This morning, I had a meeting downtown with the Executive Board of the Greater Minnesota Association of Evangelicals. I serve as the Vice-Chair to the GMAE Board and we meet together regularly to help plan and direct the strategic ministry of this organization. I just love meeting with these men and women as we seek to serve the Body of Christ to be a catalyst for evangelical cooperation in the Twin Cities. I am rather selective about my commitments outside of Bethany Church – but the heartbeat of GMAE is so aligned with the vision that God has given us at Bethany Church that it is such a logical connection for me.
As we talked today and evaluated the opportunities before GMAE, I was reminded again of the things that the Lord has been speaking to me about the Kingdom principle of the Mustard Seed. So often, in seeking to extend the Kingdom, we are sucked into the allurement of the things that are big and flashy and gain a lot of attention. The huge events with the huge celebrities and the huge budgets and planning that go along with them. But I am convinced more and more that the most effective ways to build the Kingdom are often in the things that may not get as much attention or appear as flashy. And may be overlooked or seem insignificant. But that is the principle of the Mustard Seed. The mustard seed was small, insignificant, overlooked – and Jesus was saying that that was the way His Kingdom was. How it was beginning with Jesus, his disciples (from Galilee no less) may have seemed insignificant and easily overlooked – but Jesus was saying, “make no mistake – this is the Kingdom. It may not appear much to you. But this little thing that seems insignificant to you is the Kingdom – and in time, it will fill the entire earth!”
I am finding myself drawn more and more to the things that may not get a lot of attention but are the “mustard seed” things in the Kingdom – like prayer and fasting, loving and serving the poor, preaching a simple Gospel message of Jesus and a call to repentance, the demonstration of the power of God in healing and deliverance – believing that these simple and easily overlooked things are what are going to build the Kingdom of God!