We women often face obstacles, crises, and detours on the way to fulfilling our purpose. Then we realized what we thought was the laying purpose was part of the process to fulfill our purpose. Hello, I'm Dr. Yvette Rice and welcome to There's More to Your Story podcast. In each episode, we share inspirational insights and encouraging biblical principles that help women overcome obstacles, crises, and detours on the way to the next part of their lives, careers, and purpose.
God has a divine plan for you that unfolds daily. So remember, there is more to your story. Hello, ladies. Welcome to There's More to Your Story. I'm Dr. Yvette Rice, your host, and we will discuss dealing with the mountains in our story on today's episode.
Growing up as a young believer in Christ, I never truly understood the concept of faith. Neither did I understand that without faith, I could not please God. We sang songs of climbing mountains, but never speaking to them.
And like many others, I grew up thinking that if God wanted things to happen in my life, then it was totally up to him. Boy, was I wrong. How do you respond to life's obstacles? Do you speak about the troubles you face in life, or do you speak to them?
What I mean by that, Are you so busy talking to others about the troubles in your life instead of talking to God about them and then believing Him to move the mountains, the obstacles out of the way?
Another question I have is this, are you a mountain mover or a mountain climber? The reason I ask that question is, of course, we're not trying to go mountain climbing, but there are some key things in the Word of God that tells us that we should speak to the mountains in our lives instead of just talking about them with no hope of them moving out of the way.
A few minutes ago, I read one excerpt from my book, Mountain Moving Made Easy, just to get us started, but I wanted to share some things with you that I have learned along the way. I found out throughout my life story that while I was waiting for God to deal with the many situations I faced in life, he expected me to stand in the place of authority that he had already given to me as his child and then tell the mountains to get out of the way.
What do you mean, Yvette? Well, let's talk about the mountains in our stories. Let's talk about the mountains or obstacles that we must overcome as we pursue our God -given purpose in life. So what does it mean?
And how do we get beyond those obstacles? Matthew 17: 20, and I'm reading from the New King James version says, so Jesus said to them, because of your unbelief, for surely I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.
The word mountain derived from the Greek word auras means overcoming difficulties or accomplishing great things and issues many times in the Bible to describe our situations, challenges or circumstances that we may face, including in Matthew 17: 14 through 20.
Another instance where the word of God talks about mountains is in Matthew 21:18 through 21 and Mark 11, verses 12 through 13. As I was reading those scriptures when I began to study how important faith was back a few years ago, there were two things that leaked out at me from Matthew 17:14 through 20.
The two things were the statement. You have faith as a mustard seed. And the other statement, you will say to this mountain. Before we dig deeper, though, into those statements, let's get a clearer understanding of the word faith since we needed to be able to move the mountains out of the way in our lives.
According to Hebrews 11, the scripture says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But what do those words really mean to us? Many times, to define or describe a word, we make statements like, it's pretty, it's orange, or it's strong.
But that really doesn't give us a definition. It actually gave us attributes. So as I read about faith in Hebrews 11, I felt like I was getting more of an attribute of what faith is. It's the substance of things hoped for, It's the evidence of things not seen. But what does that really mean to me? Or what did it really mean when I began to read it? So I studied that word to get a better understanding of what it really meant.
After conducting an exhaustive study of the word faith, and translating it from the Greek word pistos, I developed a simplified definition of the word faith, which I also used in my book, Mountain Moving Made Easy.
Faith is an absolute unwavering trust in God and His word. Now in the book, Mountain Moving Made Easy, I used the word immovable. But today I thought about it and I wanted to change that word out to unwavering.
And the reason that I did that was, sometimes our trust in God wavers like the ocean. We go from one side of belief to one side of unbelief, depending on the situation. And so I really want us to get this in our hearts, our minds today.
Faith is an absolute unwavering trust in God and His word. That means that no matter what, I'm not going to go back and forth. I'm going to believe what God's word says about my situation, regardless of what it looks like.
Let's go back to Hebrews 11 for a minute, and we're going to use that simplified definition of faith. to give us a better understanding of what God is speaking to us. And I know this is Yvette's version or Yvette's paraphrase, but I want to make this as simple as possible because it is so critical for us to understand how relevant our trust in God is as we go through the developments and the challenges that we face in our story.
