Mustard Seed part 2
The important thing about a seed, even one as small as a mustard seed, is that it grows. Jesus said the Kingdom--which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost--is like that mustard seed. So that means that while we start with glory (a seed has everything inside of it that it needs, as long as its placed in the right environment) and we are changed FROM glory TO glory. WE have everything we need, and the maturation process is simply when we begin to understand, and walk in, and experience, what we already have. Let me bring this to my point for today. Faith. Romans 12:3 tells us, "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." THE measure of faith. All the faith we will ever need has already been dealt to us. Given to us. Jesus gave us this faith when He gave us something (someONE, Himself, love) to believe in. Now watch this: "And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you" (Luke 17:6). And I gotta tell you, I've heard this verse preached as, "If you had more faith you could get all manner of things to happen! The reason you don't see any results, much less any miracles, is because you don't have enough faith!" But here's how I see it: Even though the gospels are in the New Testament, when Jesus was preaching it was under the Old Covenant. Because the thing that brought us out of the old and into the new, the thing that gave us THE measure of faith, was the cross. So BEFORE the cross we NEEDED faith. But BECAUSE of the cross we HAVE faith. And just as we saw in the story of Zacchaeus, the tree is question is a sycamore tree. Or a fig tree. Or the tree of knoweldge of good and evil. See, we've been told that we need the kind of faith that can move mountains. But Isaiah 40:4 tells about what JESUS is going to do. And it says, "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." Let me say it another way: "And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God" (Mark 11:22). Our faith doesn't need to move mountains. It simply needs to be able to pluck up the tree of knowledge of good and evil--the lie that we have to do in order to be--by the root. It simply needs to know and believe the truth. So that we can eat of the Tree of Life instead of the tree of death. Jesus' faith is what matters. Our faith simply connects us to Him. We don't need to do the work, because Jesus already finished it. Jesus didn't say, "Have faith in faith." He said, "Have faith in God." When you believe right everything else falls into place. What you do flows from what you believe. You can't fix behavior from the outside in. No external law can produce lasting change. But you are what you eat. If you change you diet, if you change what believe, if you fix your faith by fixing it on God, then everything else will flow from that. Its a small thing. "Have faith in God." But from there it grows and grows and grows!