The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast…

By Beau Crosetto

Keep Witnessing – Keep Leaning In – God is working.

Just yesterday while I was driving with my neighbor to go play volleyball, he opened up to me again and said,

“Beau, three different times I almost called you from work to tell you ‘Ok, I am ready to have the talk.’”

He continued on to tell me that he knows he needs God in his life but he is just being too prideful. He assured me that we are going to have the talk soon.

[you can read my earlier post about my interactions with him here]

I was floored. He is really becoming more open. God is really working in this man!

But I would have never known it just a day before. NOTHING has been happening outwardly that would have made me think so.

We mostly connect around volleyball and we haven’t played in months. He hasn’t responded to any of my invitations to talk about Jesus more deeply that I have given him in the past and just recently I invited him to Easter service at church. Crickets.

But the Holy Spirit has been working in this man and I believe He is waking him up. My friend is coming to “his senses” and is about to make the turn back towards the father – the same turn we see the younger son in Luke 15 make. I can see it, I can sense it. This is an exciting time.

As my grandfather wrote in one of his sermons,

“Our God is one who loves men and seeks for them. His love is terrible and relentless. It will pursue us all through this life and, after that, into eternity – until it overcomes us. And those who have felt this love of God pursuing them know very well what Francis Thompson meant when he called our God “The Hound of Heaven.”

I love how our God is an all-pursuing God and he is fully on the trail of my friend.

I ask that you would pray for my friend Ben today and ask God to soften his heart.

The Invisible Work of God

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of floor, it permeated every part of the dough.”

Today at church Larissa Marks gave a great word on Matt 13 and the parable of the yeast. She exhorted us that yeast works its way through dough in invisible ways and you can’t even tell what’s happening at certain points. But then “poof” the yeast works its magic and the bread starts transforming and things happen.

God’s kingdom

• Starts small
• Is invisibly working
• Transforms, and disturbs those it infects

Throughout her whole talk I couldn’t help but think of my conversation with Ben and my whole relationship over two years. God’s Kingdom is like yeast and it has not only been kneaded into our world first through Jesus, but today we all carry the kingdom inside us as well.

It is our job to knead the yeast of the Kingdom into our corner of the world and into the people we come into contact with every day. It will start small – maybe one relationship or conversation about Jesus. It will be invisible many times – various days where seemingly nothing is happening in the people around you. But it will transform – people will come to faith in Jesus and have lives transformed wherever the yeast of the Kingdom is being kneaded into others. It is a spiritual principle. It has to work. It will work.

So I want to encourage anyone who doubts today what difference they are making. Keep going! Keep sharing your faith and being bold with people. Keep living intentionally and incarnationally among others. Jesus is working through you and I pray you will have strength today to believe it and choose to keep pressing in.

Let the yeast of the Kingdom do its thing and be prepared when the dough starts to rise!

Who is someone that you are witnessing to that you want pray for God’s Kingdom to disrupt and transform in the same way yeast disrupts and transforms bread? Leave a name in the comments so we can all pray.