For the past few days, I've been thinking about the need for quick-growing seeds. No, I am not doing any gardening. [In fact, I planted my garden plot with grass seed this year so I don't have to take care of it.] I'm talking about kingdom planting.
Today I did some research on a fast-growing seed. This plant goes from seed to harvest in 30-60 days--the dryer the soil, the quicker it grows. Within a few weeks, it grows from seed to more than 3 feet tall. Are you ready for this? Its new seeds grow in a pod that explodes and casts the seeds far and wide so it spreads like crazy. In fact, growers are warned to collect the pods before that happens or this plant will completely take over their garden.
It was this seed that Jesus compared to the Kingdom of God:
"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It's the smallest of all the seeds, but when grown, it's taller than the vegetables and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the sky come and nest in its branches." Matthew 12:31, 32
When gardening, we usually don't want our plants to go to seed. It is possible to grow mustard that way. Carefully trimming the shoots, we could make wonderful mustard greens that are yummy to eat but do not reproduce. I think we have enough beautiful greenery around in the church today. We need stalky seed producers that reproduce so quickly that nothing can stop them. I need to plant quick seeds and let them grow. The land is very dry so the growing conditions are perfect. I can’t control where they are planted either so I won't try to collect the pods before they explode. I want them to grow and spread as far and as fast as they can.
What’s the hurry? It is not a far stretch to think we are in the end of the last days, as described in the Bible. It seems as if the Apostle Paul took a time machine to our present day when he wrote to Timothy:
But know this: difficult times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of religion but denying its power. 2 Timothy 3:1-5
There was a time when a Christian could be born again as a child, grow and be discipled for 20 to 30 years, then they "went to seed" and reproduced by sharing the gospel. The seasons for growth were long and there was much tending to do in the garden. I think those days are gone. God wants us to be planting His quick growing seed--the way it was in the early church: Today a person is born-again... Tomorrow they are baptized... The next day they are ministering... Do they have all of the right doctrine and knowledge? Hmm. Maybe, maybe not. But is God looking for the wise and cultivated fruit? Or is He looking for a quick harvest in the little time we have left.
Hear this! The days are coming- the Lord's declaration- when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the one who treads grapes, the sower of seed. The mountains will drip with sweet wine, and all the hills will flow [with it]. Amos 9:13
That is faster than I can fathom. Someone is out collecting the harvest and the plowman is already preparing the field for new crops. Run, reaper!!! Get your harvest before it gets plowed under. The seed is growing so fast that the fruit is being processed before the seed gets in the ground. This is Kingdom growth completely out of our control--very different from the slow, laborious process we usually take in discipleship.
There is work to do! We don't have time now to slowly digest what scripture the pastor used in his message last Sunday, savoring the options for our lives. We must be ready to work at the last-days pace. We have to eat on the run--we need the word of God and His presence every minute, wherever we are. With eyes of faith the size of that mustard seed, I am ready to see the Lord’s Kingdom come. Lord, give me the strength to keep up the pace!
First, be aware of this: scoffers will come in the last days to scoff, following their own lusts, saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they have been since the beginning of creation." They willfully ignore this: long ago the heavens and the earth existed out of water and through water by the word of God. Through these the world of that time perished when it was flooded by water. But by the same word the present heavens and earth are held in store for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. Dear friends, don't let this one thing escape you: with the Lord one day is like 1,000 years, and 1,000 years like one day. 2 Peter 3:3-8
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