The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Opening and series introduction

It is awesome to be back, I have to tell you. We had some great time off, but we also had a wonderful last week, because we were at the Harvest Alliance Church in Madrid. They are so similar to us, it’s crazy, it felt like being at home, except they were constantly speaking in tongues. Well, Spanish. So that was a bit different, but man, they love to worship, and it just goes on and on. And the Spanish timetable was very evident. Guess when their Sunday morning service starts, 11:30, till about 1:30. They just don’t like early mornings.

So we’re carrying on today with our summer theme of the parables of Jesus. Jesus referenced his parables with “the kingdom of heaven is like,” and he was trying to teach the culture then, and even us today, what the kingdom of heaven is like, because we don’t know, or they didn’t know. It’s not natural to us. It’s not normal to us. It’s different, it’s other than. So he gives examples through painting pictures in parables, and the one I’ve chosen to do today is the parable of the mustard seed. I’m going to read Mark’s version, it’s in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, just a couple of verses, and it talks about something small becoming something big. I thought this was appropriate, because I can take this very short parable and talk for an hour about it.

Reading the parable

Mark 4, starting at verse 30. Jesus said, “How can I describe the kingdom of God? What story should I use to illustrate it? It is like a mustard seed planted in the ground. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of all garden plants. It grows long branches, and birds can make nests in its shade.”

Jesus often used everyday examples that people would understand. Everybody there, if they weren’t a farmer, they were used to the farming culture, a large percentage of the people would have been involved in agriculture in some way.

So Jesus used an example they would understand. How many have seen a mustard seed? How big are they? It’s easy to lose one, isn’t it, if you dropped it on the rug, you’d be hard-pressed to find it. It’s teeny-tiny. Jesus is telling us that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed: something that can start small but has great potential to produce something way bigger than you might expect from looking at the seed. We’re going to go through a process of figuring out how that gets released. I want to take two applications of this word picture. One is “the kingdom of God is like,” and the other is the faith application, Jesus also used the mustard seed as an example of faith, of praying for things, and so on. So we’re going to look at both applications of this parable.

Humble beginnings of the church

It starts looking like something inconsequential. The kingdom of God started in a very, very small fashion, really. Talk about humble beginnings. Jesus spent his whole ministry preaching to hundreds and thousands, feeding thousands miraculously a few times, healing probably hundreds of people. John says at the end of chapter 20 of his Gospel, “If everything that Jesus did was written, I don’t think the whole world could contain the books.” That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the point is that what we read in the Gospels is a very small percentage of what Jesus actually did.

So he did all of this amazing work to demonstrate and teach about the kingdom of God, and to demonstrate its power, and yet at the end he had eleven people. Eleven guys, after his resurrection, who were actually still his followers, and they were all terrified. They had just seen Jesus arrested, tried, and executed, and they were terrified they were next. They were like little timid guys, Peter, the big boaster and bragger who said, “Even if I have to die, I’ll never deny you.” And guess what he did? He started cursing and swearing when somebody outed him as a follower of Jesus. “I am not,” he said with an oath. “I don’t know him.”

So the kingdom of God started from very humble positions. The kingdom of God itself is forever, of course, but I’m talking about the earthly revelation of it that Jesus brought about, humble beginnings. In John 21, Jesus cooks breakfast for the boys on the beach at the Sea of Galilee, and of the eleven, only seven of them were there that time. Then there’s eleven together again in Acts 1, and Jesus spends time with them talking about the kingdom of God, correcting their idea that it’s about a physical, earthly kingdom. Then, with the eleven together, he ascends to his Father. Over the next few days the number grew from those eleven men to about 120, including the women who followed him, Jesus’ natural family, his brothers and sisters, Mary, and so on. On the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, there were 120 gathered together.