Let's look again, Hebrews 11. Now, an absolute unwavering trust in God and His word is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Trust in God's word becomes the foundation for our hopes, for the things we desire even before we see them. So what the scripture is saying is faith, our absolute unwavering trust in God and his word is the foundation for everything that we believe that we expect to see him do in our lives regardless of what the situation looks like, regardless of what that mountain is standing in the way of, regardless of how big that mountain is.
I believe that our trust, our unwavering trust in God and His word, the promises that are there for us in the word of God will cause us to stop talking about our situations in unbelief and begin to speak to those situations in faith using the word of God to get that situation to move out of our lives.
Now, back to the mustard seed analogy. For most of my life, I focused on a misnomer that said, having faith the size of a mustard seed. And I'm sure that many of us, or many of you that are listening, have heard the same thing when you read that scripture that we read back in Matthew 17.
If we look at the translation, it does not say the size of a mustard seed. It said that if we had faith as a mustard seed. So what's the difference between the two statements? The word as means like.
While size reminds us how tiny a mustard seed is, and the more I thought about that and the more I studied the scriptures regarding faith, especially while I was writing Mountain Moving Made Easy I begin to realize there were a couple of things happening when we look at the word like it means in comparison to and so the Lord led me to a scripture that made that even more apparent let's look at Mark chapter 4 verses 30 through 35 and again I'm reading from the New King James version and it says then he in his referring to Jesus said to what shall we liken the kingdom of God or with what parable shall we picture it it is like a mustard seed which when it is sown on the ground is smaller than all the seeds on earth but when it is sown it grows up and become the greater than all herbs and shoots out large branches so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade Let's look at that.
Verse 31, it says, it is like, it is a comparison to. And then Jesus goes on to tell us about the life of the mustard seed. It says, when it is sown on the ground, it is smaller than all the seeds on the earth, but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs.
And it shoots out branches so that the birds of the air may nest under its shape. So what is this saying? It starts off small and tiny, but it matures and grows and becomes protection for the birds. And so it is with our faith.
It may start off small, but it must mature to serve its purpose and as trusting God enough to get beyond the mountains or the challenges that we face and the circumstances that we deal with as we move forward in our life story.
So now let's go back to Matthew 17: 20 for a minute. And you know, of course, this is going to be another one. He best paraphrases where I'm going to substitute what the mustard seed does and what our faith has to do with the scripture.
For assuredly, I say to you, if your absolute unwavering trust in God and his word develops like a mustard seed develops, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move and nothing will be impossible with you.
Wow, look at that. we have a clearer understanding of what God is saying to us and what we must do in order to be able to speak to the mountains with the word of God to get beyond those circumstances, build and increase our faith so that we can move to the next part of our stories.
I have another scripture that actually coincides or also supports my thoughts relative to our faith and maturity. There were times when Jesus walked the earth, rebuking some because of their lack of or having little faith while he boasted on others with great faith.
Examples can be found in Matthew 8, 5 -10, Matthew 15, verses 21 -28, and Matthew 8, verses 5 -11. I believe that if we could not increase our trust in God and His word or our faith could not grow and mature, Jesus would not have rebuked them for having little faith while praising others for having great faith.
Let's look at Matthew 28 and see how Jesus responds to this woman's faith. Then Jesus answered and said to her, Oh woman, great is your faith. Let it be to you as you deserve. And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
The word great used by Jesus to characterize the faith of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:28 is the origin of our English word mega. This word, the Greek word magus is defined as great, high, large, and mighty.
Thus, it is critical that our faith or our absolute unwavering trust in God and His word develops if we plan to move mountains out of our lives. Let's take a break. We will discuss how to mature our faith to overcome the mountains in our story when we return.
Welcome back to There's More to Your Story. We were discussing dealing with the mountains in our lives and how to develop our faith to move them out of the way. I want to take a look at Romans 12: 3 which says, for I say through the grace given to you, to everyone who is among you, not to think of Him. More highly than they ought to but to think soberly as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. Now remember before the break we were speaking about how some of us may start out with little faith while others have great faith.
So after looking at Romans 12: 3 and it says that each one of us was dealt a measure of faith, that word measure comes from the Greek word metron meaning a limited portion or degree. So how can that limited portion of faith increase to become great faith?
Let's look at Romans 10 :17 and I'm reading from the New King James Version. It says so then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the And in the Amplified translation says, So faith comes by hearing what is told, and what is heard comes by the preaching of the message that came from the lips of Christ the Messiah Himself.
