Guest Speaker: the Power of Small Things

The mus­tard seed is very small. Yet it can grow twice as tall as a man. Jesus said that the king­dom of God is like that mus­tard seed. Great things can develop from very small actions. We should always be on the watch for those times when we can do the lit­tle things, doing it all for God. And now my ser­mon notes:

Sitting here wait­ing for ser­vice to start, really appre­ci­ate our musicians.

Today we have a guest speaker, Curt Harlow, who works with col­lege stu­dents estab­lish min­istries at west coast state col­leges and uni­ver­sity, Chi Alpha.

Power of small things. Matt 13:31 [show]Matthew 13:31 [31]He put another para­ble before them, say­ing, “The king­dom of heaven is like a grain of mus­tard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. (ESV)
mus­tard seed para­ble. Smallest things make the biggest difference.

The mus­tard plant was almost a weed in Israel dur­ing Jesus’ time. As such those lis­ten­ing to Jesus would have imme­di­ately understood.

Tiny mom­ments of one to one inter­ac­tions, of kind­ness and love make a difference.

Seeing the after. Look beyond the “geeky” silly or wrong. What do you see in oth­ers? Is it the now or their poten­tial. We can help the small­est poten­tial in some­one blos­som into a mighty man or woman of God.

Sending home. The birds come and perch. Home base the­ory: healthy chil­dren nei­ther stay too close or stay away too long from home. A sea­son of nur­ture and a sea­son of kick­ing them out the door. Who is perch­ing in your world?

Really sim­ple mes­sage but one that we all too often do not turn into real­ity. In fact, we all too often do not start with our­selves in this mes­sage. We fall into the trap of think­ing that we are too insignif­i­cant to make an impact, be it in our imme­di­ate cir­cle of fam­ily and friends, our wider cir­cle of acquain­tances, and of course the world.

Jesus wants to start with us. He wants us to see that we can make an impact no mat­ter how insignif­i­cant we may feel we are. That is the first step of plant­ing mus­tard seeds, believ­ing that we can.

Another mes­sage of the mus­tard seed is that it is an annual plant. It must be replanted every sea­son. We have to remem­ber to con­tin­u­ally be out there plant­ing. We need to be act­ing in kind­ness and love con­tin­u­ally. We need to look for the poten­tial in oth­ers and encour­age it. We need to be a good place for peo­ple to perch. A place that peo­ple can go out and do min­istry and come back to for refresh­ment, that con­stant renewal of replant­ing the mus­tard seed.