Explosive growth at Pentecost

By the end of that day, there were 3,000 more. The kingdom of God and the church of Jesus Christ just exploded with growth, starting from very humble beginnings. Imagine Jesus, in his humanness, going through all of that, preaching to thousands, healing hundreds, teaching the very words of God to the people, because he only said what he heard his Father saying, and in the end he’s got eleven guys he has to help out of their terror, and has to forgive Peter for denying him. But something incredible happens in that tiny, humble beginning: suddenly there’s explosive growth. I don’t know if these guys, before the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, ever envisioned how busy they were about to be, because it says at the end of Acts 2 that 3,000 people repented and were baptized and became followers of Jesus. Who was doing all the baptizing? “Okay, you just got baptized, go start baptizing other people right now.” It was phenomenal growth out of very humble beginnings. That’s the kingdom of God. You can’t judge humble beginnings, and you can’t judge the outcome of humble beginnings, in the kingdom of God. That’s one of the points of the parable.

It’s interesting that in the beginning of Acts, Peter and the apostles gained incredible courage with the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Whereas before, Peter was denying he even knew Jesus, now he’s standing up and telling the mob of thousands, “This Jesus whom you crucified has now become Lord and Savior.” He carries on teaching in the synagogues, and the Pharisees are mad at him, so they haul him before the council. Acts 4:13 says the Pharisees understood that these guys were uneducated and untrained ordinary men, the Amplified says “untrained and uneducated men.” The Message says, “These two were laymen with no training in Scriptures or formal education.” Wow.

Turning the world upside down. And yet sometime later, this is what was said about the followers of Jesus: in Acts 17, Paul and Silas are in Thessalonica preaching, and a mob stirs up against them, and the people who are mad at them say this about them (Acts 17:6) “These men have turned the world upside down.” Do you see it? From very humble beginnings, from a little mustard seed, something amazing beyond all human calculation, beyond all human wisdom, came from that very humble beginning, with just ordinary people. Paul was a very educated man, but he said, “I laid all that aside, my education, my credentials, whatever. I don’t care about that anymore. All I care about is saying what I hear my Father saying.” But Peter and John were fishermen. They were uneducated. I wonder if they were insulted when the Pharisees said, “You guys are uneducated, basically illiterate, what gives you the right to preach in the temple?” But they had been with Jesus. Wow. Made all the difference.

Small acts of obedience

So, bringing that down to us: sometimes we think our gifts, or our contributions, aren’t very significant. But the kingdom of God is like this, the tiniest little action, the tiniest bit of obedience, can have amazing results you couldn’t have foreseen. Because that’s what the kingdom of God is like. When we invest what we have, however small or insignificant we might think it is, it can produce something amazing.

There have been times I’ve heard God say in a meeting, “Why don’t you go give that person a hug?” A person I’ve maybe never hugged before. This happened to me in South Carolina in February. He was across the room, with a hundred people, hundreds of people there. And I thought, do you think he wants a hug, from me? We’ve talked before, but he doesn’t really know me. But then finally I did it. I went over and hugged him, and he just wouldn’t let go. I don’t know all that went on, but he told me a little bit, something amazing happens just from the tiniest little thing. Just go and give that guy a hug.

Alf’s leap of faith

In bigger things, we’ve had several times over the years (right, hon?) where what might have seemed like a little step to some people was a huge step for us. One of those was when I quit working for BC Tel and started a business, tiling. I knew absolutely zero about tiling at the start. But I had a friend who was willing to train me, show me how to do it. He was excellent, an expert. And I thought, but the guys I worked with at BC Tel, I had just passed the seven-year mark, and under the contract we were under, once you passed seven years you pretty much couldn’t be fired or laid off for anything. I was basically thinking, what’s the matter with you, you’re basically retired, you can just coast the rest of your working life, nothing can go wrong. But I hadn’t even been introduced to my Father yet, and somehow I knew God was asking me to do this. So I did, and it was amazing, the result was beyond what I could have imagined.

A month or so after I started, the guy training me took on a job at a very wealthy house perched on the bluff in White Rock, you’d know the family’s name if I said it. He was going to be there for months, and he said, “Alf, I’m sorry, I can’t really take you there, because the guy knows I’m just training you and he won’t want somebody [inexperienced].” So I was left on my own. And I do what I’ve always done since I was a scared kid, if somebody says, “Can you do this?” I say, “Of course I can,” and then later I sit down by myself and go, “Oh God, how am I going to do this?” But you know what, it worked out, because I knew I was supposed to leave that security and go into an entrepreneurial situation, and that was one of the times. I had a little bit of faith, and God, it was amazing. We had an amazing run of a couple of decades doing that, while also helping lead in a church.