So faith comes by us hearing, reading, and listening to the Scriptures. It comes from us studying the Word of God. To have great faith to move mountains, our absolute unwavering trust in God and His Word must increase daily by hearing, reading, and speaking God's Word.
Why? Let's look at Proverbs 18:20 -21 to find out. This is the New King James translation and it says, A man's stomach shall be satisfied from the fruit of his mouth, from the produce of his lips, he shall be filled. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat his fruit. In the Amplified version, we get a little more explanation. It says in verse 20 and 21, a man's stomach will be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth.
He will be satisfied with the consequences of his words. I want to stop right there at the end of verse 21 for a minute. Think about that. Our lives will have to be satisfied with the consequences of our words.
Remember when I was saying that we have to learn to speak God's Word over the circumstances in our lives and we needed to increase our faith or our unwavering in trust in God's Word by reading His Word, studying it, speaking it on a daily basis.
Why do we need to do that? Because our lives are affected by the consequences of our words. Let's go to verse 21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it and indulge it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of their words.
You know, I begin to think about this the more I studied it. I begin to think a lot of things that have happened in my life could have been caused by the words I spoke and how I dealt and lived through situations without following the instructions of God's word.
You know, I said and I've said it many times that in Psalms 139 that our stories are written in God's book But I but we must understand that even though our life stories are developed according to what he plans for us he gives us a choice and sometimes we stray from what's written in the book about our lives meaning that the perfect plans that God has for us may have Taken our turn because of our thoughts Because of the words we said and the direction we chose to follow instead of following God's Word And that's why it is critical that we guard our hearts and watch what we hear what we say and What we speak and what we take in even from the people that we fellowship and are associated with Why is that so critical?
Let me ask you a question Who do we hear speak more than anyone else even when thinking and not saying words out loud? I Want you to do a quick test Say something in your mind, but don't speak it out of your mouth Whose voice did you hear?
You're right, we hear ourselves speak more than anyone else and So we have to control the thoughts that are in our mind because that affects our ability to trust and believe God if we're saying to ourselves It's not gonna get any better Even if we're thinking it we are hearing those words What did we just read faith comes by hearing and hearing the message that Jesus spoke?
What is the message that Jesus spoke? It's the word of God. And so we have to make sure that our thoughts are controlled more by the Word of God instead of outside circumstances, outside people, and outside things we watch on television, things we stream live on our phones or our tablets, these reality shows.
We have to be careful what we're consuming and taking in to our minds because those thoughts don't go away. Think about this. I have been in cars and I've been driving and all of a sudden a song may come on the radio.
Well we don't listen to radio anymore but I may have a song playing on my phone and it could be an old song that I knew growing up as a child. I don't even have to think about it. I didn't plan to learn those words but all of a sudden I can sing them.
I remembered them from 30 -40 years ago. So guess what? That taught me that things that go into this mind of mind, they may be suppressed, but they're still there. And that's why you can be in a situation where you're frustrated or you get in a big conversation with someone and y 'all have a blowout and you say things that you regret and then later on you're wondering where in the world did that come from?
It came from your old man. It came from that old life. It's still in your mind. When we give our lives to Christ and we're surrender to the Lord, yes, our spirits are transformed and we're going to talk about that a little bit more.
But guess what? Our minds don't change. Our minds have to be renewed according to Romans 12. We have to renew our minds with new thoughts and new ideas and those thoughts and ideas have to come from the word of God if we're going to live the perfectly planned life that God has for us.
So we have to remember that the words we say, whether fruitful or unfruitful, will affect our mental capacity to develop a greater truth in God and his word, which then affects our ability to overcome the mountains or challenges in our lives.
Does that make sense? Let's look at a scripture that will help us understand that even more. Luke chapter 6 verse 43 says it this way, and I'm reading from the amplified translation. Out of the good tree of his heart brings forth good fruit, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of his heart his mouth speaks." Think about that. Out of the abundance of our hearts, which is talking about our minds, our brains, we speak.
So whatever we put in our minds and our brains is going to come out of our mouths. And you know, that's why when people say things to me and they say, oh, I didn't mean that, and they may joke or laugh, the first thing that comes to me is this, out of the abundance of your heart, out of the abundance of your mind you spoke. So in all actuality, what your belief system has generated over all these years is what came out of your mouth. So you really meant what you said, you thought you had the right to say it. And we have to think about that as children of God.
We have to think about that, that if out of the abundance of my heart, my mouth speaks, I must guide my heart. I must guard what I read, what I see, so that I can guard what I say. Meaning, I've got to think about what I'm taking in on live stream.
