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MOVING
MOUNTAINS
A small congregation in the
foothills of the Great Smokies built a new
sanctuary on a piece of land willed to them by a church member. Ten days
before the new church was to open, the local building inspector informed
the
pastor that the parking lot was inadequate for the size of the building.
Until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they would not be
able
to use the new sanctuary.
Unfortunately, the church with its undersized lot had used every inch of
their land except for the mountain against which it had been built. In
order to build more parking
spaces, they would have to move the mountain out of the back yard.
Undaunted, the pastor announced the next Sunday morning that he would meet
that
evening with all members who had "mountain moving faith." They
would hold
a prayer session asking God to remove the mountain from the back yard and
to
somehow provide enough money to have it paved and painted before the
scheduled opening dedication service the following week.
At the appointed time, 24 of the congregation's 300 members assembled for
prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours. At ten o'clock the pastor said
the final "Amen." "We'll open next Sunday as
scheduled," he assured
everyone. "God has never let us down before, and I believe He will be
faithful this time too."
The next morning as he was working in his study there came a loud knock at
his door. When he called "come in," a rough looking construction
foreman
appeared, removing his hard hat as he entered. "Excuse me, Reverend.
I'm
from Acme Construction Company over in the next county. We're building a
huge new shopping mall over there and we need some fill dirt. Would you be
willing to sell us a chunk of that mountain behind the church? We'll pay
you for the dirt we remove and pave all the exposed area free of
charge, if we can have it right away. We can't do anything else until we
get the
dirt in and allow it to settle properly."
The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as originally planned and
there were far more members with "mountain moving faith" on
opening Sunday
than there had been the previous week!
~ Author Unknown
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