Hey, what's going on? Alex here. Hope you're doing good. When I first started preaching over 10 years

ago, someone said something to me that had great influence in my life. It was a lie. It was untrue.

It came from someone close to me. And it was about my preaching in particular. And I believed it.

And it really held back my preaching for a long time.

And as I was getting ready for the main podcast this week, there's a little nugget that Jesus drops in Matthew 1333.

And I didn't get to get into it very much in the main episode, so I thought I leave it over here and talk to you about it and just get

vulnerable real quick. It is Matthew 1333, and he told them another parable, the kingdom of heaven

is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened.

That little nugget is that something as small as leaven, which is taken and

mixed in with a great amount of flour, that little leaven makes the bread rise. That little leaven

influences every particle of the bread.

Small things have great influence.

Jesus was trying to encourage the disciples with something that they would have seen every single day.

A Galilean housewife would have made bread every day, nearly almost every day, for her family. And she would have taken a little

piece of leavened dough, mixed it in with some flour, and it would have rose over the day, ready

to be baked. Jesus is telling him that because they are a part of that little leavened dough.

Overlooked, inconspicuous.

It was just 12 of them.

And they were the ones that started the greatest religion.

I want you to look at this example in 1st Samuel 17 of small things having great influence.

It's the story of David. He's about to fight Goliath and he is speaking to Goliath about what God is going to do through him to give them

the victory. 1 Samuel 1746. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you

...