The Seed of Mustard is Life

Sorry I missed a few days, I was moving.


I love to watch TV evangelist Joyce Meyer. Her testimony about quitting cigarettes shows the progression of obedience in her life and how she had to work it out on a daily basis to reach the goal of her faith. She believed she needed to quit smoking and had faith she could do it with God’s help but from that point on she had to obey. No matter how hard it was to quit it did not require more faith, it required more obedience.

In our lives, as we learn to obey, our faith, which is in God who is the “author and finisher of our faith” Hebrews 12:2, becomes easier to listen to. Doubt, faith’s opponent, begins to wane thereby allowing our faith to wax full. Is this our faith growing? Are we acquiring more faith? Is it like the mustard seed, which grows into the largest of garden plants and the birds of the field rest in its branches? It does seem that our faith grows but are we really growing more faith?

What I see is this. Life. The seed of mustard is life. This particular life, we call a mustard seed. No matter how this seed changes in form, size, color and shape it is still life. God says that he knows us before we are even born. It is this knowing of who we are, the real us, that he sets out to reach on the cliff to save. It does not matter how we change once we are born, how we feel or smell or look, God still sees us as who we are. Who we are did not change, did not grow.

Our faith is like life. As we obey our faith, it manifests itself for us to see and for others to draw near to, but it is still that measure of faith.

There is though, an opportunity to gain extra faith. The Holy Spirit gives gifts and one of the gifts of the Spirit is Faith. It is given to someone to whom God knows who will be meeting a challenge and will need supernatural faith to activate supernatural obedience in order to accomplish His will in some area. Who gets this booster shot? My guess is its people who already are obedient to the faith they have. Who received the extra talents?

I believe David in the Old Testament was given this gift when he saw the situation between the Philistine Goliath and the children of Israel. He had been obedient to God in other areas of life so God thought he could count on David to obey a greater measure of faith, which positioned him against someone practically twice his size. David did not have to go through baby steps 1,2,3 of obedience, no he rather charged straight to 10. Just as his faith caused him to obey, his obedience caused his faith to succeed. Both God and David won that day.