In the latest season of the All Nations Church Podcast, members of the church here have been sharing about their heroes of faith. If you haven’t been listening, quick! Go catch up now! I have many takeaways from this season, but one thing that sticks with me from almost all of the stories of these amazing men and women of God, and it’s this…
Time.
God takes His time.
After all, time, like the rest of creation, belongs to Him. And when it comes to extending His Kingdom, ensuring His rule is enacted in the world, He is in no rush.
For example, Marie Monsen, a Norwegian missionary to China, worked in that nation for almost 30 years before she saw any significant number of people come to Christ. Or James Hudson Taylor, who, when he became a missionary to China in the mid 1800s, figured out that there were no missionaries in the inland provinces and millions of people with no opportunity to hear the Gospel. Over the course of the next 50 years, he established the Chinese Inland Mission, mobilising over 1,000 missionaries to go to China. His life has inspired many church leaders and missionaries to preach the Gospel around the world. Today, in China, 170 years after Hudson Taylor first travelled there, it is estimated that there are over 100 million Christians in that nation!
This is the yeast effect.
Jesus tells His followers that the Kingdom of God is like yeast used in the making of bread. Only a little bit is required (and some time) to permeate the whole loaf (Matt 13:33; Luke 13:20)
I don’t know if you are anything like me, but sometimes when I read the Scriptures or I listen to stories of things God has done in the lives of others, time gets condensed into a neat story line: situation, challenge, action, resolution. But so often, these stories take place over significant chunks of time, in the context of ordinary life, with much prayer and seeking God, and for many, it involves living for a promise they might never see fulfilled in their lifetime, because it can only be fulfilled in the lives of their children.
Think about Abraham. When God promised him that his offspring would be like the sand of the earth and the stars in the heavens, he realised he would not live to see that day. But if he didn’t play his small role, then that promise would never be fulfilled; that word from God, that daily bread, would remain a flat unbaked lump of dough because he didn’t add the yeast.
Is this a call for you to drop tools and move to another country to go and plant a church. No. If that’s a desire of your heart, wonderful! Pray and speak to your leaders.
But for many of us, we simply miss the significance of our deeply ordinary lives because change seems to take so long.
Ready to be humbled?
If you are a son of God, and therefore a citizen of His Kingdom, your life is like a lump of yeast, a fungus, that eats sugar and excretes alcohol and carbon dioxide. It doesn’t get more ordinary or insignificant than that! BUT… here is the extraordinary thing. A small number of tiny, single-cell organisms, given time, can transform the make-up of their entire environment.
As a son of God, no matter how you view yourself, you have influence in this world, because the ruler of heaven and earth has come to live within you. He is not like this world. He is good. Always kind. Never selfish. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. In fact, He is love. And it is His love that has the power to transform any situation. Like yeast, God’s people are spread throughout this world, slowly but steadily transforming the entire loaf with the love of God.
So don’t be discouraged that the situations and the people you are praying for haven’t transformed in a moment. Transformation is taking place because God’s people are present. Like yeast, your presence in the earth is achieving a deeply transformative work over time. Whether you are working, retired, raising a family at home, let the love of God flow from your heart to those around you. Don’t despise the small actions of kindness that God leads you to take. Without those small acts of obedience, the loaf might not rise. For as yeast lifts a lump of dough, our lives are meant to raise the ethical standards in our workplaces; to lift the pressures off others that are being crushed by their circumstances; to make room for others to flourish; and in fact, to raise those dead in their sins to life in Christ.
What a calling!
The Kingdom of God is like yeast in a lump of dough, transforming the whole batch. God is transforming this earth with ordinary people, living ordinary lives, but loving with an extraordinary love. Just give it time.
