ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A MAN...AND ANOTHER MAN...AND MEN AND WOMEN BY THE TRILLIONS...AND EACH ONE...

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Matthew 13:31-32

Another parable he put before them, saying,

The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed
which a man took and sowed in his field;
it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

Have you unknowingly led someone to Christ?  You might well have done that; planted some tiny mustard seed thought when you were not aware you were doing it.

Perhaps you verbally expressed your faith, or with a deed that was a visual shout that let those around you know that you are a Christian.  It was the right moment or the right place and it changed their life.  Their soul was ripe.  Their need was great and it happened.  

That word or that deed was like a tiny mustard seed and it grew and grew and grew.  In fact, it changed their lives to such a degree that if you knew what you had done, it would have left you speechless.  

Let me tell you one of my favorite stories.

A young teenager was walking toward his church in a building snowstorm but he never made it there.  As the storm increased in intensity he realized he would do well just to make it to a tiny chapel that was along the way.

And so it was that he joined a very small group of Methodists, who were also affected by the storm - their own preacher had been snowed in.  Finding themselves preacher-less, a layman volunteered to speak in his place.  He certainly hadn’t come prepared for such a happening, but several weeks earlier he had heard a sermon that he could not get out of his mind and decided to share it.

So as best he could, he repeated it to the gathered group which included the teenager.  Time and time again the layman quoted the words from Isaiah, “…look unto me and be saved, all ends of the earth.”

From that impromptu sermon, a tiny mustard seed, planted in the heart of a teenage boy during a most unlikely occasion, grew into a new and powerful faith.  It wasn’t that he had not believed before, but what he experienced was such a soul deep moment that when he left the church, he was never the same again.

His name?  Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of the greatest evangelists the church has ever known…who shook England for God and won thousands to Christ. 

And who did God speak through?  A layman who probably thought, Someone must speak for the Lord today, so it might as well be me…and so he stepped forward and basically said, “I will do it.”

Back in the mid 1700’s, there lived a man known as John Newton: a vagabond, a deserter from the British navy, a soldier of fortune, a slave trader.  Certainly not one to be admired or held in high esteem.  But this child of hell became a child of God.  One day turned from the devil’s list of things to do and picked up a Bible and saw that that list of promises and commandments was where he wanted to spend the rest of his life. 

And so the devil’s loss became heaven’s gain for the new John Newton, who could write a dirty ditty with the best of them, now wrote that hymn that has provided so much comfort and inspiration to millions, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.  I once was lost, but now am found.  Was blind, but now I see.”

        A miracle some would could call it.  And it was, the kind of miracle that happens all the time.  A tiny seed of faith planted that begins to grow and grow and grow.

It happens; repentance, redemption, a spiritual earthquake. 

        Friedrick Ruckert wrote about it…

In every man there lives an image

Of what he ought to be,

As long as he is not that image,

He ne’re at rest will be.

        Of course, God makes the impossible possible… that’s the way He set up the whole of existence.

(to be continued)

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