Be a mustard seed

When talking about faith, everyone loves to turn to Matthew 17:20, "And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."  Most will condense it down to say, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can do anything. However, the word size is not mentioned in scripture. Luke 17:5-6 is another, "And the apostles said unto the Lord, increase our faith. And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamore tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.

But faith is not the only thing which a mustard seed is used to describe. In Mark 4:30-32, Jesus says, "And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when it is down in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth: But when it is down, it growth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it." This is reiterated in Luke 13:18-19, "Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it."

So often, we read the scriptures in Matthew and in Luke 17 about faith and the mustard seed, but there is so much more entailed than just faith. But to glean that, you must know about the mustard seed itself. For a mustard seed to flourish, it must have full sunlight or very little shade. The soil in which it is planted must be well drained and enriched with organic matter. It has to be free of weeds, dug over to loosen the soil with the organic matter worked in. Young seedlings need protection from pests, pets and from the weather. Mustard seeds germinate quickly; if not harvested when they are ready, they will fall to the ground spreading everywhere. Every part of the plant is useful: the seeds are ground into the condiment we use, the oil is extracted, the leaves serve as food and the plant and roots are used as fuel. And there is no hybrid mustard as it will not germinate with any other plant.

We have to be the same. As Apostolic believers, we must maintain full Son-light at all times. If we go into the darkness, we wither away. We must stay planted in Christ, having repented of our sins and baptized in Jesus name. Organic means that it comes from something that was once living. Jesus Christ is the living word in which we must plant ourselves. We have daily "till up" those areas of our lives that are hard and need a little more of the living word to penetrate. As young believers or new converts, we are susceptible to the things of the world and need protection. Psalm 91:9-13 says " Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep the in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet."

As a follower of Christ, we are asked to produce fruit. That is the great commission which Jesus gave to us in Matthew 28:19-20. He told the disciples to go and make disciples. That has not changed. We are not "harvested" until we die, therefore that commission to go should be spreading everywhere. It becomes hard to control and contain when we are like a mustard seed.

Every part of our lives as believers is useful. Our work, our play, our interactions with strangers, we leave a mark. We sometimes have to be ground to become a flavor that is palatable to someone else. Sometimes we are crushed to produce an oil that serves as a lineament to what ails another. We should become whatever a person needs.

The last part is that there is no hybrid. The mustard seed cannot be mixed with anything else. As a believer, if you are trying to combine philosophies or doctrines to make something to fit you, you will never have peace. The mustard seed is pure, undefiled, untainted. There can be no preconceived ideas of what it looks like or what it feels like. It's not just about the faith, it's the kingdom. It's everything that God intended for us to be. 

As I have battled in my mind, I have cried out so often "Lord, you said that if I have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you said God! Why am I not seeing what I'm asking for?" I was trying to produce something that wasn't pure. I wasn't preparing my soil. I wasn't giving it the living word. I wasn't keeping the pests away, I was actually inviting them in. Tonight, I want to be a seed, planted in Him.