Hello and welcome to the STC Foundations Daily podcast.

My name is Tom Flynn, I’m a youth worker for STC Sheffield and this week I’m the first of five voices you’ve probably heard a little less than our usual crowd. This week as we continue through Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells a series of intricate stories called Parables as a way of explaining God’s heart to his people.

REFLECTION:

Matthew chapter 13, verse 33 says this: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about 60 pounds of flour until it worked all throughout the dough.”

I love a good metaphor. And while using them badly can make simple things hard to understand and even harder to listen to, used well they reveal depth and soul to an otherwise empty concept. Jesus could have just said that God, given a foothold in your life, will change who you are and how you interact with the world, but by talking about the proverbial yeast in this passage I’m going to make it last six whole minutes.

But as we pull the bread apart, there are three beautiful truths that Jesus conveys in the passage that might not otherwise be obvious.

First: Much like yeast fills flour with life, Jesus is alive and fills us with His life. We may be a little past ‘bread week’, but those who have seen bread prove will know that dough with an active ingredient such as yeast will double or triple in size before it gets cooked. In the same way, as we encounter God, his presence inspires us to grow. To grow in love, in joy, to grow in peace and mercy. When God works within us, we become so much more than we would ever have imagined we could be. As we take this into the places of struggle, suddenly we can take the heat.

The second truth is this: Yeast only reveals what the flour could be. You see, flour does not cease to be flour and we don’t cease to be us. When the spirit inspires and changes us, it only perfects what God had already made beautiful. I don’t know if you ever go into a day feeling like you just aren’t enough, but as God made you, you are amazing in ways you have yet to realise. You are his beloved child, he adores you as you are and he always made you to be none other than you. Wherever you are today, remember how loved you are. That you, personally you, were fearfully and wonderfully made.

Lastly, a reminder that the yeast of the Kingdom of Heaven is powerfully active wherever we mix it in. As we approach anything in our day, we should remember that God will work in anything of us that we allow him. The God who gives us life, who grows and perfects us, who loves us beyond death itself and wants nothing but our everything. So when I drop a pen under my desk, do I ask God to help me find it, when everything seems lost and control goes out the window, do I ask God for His peace and His power? Do I allow God to the places in me that I feel can never be redeemed and let Him change the parts of me that I already consider perfect? Bread with gross clumps of unmixed flour is a sad thing to find on the shelf. But God himself would stoop beyond even the messiest parts of our hearts.

You see, Jesus never spoke in Parables to convey less and a woman making a mountain of bread, from but the smallest of influences, tells more in one sentence than I could speak in 6 minutes. The richness of God’s work within us has led to thousands upon thousands of songs, preaches, books and works of art. My challenge today is not to focus on the things I have said, but to take them into account and ask yourself how a small influence by the Spirit of God within us could bring eternal and unknowable change to our friends, our colleagues, the people we see each day.

PRAYER:

Let us Pray: Lord, thank you that you are working within us each and every day, perfecting us and making us more like you. I pray today that you would provide opportunities for us to speak to others of your transformative power in our lives.