Called to pastor

But at a certain point, God said to me, “I’m lifting my hand off this business, because you’ve got something else I want you to do.” By this time I’d been introduced to my Father, and he was teaching me that I was indeed his favorite son, filling me with confidence. Then I was asked to pastor this church twenty-five years ago, and part of it was that the church was in complete disarray, from leadership on down. My friend the Anglican pastor at the time, Trevor, said to me, “Alf, when I heard you took over that church, I thought, who in their right mind would take on that church?” And I said, “Thanks, Trev. Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

But I knew that I was supposed to, and part of it was because it was a mess, I couldn’t also continue to be bi-vocational, I had to shut my business down. And how many know that may have involved a slight pay cut? But I knew what I knew, and God has just always provided faithfully all the way through, through the years of raising our family until they were out the door, and even up till now, God has always provided for us. So sometimes it’s a small little act of faith, like, can you go give that guy a hug? Sometimes it’s a big thing, like, can you quit your job and go in this direction? But the kingdom of God is like this: if you take a step of faith, things happen that can sometimes blow your mind.

A cup of cold water

Jesus said in Matthew 10:42, “If you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded.” Two tinies there. Just a cup, he didn’t say, “If you give a guy a gallon of water.” Just a cup, of cold water. Not wine, not beer, not something fancy, not soda pop, just plain old water. He’s trying to say that any act of obedience, if you do anything in the name of Jesus, can have amazing results. And the second tiny, “to the least of one of these my followers.” If you give this cup of water, don’t just give it to the pastor or somebody who’ll notice you, but if you give it to the least of these, you will surely be rewarded. When God says you will surely be rewarded, guess what, you will surely be rewarded. So the kingdom of God is like something small turning into a result that’s above expectation.

Faith to move mountains

So the second application is the mustard seed of faith. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus is talking to his disciples about why they couldn’t cast out a certain demon, they’d tried, and couldn’t, and wondered why. Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”

The second time he used this image was in Luke 17, when the disciples had asked, “How often do we have to forgive people? If we forgive once or twice, is that it, is that good?” And Jesus told them forgiveness is unlimited. So the apostles said in Luke 17:5, “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Show us how to increase our faith.'” You need faith to forgive, I guess. The Lord answered, “If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘May you be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

So is Jesus commissioning us to move physical mountains and uproot mulberry trees? How many have ever tried that? There’s a guy who wrote a book, a parody of this, Adrian Plass, “The Diary of Adrian Plass.” It’s hilarious, you should get it. He says that when he came across these Scriptures as a new Christian, he thought, “Well, a mulberry tree, that’s kind of big, but a mountain, oh my god. I don’t want to start there.” So he sat at his desk and tried to move a paper clip. He grunted, sweated, grimaced, prayed, commanded, did all kinds of things, and then looked away. Did it move? He thinks it moved. It’s a hilarious story, you should read it.

But the point is, Jesus was not teaching us to go about uprooting trees and casting mountains into the sea, how many know that might cause a tsunami? What he’s doing is illustrating the mustard seed: if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could do incredible things.

Faith is not about size

The symbolism in this parable is that even the smallest, most insignificant gesture of true faith can lead to amazing outcomes. If you’re not an agricultural type of person, you might not even know what a mustard seed looks like, if somebody said, “That’s a mustard seed,” you’d think, so what? Don’t breathe in too much or you’ll lose it. You have no idea the potential that’s in there.

So the focus really isn’t on the size of our faith. A mustard seed’s pretty tiny, yet Jesus said if you just had that, you could move a mountain. Well, could you move a mountain? I don’t care how much faith you have if your faith is in your faith, if your faith is in yourself. Who’s the faith in? The faith is in an all-powerful, almighty God. It’s not about, “Oh, I have so much faith, I’m a man of faith and power.” It’s about, I have a Father who’s the King of the universe. He made everything, he knows everything, he knows every situation, every person’s body down to the cellular level. He knows how many hairs I have on my head. He knows everything about everything. That’s who I have faith in, not in my ability to do something, or the size of my faith. Genuine faith has to be rooted in the character and promises of God, and if it is, it can flourish beyond our wildest imagination. So the power of faith does not lie in human strength or in perfectly polished belief. It hinges on the living God who stands behind our faith.

