Faith as a Mustard Seed

At one point in the Savior’s ministry, a man came to the Savior asking Him to heal his son and telling the Messiah that the disciples could not heal him.  Jesus responded, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?”  He then healed the boy, and the disciples asked Jesus, “Why could not we cast him out?”  The Savior’s response was that they needed more faith, “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” (Matt. 17:14-20).  Because a mustard seed is so small, I think I have generally understood this passage to mean that we only need a small amount of faith and we can work great miracles.  But pondering this more, that doesn’t seem right.  We need faith, and we need a lot of it.  Surely those disciples who had failed to heal the boy had some faith, for they were at least trying and seeking to emulate the Savior’s power.  In our dispensation the Lord told us in the last days that we need to develop the great faith of the brother of Jared, who, incidentally, did move a mountain: “And in that day that they shall exercise faith in me, saith the Lord, even as the brother of Jared did, that they may become sanctified in me, then will I manifest unto them the things which the brother of Jared saw” (Ether 4:7).  In the New Testament the Savior also condemned those who had “little faith” and so surely having faith like a grain of mustard seed can’t mean to have just a tiny amount of faith (Matt. 16:8).  So what does it really mean to have faith like a grain of mustard seed?

            I believe to have faith like a grain of mustard seed actually means that we have powerful faith.  In another passage in Matthew, not about faith, the Lord spoke about mustard seeds: “Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof” (Matt. 13:32).  So the mustard seed is something very small but it grows to a large and useful tree.  In the same manner, perhaps to have the faith of a mustard seed indicates that we can do powerful things from only very small means.  Mustard seeds have amazing potential and can turn something ordinary and hardly noticeable into a large tree that even birds can come and lodge in them.  When we have the faith of a mustard seed then maybe that means that we will do something similar in spiritual matters; for example, surely Nephi had the faith of a mustard seed when he took the raw materials that made up the place Bountiful and turned them into a ship worthy to sail across the ocean.  President Nelson had the faith of a mustard seed when he was assigned to open the doors of the eastern European nations to the Church and, though he had very little to work with when he started, miraculously turned them all into countries that officially recognized the Church.  He changed a difficult situation into a blossoming field of missionary labor.  Or we might even say that David had the faith of a grain of mustard seed, for he took very small means in order to accomplish the great task of slaying Goliath.  In our own lives we need the kind of faith that uses small and simple means to accomplish that which is great—that is the faith we need to move the mountains.