You ever plant something and then just... forget about it? Not out of laziness, but because that's how planting works. You put the seed in the ground, you water it, and then life goes on. You sleep, you wake up, you go to work, and somewhere underground, completely out of your sight and totally outside your control, something is happening. Jesus says that's exactly what the kingdom of God is like.
We landed back in Mark chapter 4 after a missions trip to Peru, and honestly, it felt like the Lord had been saving this passage for this exact moment. Jesus has been teaching in parables all along the Sea of Galilee, each one tailored to the heart of the hearer. But here, in verses 26 through 34, he steps back from the individual heart and starts talking about the kingdom globally—what he's building, how he's building it, and what it's going to become.
God Wants You in the Kingdom—But He Wants the Kingdom in You
Here's a truth worth writing down. God absolutely wants you in the kingdom. But he's not satisfied stopping there. He wants the kingdom in you. Over and over in this passage Jesus asks, "To what shall we liken the kingdom of God?" He's not just describing a place you get into someday. He's describing something meant to take root inside you now—to shape how you see your marriage, your job, your neighbor, your Tuesday afternoon.
So here's the question worth sitting with this week: is the kingdom in you? Does it change how you see the traffic jam, the coworker, the prodigal kid, the hard conversation you've been avoiding? Or are you in the kingdom without the kingdom being in you?
The Seed That Grows While You Sleep
Jesus starts with this picture:
"The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how." (Mark 4:26-27, NKJV)
Notice what the man does and doesn't do. He scatters the seed. Then he sleeps. Then he wakes up. He doesn't dig it up every morning to check on it. He doesn't understand the biology of it. He just trusts that the earth does what the earth does—first the blade, then the head, then the full grain.
That's a hard pill for a lot of us, because we like to control outcomes. We think if we just discipline the kid harder, argue the point better, or work the plan more aggressively, we can make the growth happen on our timeline. But Jesus is blunt about it: he himself does not know how. The power to grow the seed was never in the planter. It's in the ground, in the sun, in the rain—in the Lord. Your job is to scatter. His job is to grow it.
The Mustard Seed and the Myth of Big
Then Jesus tells a second parable, and it's the one most of us know:
"It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade." (Mark 4:31-32, NKJV)
Everybody in that crowd knew what a mustard seed looked like—tiny, practically weightless, easy to lose in the folds of your robe. But that same seed, given time and soil, can grow into a plant six to twelve feet tall. Massive return on a microscopic investment.
Here's where I want to challenge you, because I have to challenge myself constantly on this. So much of our thinking is conditioned to believe bigger is better. We think the kingdom advances through grand gestures—big campaigns, big buildings, big platforms. But Jesus doesn't compare the kingdom to a beehive where everybody's buzzing around exhausted. He compares it to a seed nobody notices at first.
So ask yourself this question this week: are you using the fact that you can't do something big by noon today as an excuse not to do anything at all? Because that's not how the kingdom works. We're not called to do big things. We're called to do faithful things. If you set out to make something big, guess who has to keep it big? It's exhausting. But if you show up faithful, day after day, at the Lord's pace, now he's got something to work with.
Two Thousand Years of Small Beginnings
Think about it this way. In 30 AD, there was no church. No cross yet finished, no empty tomb, no gathering of believers—just Jesus sitting by a lake telling a story about a seed nobody could see the point of yet. A few years later, at Pentecost, three thousand souls get added in a single day. From there the gospel spreads to Africa through the Ethiopian eunuch, through Paul's journeys into Asia Minor and Greece, into Egypt and Persia and eventually into Europe, the Americas, and beyond—until, two thousand years later, that same seed has become a tree with branches wrapping around the whole globe.
Closer to home, a guy named Chuck Smith started the first Calvary Chapel in 1965 with 25 people in Costa Mesa. Sixty years later there are nearly 2,000 Calvary Chapels worldwide. And down in Peru, a church of about 500 people has, in the last decade, planted churches in Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Bolivia—and they're not slowing down. We got to stand with some of those young missionaries who are packing their bags right now for places that don't have a single church in them yet. One of them told me, "I've got one life. We need to hurry." That's a mustard seed talking.
None of that started big. All of it started small and faithful. That's the pattern of the kingdom every single time.
Your Part: Scatter and Trust
So what's our piece in all this? You don't have to move to the Amazon jungle. Maybe your jungle is Boise—concrete everywhere, and lost souls within arm's reach. The order is simple: pray, share, serve, give. Just scatter the seed. Talk to people. Say the hard thing. Answer honestly when someone asks about the hope you have.
I think about a friend from years ago, standing in a parking lot after work, asking me point blank what the difference was between his life and mine. I knew the answer. I said, "I don't know, Mike," and drove away. That's one of the worst days of my life, because I had a seed in my hand and I didn't scatter it. Peter tells us:
"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear." (1 Peter 3:15, NKJV)
Don't pull a David. Give them Jesus.
And when the results don't show up right away, remember—the fruit is the end, not the beginning. Find joy in the work, and rest in the waiting. "Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart" (Galatians 6:9, NKJV). The heart of the one you're praying for belongs to the Lord, not to your effort. Your job is to plant. His job is to grow it.
If you've lost your zeal, if the world has knocked the wind out of you, don't waste today grieving the years you feel you lost. Scatter a seed today. That's all it takes to get started again—and God has never once been unimpressed by a small, faithful beginning.
This article is drawn from the message "It's Going to Grow" from the Gospel of Mark series at Calvary Chapel Star, taught by Pastor David Ax. Watch the full message on our YouTube channel.
