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 parking 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!
