe to uproot some smaller trees. I didn’t want to just cut them with a chainsaw. It’s hard work. Really hard.
Jesus says we are to speak to the problem (to our tree) and tell it to be uprooted. If we are spiritually lazy, we will just speak to the visible leaf and branches of our situation with little result. The challenge is to work on “getting to the root” of the problem.
For example, your lack of finances is not your root problem, rather, it is just addressing the leaf and branches. The root could be generational curses or perhaps repentance for poor stewardship.
Whatever the difficulty is that you are facing…keep coming back with your request to God and believe that He will show you how to get to the “root”.
May God increase your faith to persevere to your answer.
Blessings.