When God Uses What We Reject: The Parable of the Yeast

I was meeting with someone in spiritual direction who had spent months trying to "fix" what they called their "spiritual defects." They came to our sessions with a clear agenda: eliminate doubt, overcome anxiety, stop being so sensitive to criticism. They wanted a clean, respectable faith that looked good from the outside.

"I just want to be one of those Christians who has it all together," they said. "You know, the ones who always have the right Bible verse ready, who never struggle with their faith, who seem so peaceful and confident."

But as we kept meeting, something interesting emerged. Every time they talked about their deepest spiritual experiences, they came from the very places they were trying to clean up. Their doubt had led them to ask honest questions that deepened their understanding of God. Their anxiety had taught them to depend on prayer in ways they never had before. Their sensitivity, which they saw as weakness, had made them incredibly compassionate toward others who were hurting.

They were trying to eliminate the very things God was using to transform them. They wanted to present only the acceptable parts of their spiritual life to God, not realizing that the dark, messy, "unacceptable" parts were exactly where the kingdom was taking root.

This conversation reminded me of one of Jesus' most subversive parables from Matthew 13:33. It seems simple on the surface, but the more you dig into it, the more radical it becomes.

The Scandal of the Parable

"The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough" (Matthew 13:33).

To Jesus' original audience, this parable would have been deeply unsettling. He's using three things that his Jewish listeners would have considered contaminated, unclean, even dangerous, and making them the very picture of how God's kingdom grows.

First, yeast itself was considered unclean. During Passover, Jews were commanded to remove all yeast from their homes because it represented corruption, sin, contamination. The rabbis taught that yeast was a picture of moral decay spreading through a community.

Second, Jesus puts a woman at the center of the story. In first-century Palestine, women couldn't teach in synagogues, couldn't be legal witnesses, were often seen as spiritually inferior. Yet here's a woman as the agent of God's kingdom work.

Third, the action happens in hiddenness, in darkness, in secret places where no one can monitor or control what's happening. Jewish religious leaders valued public righteousness, visible holiness, observable purity.

Jesus takes everything his culture labeled as problematic and makes them the very mechanism by which God's kingdom transforms the world.

What We Try to Hide, God Wants to Use

This parable forces me to confront my own judgments about what God can and can't use. In my years of spiritual direction, I've watched God consistently work through the very things people are most ashamed of, most eager to hide.

The person I mentioned kept trying to present their "good" spiritual self in our sessions. They'd talk about their Bible reading, their church attendance, their attempts at prayer. But whenever we touched on their struggles, their questions, their moments of feeling distant from God, that's when real transformation started happening.

I finally asked them, "What if your doubt isn't the obstacle to your faith? What if it's actually the place where your faith is growing deeper roots?"

They looked at me like I'd suggested something blasphemous. "But doubt is bad, right? I should be past this by now."

"According to who?" I asked. "What if the questions you're afraid to ask are exactly the questions God wants to explore with you?"

The Underground Revolution

This is what makes the yeast parable so subversive. Jesus is saying that God's kingdom doesn't grow through the methods we expect or approve of. It doesn't spread through perfectly polished people in perfectly controlled environments.

It spreads through contamination. Through mixing. Through the very things religious people try to keep separate and pure.

During my research on burnout, I discovered that the people who experienced the deepest transformation weren't the ones who had their spiritual lives organized and presentable. They were the ones who had been broken open by their limitations, their failures, their inability to save themselves.

Their brokenness became yeast. Their weakness became the very thing that taught them to depend on God instead of their own spiritual performance.

The Woman in the Shadows

Let's talk about this unnamed woman. She's working in the domestic sphere, invisible to the religious establishment. Yet Jesus makes her the agent of kingdom transformation.

This tells me something crucial: the kingdom doesn't advance through the people we'd put on platforms. It spreads through ordinary people doing hidden work, often people society overlooks.

I think about the clients I work with who feel like they have nothing to offer because they're struggling. The woman battling depression who thinks she's spiritually deficient. The man dealing with addiction who believes he's too broken to be used by God. The person wrestling with their sexuality who's been told they don't belong.

These are exactly the people I've seen God use most powerfully. Not because they have it all figured out, but because their struggles have made them humble, honest, and desperate for grace.

The Darkness Where Growth Happens

The yeast works in darkness, in hiddenness. This is perhaps the most challenging part of the parable for those of us who want to manage our spiritual growth.

We want transformation to happen in the light, where we can see it and take credit for it. But Jesus is saying that the kingdom grows in the dark places - in our unconscious, in our wounds, in the parts of ourselves we'd rather pretend don't exist.

The person I was working with slowly began to understand this. Their anxiety wasn't just something to overcome - it was teaching them to pray without ceasing. Their doubt wasn't evidence of spiritual failure - it was leading them to a more honest, mature faith. Their sensitivity wasn't weakness - it was giving them the ability to see and respond to pain in others.

What they experienced as obstacles were actually the path. What they labeled as contamination was becoming consecration.

The Challenge to Our Categories

This parable forces us to reconsider everything we think we know about spiritual acceptability. We want clean narratives, clear categories, presentable faith stories. We want to separate the good from the bad, the holy from the profane, the acceptable from the problematic.

But Jesus keeps mixing yeast into flour. He keeps using the very things we'd reject as the raw material for kingdom transformation.

I've had to wrestle with this in my own spiritual direction. The seasons of doubt that I thought disqualified me from ministry became the times when I learned to depend on God most deeply. The failures that embarrassed me became the experiences that taught me about grace. The parts of my personality that I've tried hardest to fix have often become the very things God uses to connect with others.

Embracing the Yeast in Your Life

In our continued sessions, my directee began to see their struggles differently. Instead of trying to eliminate their anxiety, they started asking what it might be teaching them. Instead of being ashamed of their doubt, they began to see it as an invitation to go deeper with God. Instead of hiding their sensitivity, they started recognizing it as a gift.

The transformation was remarkable. Not because their struggles disappeared, but because they stopped trying to present only the acceptable parts of themselves to God. They began to offer their whole selves - light and shadow, strength and weakness, faith and doubt.

And that's when real growth started happening. The yeast was finally free to do its work.

An Invitation to Bring Your Whole Self

Friends, if you're exhausted from trying to present only your "good" spiritual self to God, I have news for you: Jesus uses yeast to make bread. He uses what's considered unclean to grow his kingdom. He uses what we reject as the very source of transformation.

Maybe your depression isn't the obstacle to your spiritual life - maybe it's the yeast that's teaching you to cry out to God in ways you never have before. Maybe your addiction isn't the thing disqualifying you from God's love - maybe it's the yeast that's showing you what true surrender looks like. Maybe your broken relationships aren't evidence of your spiritual failure - maybe they're the yeast that's teaching you about forgiveness and grace.

The kingdom of heaven works through contamination, through mixing, through the very things religious people try to keep pure and separate. It grows in darkness, in hiddenness, in places we can't control or make presentable.

At Fermata Ministries, we create space to explore how God might be using the very things you'd rather hide. Through spiritual direction and formation groups, we help you recognize the yeast that's already working in your life, especially in the places you least expect to find God.

Because the kingdom of heaven is scandalous in its inclusivity, radical in its methods, and unstoppable in its growth through the very things the world considers unacceptable, contaminated, and unclean.