I’ve got two Old Testament examples of how faith can do incredible things from very tiny, humble beginnings.

Gideon: from zero to hero

The first is Gideon. How many know the story of Gideon? Gideon started with how much faith? Zero. Gideon said of himself in Judges 6:15, when God showed up on his doorstep, “My clan is the weakest of the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family.” There’s a confident man, right? But guess who God uses. In verse 12: “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you.” He had zero faith. This is Israel, the people of God, we’re talking about, and guess what they had in their yard? An altar to Baal and an Asherah pole, a totem pole to the god Baal. A pagan, heathen god was being worshipped by this family. But God shows up to one man in the family and says, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you.” His response is, “I am less than nothing. I am an absolute zero.”

So he had no faith. But the Lord worked with him over the next short amount of time and gave him things to do, and as he began to exercise obedience, how many know it wasn’t common for God, or the angel of the Lord, to show up on your doorstep even in the Old Testament? So this was probably a pretty amazing experience. He hears, “You’re a hero.” So what God did first was change his identity, from “I’m a zero” to “I’m a hero.” He begins to build up his faith through various acts of obedience. God says, “Do this. Do that. You’ve got way too many people here.” A simple example: tell your army to go drink at the brook, those who scoop up water and those who put their face in the water and lap it up like a dog. He separated the men out until he was left with 300. The Midianites, who were enslaving Israel at the time, were a vast horde, many, many times more than 300, covering the ground. But God gave Gideon a new identity, which was actually his real identity all along. He thought he was a nothing, but God said, “You’re a hero, I’m going to use you.” He had a choice to make, exercise faith in that, or stick with “I’m a loser.”

You know what the first thing God told him to do was? “Go and take your father’s bull (the one your father probably prizes) take it to the altar of Baal in your family’s courtyard, hook a rope around it, and pull the altar down. Then cut down the Asherah pole, build an altar, and sacrifice this prized bull using the wood from the pagan pole.” His father was going to be ticked off. In fact his neighbors got together and said, “This guy has defamed the god Baal, we should deal with him.” But he did it. He acted. He had faith in the word God gave him, even though he had no faith to begin with, and his faith was building. After that, he started calling people together for the army, and God whittled his army down. So it was a series of steps of obedience, all designed to build his faith from no faith, to mustard seed faith, to faith that he could do what God had given him to do. Gideon’s faith grew to the point where he could lead his tiny band of warriors against a vast horde. And guess what, if his faith had been in the wrong thing, if it hadn’t worked out, the result would have been 300 slaughtered people on the ground. There’s sometimes a real risk involved in faith.

David and Goliath

David is another one. I’m jumping ahead in David’s history to where he decides to face Goliath. David already knew who he was at this point, but he didn’t get it for nothing, he was out in the field with his musical instrument, writing worship songs to God, building a relationship, a friendship with God, to the point where he knew God’s heart. He wanted, above all things, to uphold the honor of the God of Israel, and that was his motivation in facing the giant. But his faith was developed through challenges he faced. He wasn’t just a namby-pamby musician, artsy-fartsy, who wrote songs and Psalms, he was already a warrior. When Saul, who doesn’t know him from Adam, hears David say, “I’m going to go fight the giant,” Saul says, “How can you do this?” And David says, “Listen, King, when I’m out watching my father’s sheep, sometimes a lion comes and tries to take one, and I go after it with my club, and I rescue the sheep, and if the lion turns on me, I grab him by the jaw and I kill him.” Same thing with a bear. “Your servant has killed both lions and bears.” Maybe this was a multiple event.

So this guy not only wrote songs and worshipped and built a relationship with God, he had his faith built up by challenging circumstances. He’s alone, his father is depending on him to defend the sheep and keep them alive. He doesn’t run away when a lion comes, he runs after it. He knows, from experience, how to fight and how to exercise his faith in God. He didn’t have God show up physically like Gideon did, speaking to him person to person. But he knew who God was, and he knew who he was. So even though people called him down, when he arrived at the battle with supplies for his three older brothers, they said, “What are you doing here, kid? You little punk, you just want to come see the battle”, like he was inconsequential to them. But he very quickly became consequential to the whole nation of Israel. He didn’t allow people putting him down to stop him. Neither did Gideon, once he got hold of it. Both started out feeling completely inconsequential and ended up being the hero of the day, because they acted on their growing faith. This is what the kingdom of God is like, acting on whatever faith you have, be it as small as a mustard seed, be it what you think is an inconsequential thing.