If it's contrary to the word of God, and it's gonna put me in a place where I can't trust and believe what God is speaking to me, then I need to cut it off. It may be trending, and it may be the greatest thing that everybody else is out there watching, but I'm in situations right now where I'm trying to move mountains out of my life.
Where I'm trying to get beyond circumstances and challenges so that I can move on to the next part of my story so I don't have time to think about or to take in garbage that is gonna affect my thought patterns.
You know what they say? Garbage in, garbage out. When we returned, we were finished this episode by discussing, speaking to the mountains in our lives instead of speaking about them. ["The We're discussing dealing with the mountains in our story or our lives and how we overcome them through our absence." absolute unwavering trust in God and his words and also by the words we speak.
I want to draw your attention to a particular scripture related to us and our makeup and how God created us. And I think that's going to help us see how we have the ability to speak to the mountains in our lives and to see them move out of the way.
In Genesis 1, verses 26, that's Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, and I'm reading from the Amplified translation, the Lord discusses how he made us. God said, let us Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so we know of the Triune God.
He's three personalities, one God. Okay, God said, let us Father, Son, and Holy Spirit make mankind in our image. after our likeness and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tamed beasts, and over all of the earth and everything that creeps upon the earth." So God, in his triune personality, God, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, said he was going to make us in his image and after his likeness.
While many may accept Christ as the way into the kingdom of God, I now realize that very few of us comprehend the significance of being created in the image and after the likeness of God. You know, we're so used to seeing each other from the outside.
And sadly to say, we actually see, we judge each other by what we look like from the outside. So many times we're prejudiced against people by their appearance and not even realize we're not even looking at the real person that God created.
The word image that was used in Genesis 1 and 26 is translated from the word teslam which is defined as a phantom, resemblance, hence a representative. In similar descriptive terms, the word likeness comes from the word demuth and it signifies the original after which something is patterned.
And so we have been patterned after our creator, God, our Father. And so we have been patterned after our creator, God, our Father. Look at this. So God is a spirit. He's a spirit being. And remember, because we don't see God, but we know his presence, he's there.
He has sent his Holy Spirit, his personality in the Holy Spirit. actually residing inside of us once we get saved. And so, remember I was talking about our earth suit, what we look like from the outside, but that we are spirit and we are spirit being just like God the Father.
Let's look at Thessalonians 5 .23 to get clarity. And it says, now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the comment of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are a triune being and we are a spirit. That's the real us. We have a soul which is our mind, the Succi, how we think, our ability to take in information, and we live in a body which is our earth suit.
So when we look at that and the real person the real event is the spirit being just like her father Then we have to realize We have our father's DNA His divine nature and authority. Oh That excites me to know that I am made in the image and after the likeness of my father God my creator And so I shouldn't get so hung up on the earth suit Of course, we need to eat right take care of it because we can't exist on the earth without this earth suit but the real me is a spiritual being a Supernatural being you know when we think about it That's why we need to quit looking at people so much from the outside and mistreating people Based on the color of their skin or what their hair looks like or what nationality they are because we have to think about it God made us diverse for a reason and I think he wants us to come to love people based on our abilities given through us or given to us by the Holy Spirit and by our Recreated hearts and soul when we give our lives to Christ a critical factor in living out our stories and our ability to overcome the obstacles in our lives is Understanding and accepting who we are in Christ Jesus I use the word accepted because many of us have poor images of ourselves Remember I was talking about our earth suits and we use that so much to judge ourselves instead of looking at the real beautiful person on the inside of this earth suit that God created us to be and then another thing is we allow pain and Disappointment from our past or our current difficulties sometimes prevent us from accepting ourselves as the way that God sees us or realizing how dynamically we were created.
Remember in Psalms 139, and I've mentioned this scripture throughout our podcast episodes, it says, I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made marvelous art thy works. So I read Psalms 139 14a.
I didn't go through the entire part of it. But we have to realize that we are wonderfully made that God has a purpose and a plan for us and everything about us is marvelous. We must determine that the real mountain mover, the real event, the real you, that we are overcomers and that we are powerful spirit beings created in the image and after our Father and our God to help us understand that even more. Let's look at second Corinthians chapter 5, verses 16 through 17, and it says it in this way. So from now on, we regard no one from a human point of view.
