A Little Seed's All It Takes

So I've been struggling lately with a little thing called laziness. Ugh. It is awful! Blame it on the long winter up here, blame it on no sunshine, blame it on the homeschooling blues...or just blame it on the fact that I'm lazy.

There. I said it.

Lazy.

My mornings are taking the biggest hit. I don't want to get up. I want to stay in bed and sleep. And no, I'm not depressed. I just really like my cozy bed. And sleep.

Only problem with that? Doing nothing gets me nothing. And if I want an abundant life (remember my word for this year? Yeah. Abundant.) then I can't sit around doing nothing. I need to pursue God in a way I've never pursued Him before.

Except we go back to the fact that I don't want to get out of bed.  Which kind of messes with my morning prayer time. Last week I was determined to get up though and get back to my pursuit of God. It was hard. I kid you not...like really, really tough. We got snow again which meant my cozy bed only looked cozier. Not to mention with this time change, it's dark again in the morning. I prefer waking up once the sun has made its appearance.

Anyway. I sat at the table and stared down my Bible, and decided to get serious. I began to pray that God would shake up my sleep. Leave me restless. Make my bed lumpy and my sheets cold. Keep the peacefulness of sleep away from me. And as I prayed, this little voice underneath it all said, "No way. That's not really what I want. Don't pray for that..."

In that moment I so understood what Paul said in Romans 7:
When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members...

Ugh. It's that whole spirit against the flesh thing, and it was alive and well. And though my prayer spoke one thing, my flesh was shouting another. And I knew God could hear both. Psalm 139 says:
Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar...before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord.

I was toast. I couldn't hide from Him. Sure I was praying the right words, but the other thoughts showed my heart--and I wanted to hide from Him, because the good I wanted to do was so not happening.

As I continued to pray, I suddenly saw this picture of my heart. Thick, black weeds wound around it several times, so much that I could barely make out my heart underneath. But shining right in the middle of it was this tiny, little seed. As I continued to pray, that seed shone and began breaking apart those weeds, and I could quietly hear God saying,

"This is what I see. That tiny little seed of faith in the middle. That, I can work with. That, I can water and grow. Look, it's already taken root. And it pleases me."

Not gonna lie. I cried a little.

We see all the crud around us. We see how many times we've failed and hear the thoughts that sometimes scream louder than our very spirit as it cries out to God. But God sees infinitely more. His eyes are trained to see that mustard seed, that tiniest part of us desiring to do good. It's all He needs to get started, because though a mustard seed starts small, it grows big. I love Matthew 13:31-32:
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 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."

Oh! Too cool. He takes that little seed, grows it in us--and grows it BIG. Bigger than anything else in our garden, which means it will overtake our weeds. See, because through Him we are MORE than conquerors (check out Romans 8:37)--which means we can conquer our fleshly desires, but only through HIM. (check out Philippians 4:13 too: we can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens us.)

But He doesn't just stop there. No, He grows that seed for a purpose. He uses that area in our life to minister to others. That's what all those birds perching on the branches is all about.

So here's my challenge today. In that area you're struggling, where you only see the weeds, ask God to search for your mustard seed in the middle and focus on that. Let Him water it and grow it. Growth doesn't happen in one day, it's a season. The seed needs water and food--both found in our God. Ask Him to pour Himself over you today, and begin that season. It is spring, after all--time for new growth :)

For me, guess that means getting up early! What's it mean for you?