Small Beginnings

A Series on Spiritual Turning Points
Moments in Time: Seminal
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Genesis 11:27-12:9 

[God is always at work in our life – drawing us to him, helping us to become the person he created us to be and leading us to opportunities to serve him. In this series we will look at spiritual turning points in the lives of real people and the moments in time that it happened. Applying this to our own life, sometimes this happens suddenly, sometimes gradually, but always with purpose.]

 

The Emmy Award winning TV miniseries Roots was released in 1977. In many ways it was a seminal event that changed people’s attitudes about African Americans and slavery. Millions were confronted with its realities and brutality.

 

I can still remember the dramatic scene where Kunta Kinte takes his infant daughter Kizzy and holds her up, like an offering, to the star filled sky. The contrast between the tiny, insignificant baby, and the enormity of the universe was striking.

 

The story of Abraham is also a seminal event. Born in Mesopotamia in Ur of the Chaldeans, where they worshiped the moon god, the Lord had called Abraham to go to Canaan.

 

¹ The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you.      NLT

 

Abraham’s call included this promise.

 

² “I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.       NIV

 

However, the promise may have seemed hollow to Abraham as his wife Sarah was childless and unable to conceive. In addition, at seventy-five years old he wasn’t a young man. It would also mean uprooting his family to go to a land that he knew nothing about. Despite all of this, he went.

 

That didn’t make life easy though. Over ten years later, Sarah was still childless and Abraham was very discouraged. But the word of the Lord came to him in a vision and reassured him of his promise.

 

⁵ The Lord took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” ⁶ Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.            NIV    Genesis 15

 

The Lord had promised Abraham that he would be a blessing to “all the peoples on earth”. And because of his faithfulness, he became the father of many nations.

 

¹² And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.            NIV    Hebrews 11

 

Not only that, but Abaraham is an ancestor of Jesus. And like Abraham’s story, the birth of Jesus was a seminal event… a small beginning with big results.

 

³¹ Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. ³² Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”            NIV    Matthew 13

 

The Lord uses small beginnings with impossible circumstances to accomplish his will; to build the kingdom of heaven; to bring the Good News; to be a blessing. What seminal event(s) have you experienced?

Copyright 2026 Joseph B Williams

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The Mustard Seed Challenge

A Series on the parables of Jesus
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Matthew 13:31-32 

[During the first century, it was common for a rabbi to use parables when teaching their disciples. The parables of Jesus were stories that he told to illustrate spiritual truth using some element from everyday life. Jesus used seeds, fish, trees, bread - things people could easily relate to – for a “teachable moment”.]

  

In the early 70’s, I began to sense God’s call to ministry, “by using basketball as a tool to reach inner city boys with the Gospel of Christ”.

 

That small beginning germinated when a roommate of mine got a call from a friend of his that was looking for volunteers to coach a boys’ basketball team for an inner-city ministry… what a coincidence.

 

Eventually, I went into full time ministry with them which led to me running a basketball tournament. The first year, we had four teams. After twenty-five years, when I finished, we had forty teams in one city, plus tournaments in four other cities including Atlanta, Chicago and Boston.

 

³¹ He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. ³² Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”       NIV

 

God is counter intuitive. He takes a very small seed and grows it into a tree. He takes weakness and turns it into strength. He takes the impossible and makes it possible. Consider these few examples from His word.

 

·         Abram and Sarai were old and beyond the years of bearing a child when she became pregnant.

·         David was the youngest son of Jesse, and a shepherd, but was anointed king and later defeated Goliath.

·         Gideon was hiding in a winepress from the Midianites when God called him to be a mighty warrior.

·         Jesus’ disciples were common men and women, some of them even “known sinners”.

·         Following the resurrection, eleven apostles, plus the women, led to 120 believers which then led to adding 3000 more.

 

Like the parable of the mustard seed, that small seed of faith in God’s call led to many young men coming to Christ. There was nothing special about me. I was a regular kid, who grew up in a small rural town, that God used to grow his kingdom.

 

Really, this parable has two levels of application: macro and micro. Macro is quantitative. It’s how the kingdom of heaven grows numerically when people give their lives to follow Jesus. Micro is qualitative. That’s how we grow as an individual in our relationship with Christ.

Either way, a small seed can do unexpected and amazing things. That’s the challenge that you and I face every day… the mustard seed challenge.

Copyright 2022 Joseph B Williams