Jesus said:
Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth: but when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it.
Mark 4:30-32
Right after the Lord began showing me how important the Word of God was to my life, I started poring over it continuously. I mean, I meditated in it day and night (Josh. 1:8 and Ps. 1:2). Then I got drafted into the US Army and went to Vietnam as a soldier. During my very first week in Vietnam, we had to complete some special CS gas training before they shipped us out to our final assignment. I remembered how in basic training I’d had a really negative experience with CS gas, which is basically the same thing as tear gas. CS gas burns your lungs, your eyes, your throat. It’s just terrible.
I had an experience in basic training where they had us low-crawling under this wire. They said that when we heard the pop from the canister of CS gas opening, we were supposed to pull out our gas masks, put them on, clear them out, and get ready. It was a drill to see how fast we could do it.
Well, due to that bad first experience with CS gas, I hated it. So, this second time, I was ready. When I heard the pop and knew what it was—a canister of CS gas—I got my gas mask out and put it on. I was the very first person to secure my mask. A drill sergeant standing next to me kicked me and barked, “Trooper, what are you doing? I didn’t tell you to put your mask on yet. Take it off!” So, I took my gas mask off. Then he stuck a canister of CS gas, which he had on the end of a stick, right in my face. I got a huge whiff of it, started choking, and tried to put on my mask. It was a terrible experience. He made me stand at attention, but I was choking and actually threw up in my mask. That made it even harder to breathe. I thought I was going to die.
A VOLUNTEER
So, when I arrived in Vietnam, we were scheduled to have this special training. They were going to put us through a gas chamber and then gas us with this CS gas to teach us how bad it was. Well, I was already absolutely totally convinced it was bad, and I did not want to go through any more of this. So, I remember praying and saying, “Lord, I’ll do anything—anything—but You’ve got to get me out of this!” I was really believing God to deliver me from going through that gas chamber.
That morning at breakfast, they asked for a volunteer. One of the things you learn right away in the army is to never volunteer for anything. It’s just not smart. However, at that point I didn’t care what they were going to do. It didn’t matter if they were going to use me for target practice—anything would have been better than this gas chamber. So, I volunteered. It turned out they made me the guard over the barracks that day. So, while everybody else went through the gas chamber, I just laid on my bunk in the barracks and studied the Word. It was awesome! I had a great time.
PUT DOWN ROOTS
I never will forget this. I was reading a passage of Scripture—Mark 4:30-32—about how the kingdom of God is like a little mustard seed. Have you seen a mustard seed before? I have. It’s tiny. But once planted, it can grow into a very large plant. Jesus was saying that there is growth in the kingdom of God. We also read that in Mark 4:28, which says, “First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.”
Through these scriptures, the Lord began ministering to me about how I needed to grow. This must have been around January 1970, and I felt like that little mustard seed. I said, “God, I know You love me, and You’ve done something awesome in my life. But I am the smallest, most insignificant of all people. How in the world could You ever use me?” But this passage in the Word promised me that if I would take that seed—the Word—and plant it in my heart, it would produce this huge fruit. It would be like a tree that grows up so that the birds of the air can lodge under the shadow of it.
I remember lying on this bunk and just meditating and seeing myself someday growing to a place where I had something to help other people, where I would be able to bless other people. I remember thinking about this and, in my imagination, I saw this huge tree. It was like a giant oak tree spread out everywhere.
As I was thinking about this, pondering that picture in my imagination, the Lord spoke to me. He told me that if He granted me the growth that I wanted with the puny root that I had, the first bird that landed on one of my branches would topple the whole tree. I was so young in the Lord, with such little root, that the first puff of wind would blow me over. The Lord made it very clear to me that what I needed were roots and then growth would come later. The first thing to do was to put down roots.
BELOW THE SURFACE
Roots are below the surface. Even though they aren’t normally seen, they stabilize and anchor the tree, drawing water, nutrients, and nourishment up into it. Roots enable all the rest of this above-ground growth to take place.
The Lord was showing me that my roots were not very deep. They were too shallow to handle the weight of what I was envisioning. If He had opened up a worldwide ministry and given me the opportunity at that time to share with people on that level, then the slightest little thing that came along would have toppled me over. Through this, the Lord really began to speak to me about some things.
You may desire some awesome things from the Lord. Perhaps you want great financial prosperity yet you haven’t meditated on the Word of God and let that Word put roots deep down inside of you. First Timothy 6:9-10 says:
They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with having prosperity. But what these verses are saying is that you need to have the root system and the stability to be able to handle prosperity in a godly manner. Without a deep root system in the Word, if God supplied, blessed, and gave you all that you desire, it would be the very thing that would ruin you. See, you need to let those roots go down deep first.
You may want to go out and work great miracles of healing and do all kinds of signs and wonders. But there are responsibilities, opposition, and temptations that go along with operating in such supernatural power, one of which is thinking that you did it yourself, instead of humbly admitting that it was God who used you.
There may be many things that you are looking for and praying for in your life that, if the Lord granted you right now, would absolutely destroy you. God isn’t punishing you or doing bad things to you. Your heavenly Father only does good things for His children. But sometimes we perceive something as bad because it’s not what we want in the moment. But He’s trying to develop a root system on the inside of us.
God is more concerned about you than He is about using you to reach somebody else. He’s more concerned about your integrity than He is about all of these other kinds of things. Through these parables in Mark 4, the Lord has taught me, “Don’t worry about the growth above the ground. If you will take the Word and let it be rooted deeply on the inside of you, then this other growth will come.” It’s impossible to put a seed in the ground and let it develop roots without it also producing a tree or other plant above ground.
At the beginning of an oak tree’s life, when the acorn first germinates, most of its energy is spent developing roots, with little growth above ground. Only with a dependable root system can that little acorn grow into a spectacular oak tree. And it takes time to develop roots like that.
Some people look at me and say, “My, how your ministry has grown. It just happened all of a sudden—overnight!”
Yeah, it’s been a fifty-year overnight miracle. It may look as if the growth has happened all of a sudden, but what people don’t know is that for fifty years I’ve been seeking God and establishing roots, holding steady and doing what He’s told me to do.
There is a root system that needs to be developed in you, and that’s what the Word of God does. It builds the character you need, and it keeps you from being a character. That’s what we all need!