Now, this is talking about after we give our lives to Christ and we have been recreated as new creations or new creatures in here, our old spirit man, the fallen person is done away with and we have been renewed and made again, eat in the spirit man, according to how God created us to be.
Now, does that mean that the mind has changed? No, remember, we said that we have to change our minds and once we change our minds, our bodies will follow. But we want to see ourselves in this new created being according to the way the scripture says that we've been renewed in second Corinthians 15.
I'm gonna read that again one more time. Now, let's go to verse 17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that is grafted in, joined to him by faith in him as savior, see, I just mentioned that, he is a new creature reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit.
Hallelujah. So God, the Holy Spirit resides in us, in this recreated being, in this new woman, this new man of God, once we give our life to Christ. Then it says this, the old things, the previous moral and spiritual condition has passed away.
Behold, new things have come because spiritual awakening brings a new life. Hallelujah. Spiritual awakening has brought a new life to us, a new created being. So now with this new life we have in Christ, we can see how God operated on the earth and that is how we should be operating or doing things on the earth.
So let's look at this. Back in Genesis, if you go study Genesis chapter 1, I'm not going to read it, but I want you to study it. Everything that God created, He spoke into creation. The Bible says that He spoke something and then it says, and He saw what He said.
And that's why we have the authority and ability to do the same thing. Remember what I read in Proverbs about life and death are in the power of the tongue and we're going to live out the consequences of what we have been saying and speaking.
Guess what? It's because we have the same authority. We have our Father's DNA. We have creative powers with the words that we speak and so we have to be. careful what we're saying and how we are saying them.
Remember the word image is defined as a phantom resemblance or representative. So we are God's representative on the earth and we must learn how to see ourselves the way God sees us and speak to ourselves about what God says about us so that we can begin to speak to the mountains in our lives.
You know, I cringe when I hear someone speak negative about themselves. I'm dumb. I'm fat. I can't do this. I'm too old. It makes me cringe. People, we can't be so loose with our tongues because our tongues have created power and guess what?
Our brains, our minds, that suture is hearing all of those negative things that you're saying about yourself and your situation and guess what happened? It overrides the word that you have been listening to, that you have been reading, that you have been studying and that's why it is so important about the people that you hang around with.
You know there is a saying that we become the average of the five people we spend more time with or spend the most time with. I read that and I started counting one, two, three, four, five. When you look at that situation and it's true because guess what?
You're hearing their thoughts. Some of their thoughts become your thoughts. You know, we say we have our village or our posse or our group but you need to look closely at the posse that you have or the group that you have because what they're pouring in into you.
If it doesn't line up with the word of God, if it doesn't line up with moving the mountains in your life, it is hindering you getting beyond those obstacles to the next story or the next place, the next part of your story that God has for you.
It is critical that we guard our hearts and it is critical that we build our faith by hearing, seeing, and speaking the word of God because our words have creative power and we have to guard our ears because what we hear becomes part of our thought patterns and we begin to speak.
The things we speak shape our lives. Some things that we're facing right now. We probably spoke, believed and said five years ago and now we're seeing the manifestation. So what do you want to see for the next part of your story?
Then start saying it, start speaking it, start declaring it. Now, I'm not saying some abracadabra stuff. No, but the word of God is true. It's powerful than any two -edged sword. And according to Hebrews 4 and 12, it will separate the spirit from the soul.
And so we need God's word to separate the spiritual man from that soulless part of us that we need to renew with the word of God so that we can go forth to do what God has called us to do. Let's have a word of prayer before we end the episode today.
God, help us speak, say, hear, read, take in the right kind of information, which is your word. Lord, help us to develop an unwavering trust in your word and what you say. God, help us to believe and trust so that we can speak to the situations in our lives so we can tell ourselves this may be happening, but Lord, we can overcome this situation because your word is true.
Lord, help us to get beyond the mountains and stop talking about them, but start saying and speaking and declaring that they are out of our way so that we can have the victory to move forward with our lives.
God, we give you all the glory and the praise and we seal this in Jesus name. Amen. I have three challenges for each of you that are listening today.
Challenge one, apply everything you have learned from this episode as you speak to the mountains in your story.
Challenge number two, visit our web page, LLVE-LLC .com for more information about how you can discover resilience, build confidence, and become that best woman of God that you were created to be.
And then the third challenge is join us next time to be encouraged and inspired as you pursue your God given purpose and dreams. Until then, I'm Dr. Yvette Rice. Have a victorious day. And remember, there's more to your story.
Thank you.