God is big. Really big. But often God shows up in small, seemingly insignificant ways that we can miss if we’re not looking.  His Kingdom is like a mustard seed.

If God brings His Kingdom in small ways, like planting a mustard seed and waiting for it grow into one of the largest plants in the garden, then God’s church must be willing to partner with Him in His process. We can’t try to mass produce and outproduce God. If he’s decided to work through small things that eventually have great impact, He needs a people who will join Him in that process.

He needs a fellowship of the mustard seed.

What is a fellowship of the mustard seed? It’s a people who are content to partner with God in small, seemingly insignificant ways, believing that if they do, it will lead to something  greater, either in this age or in the age to come.  The fellowship of the mustard seed is those who have abandoned the big show in favor of great faithfulness and love, whether the task is big or small.

This won’t be easy. Our world teaches us to want more, bigger, better all the time. In fact, we spend much of our time trying to amass more- more people to our cause, more money in our accounts, bigger more explosive events that attract the attention of more people.

The point of God’s Kingdom coming like a mustard seed is it weeds out those who are looking for anything besides Jesus. If you wanted to be the center of attention or be known for doing great things, mustard seed starts don’t give it to you. For those of us who are trying to be faithful to the Kingdom, being part of mustard seed beginnings is enough. We don’t gain our significance from our ministry, we gain it from the love of God. And that is enough.

The truth is the way to the big impact is through faithfulness in small things. Jesus tells us how that happens:

If you are faithful in the little things, you will be faithful in large ones.

–Luke 16:10

You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things…

–Matthew 25:21

Think about Billy Graham, Bill Johnson, John Piper, or whatever other large scale Christian leader that you think has impacted this generation. Many people want to be like these men, doing great things and being recognized for leading people to Christ and teaching the masses. But hardly anyone knows the names of the men who faithfully discipled these men. They were just faithful men, planting mustard seed-sized truths of the Kingdom of God into soil and hoping that they would grow. These will be true heroes in the age to come.

Think about Johnny Appleseed, a bit of a myth at this point, but he was a real man who walked across the United States sowing apple seeds into the ground.  He may have never seen the fully grown apple orchards from the seeds he planted. He definitely didn’t see the other apple trees that grew from the trees he planted. But he believed in the power of the seed to affect human kind, and he’s become famous for that belief.

We have a seed more powerful than an apple seed, but we must believe in it’s power to transform mankind. It might not happen overnight, but if believe in its power and sow seeds wherever we go, our seeds will take root in the hearts of men and will change the course of generations of humanity.

We just need to become the kind of people who trust the power of God’s seed.

Photo Credit: Mustardseed by Molly