Faith must be planted

Here’s the thing about a physical mustard seed, it can survive years and years, decades, maybe hundreds of years, sitting dry in a glass jar, and never reach its potential. What has to happen for the mustard seed to turn into its potential? It has to be planted. It has to be acted on. You can look at it every year and think, I thought this was supposed to grow into a ten-foot-tall plant, one of the Scripture portions says it grows to ten feet tall, where the birds build their nests in it. What has to happen is it has to be acted on, it has to be planted, you have to do something with it. Otherwise, as James says, faith without works is dead.

So what are the kinds of works? Faith isn’t designed to stay static, it’s designed to grow and thrive. And it isn’t wrong to confess to God about the size of your faith. In Mark 9, there’s the story of a demon-possessed boy, and the father comes to Jesus and says, “Please heal him, if you can.” Jesus replies, in verse 23, “What do you mean, if I can? Anything is possible if a person believes.” The father instantly cried out, “I do believe (but help me overcome my unbelief.” That’s such a good prayer. I’ve got a newsflash for you) God already knows about your unbelief. But asking God, “I’ve just got this tiny little bit of faith, help me, help my faith to grow,” and he says, “Okay, plant it. Plant what you’ve got. Do something with it. Exercise your faith. Plant the seed in the ground.” It’s not wrong to say to God, “I don’t know if I have faith for that, but please help me increase my faith. Help me overcome my unbelief.”

One thing faith is not: it’s not manufactured spiritual bravado. A common misunderstanding is that faith gives believers carte blanche to command miracles at will. The Bible never presents faith as a tool for manipulating God, or for guaranteeing immediate success in every endeavor. It’s in our Father-son relationship with God that we learn God’s heart, the Holy Spirit’s job is to show us what’s on the Father’s heart, to teach us when and where and how we are to act, move, think, pray, exercise our faith. Faith is not an invitation to force supernatural results, but to posture ourselves and ask, Father, what do you want to do here?

And how many know that the closer a relationship you develop with somebody (say, for instance, you’ve been together fifty-two years) I can almost, with certainty, predict what Pam wants, how she’ll react in a given situation. Sometimes I can’t, because women are a bit of a mystery, am I right, guys? But the closer a relationship you have with somebody, the more you’re able to actually hear, even if they don’t say it, what’s on their heart. If that’s true in human relationships, it’s true in our relationship with our Father. So when we’re confronted with a situation that may or may not require us to exercise our faith in speaking out and praying about something, the question should always be, Father, what are you doing right now? What do you want to do? Is this the time?

Paul’s thorn in the flesh

Let me give you an example. Paul prayed repeatedly to have his thorn in the flesh healed. In one version, in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul begged repeatedly for God to remove this thorn in the flesh, whatever it was, there’s been lots of speculation, probably a physical ailment. But his answer from God, verse 9: “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weakness, so that the power of Christ can work through me.” Paul (a fairly accomplished Christian, fairly influential) wrote a lot of the New Testament, started a lot of the churches, nurtured them, set up leaders in them. Paul, who had miracles done through him, could not get a miracle for himself, because that wasn’t it. Did he not have enough faith? Would Jesus have said, “Paul, if you only had a little bit of faith…”? No, somehow, a thorn in the flesh was given to him so that he wouldn’t be proud. He actually even knew the reason for it, but God decided to keep it there even though Paul begged to have it removed.

So faith is not carte blanche, commanding God, manipulating God to do whatever we want. It’s an invitation into relationship, as is everything with our Father. Build your relationship with your Father, and you’ll know exactly how to pray in different situations.

Praying for Brian Dirksen

We have a friend right now going through a very tough thing, and it’s become public, Brian Dirksen. For months he’s been in agony and pain, and only now is somebody getting to the cause of it. We’ve been praying, we’ve been begging God. But what we need to do is say, Father, what do you want? What are you doing? What are you doing through this situation, in this family, with this person who’s written so many wonderful worship songs and been such a worship leader for decades? We don’t know. What I do know is that he has not been healed because of a lack of prayer, hundreds of people are praying for him, believing God, calling out every kind of prayer you can imagine, from “it must happen this minute” to “Father, whatever your will is.” Everybody’s at a different level when it comes to praying for miracles, but he’s had tons of prayer, people begging God, particularly his family, for healing. And it hasn’t happened yet. But one thing we do know is that we keep praying, because we do not fully understand God’s heart. What we do know is, if we pray for healing and it doesn’t happen right then, there’s a purpose for it. God has timing. We’ve got to trust him, he knows way more than we do.

So faith is not an invitation to try to force supernatural results, but to posture ourselves in a humble, growing relationship with the Father. And yet small beginnings can yield amazing outcomes, because faith rests in the character of God, not in the size of our faith, not in our belief system. From the very beginning, as the smallest seed in the garden, to the astonishing growth of a far-reaching plant, the message is plain, this is what the kingdom of God is all about. God took a very few people and changed the whole world. According to census takers in 2025, there are 2.6 billion people who identify as Christian now in the world. Whatever their level of identifying as Christian means, 2.6 billion people, because Jesus left eleven guys in charge of a revolution. A humble, very humble beginning has grown to 2.6 billion.

So the lesson is: whatever the kingdom of God is, whatever little bit of faith we have, if it sits on the shelf, it will remain the same thing. If we plant it, if we use it, who knows? It could be as simple as giving someone a hug that heals their heart. It could be as big as anything you can name. But what step of faith are we being asked to take right now?

Want to come and pray with us? Before we pray for ourselves, let’s stop and pray for Brian. We just broke the news to the public a couple of days ago, but we’ve been praying privately for four months. I don’t know how much faith you have, I know Brian and Joyce have said there have been times their faith felt as small as a mustard seed, and yet they know this one thing: he is faithful. Not unchanging, faithful.

So let’s stand, and we’re going to pray first for him, and ask the Lord to stir that same kind of faith up in whatever circumstance you’re facing.

Father, first and foremost, we want to do what you’ve always called us to do, and that’s to pray for others. We know there are probably many in this city asking for healing, for marriages repaired, for mental health issues to be healed, but we want to lift up one we know personally. Father, we lift up Brian to you right now (Brian and Joyce and their children) and we say, Father, in Jesus’ name, would you take this mustard seed of faith that we are lifting up before you, and would you cause something mighty to happen? Would you cause something great to happen? Would you cause a faith to grow that is not expected from some of us, but really wanted by all of us. And that same healing we heard taken to the streets in Abbotsford through the Spirit Cafe, Father, we call that healing down over the Dirksen family today. We speak it over the doctors at St. Paul’s, over equipment, nurses, technicians, and we say, as one, Father, move a mountain for them. Father, save him, keep them safe. And we claim that, Lord. We claim it.

And if any of us are going, “But I haven’t seen other people healed”, will you help our unbelief? If that’s you, let’s just give that to him today, right now. Because some of you have been disappointed in your own prayers not being answered. Father, we give you our personal mustard seeds. We give you our own unbelief. If you’ve had a health issue, an emotional issue, a family issue you haven’t seen resolved, can you put your hand up? Father, look at these hands right now. None of them have fallen off your desk. None of them are beyond your sight right now. So we join together, those of us who are saying, like Paul, we are still waiting. Like Brian, we are still waiting. And we say, Father, answer our prayer today.

I’m going to get the prayer team to come up, and I’m just going to leave you with this: what is God asking you to trust him in today? What step of faith, what act of obedience is God asking of you? Father, we just openly ask you that. If we’ve been running from it, if we’ve been in denial about it, if our fingers have been in our ears, la la la, I do not want to hear this, Father, we yield to you today. You can make great things out of even troubles. So we say today, in Jesus’ name, would you take this little seed of faith, would you breathe on it the breath of God, and would you help us to recognize whatever the challenge is, whatever the step is in front of us. That’s all we want to do, is be obedient to you. Amen.

Make sure you come for prayer. If you have a step in front of you that you’re a bit nervous about taking, come and have people agree with you. And I’d encourage you, as you go from this place, please keep Brian and his family in your prayers. We are believing for God to turn this situation around.