The road to glory is paved with lots of little things.
We’re familiar with Jesus’ words that you cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve God and money, especially in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel. However, before these words are given in Luke’s gospel we read,
“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?” Luke 16:10-12.
Ok, it may not be glamorous, or flashy but it’s also a principle we all know. If you’re not
faithful with a little you’re not going to be faithful with much. We understand that, in principle, even though it may be harder to implement in practice. Not just experientially, in that we are to embrace the grind seeking to be faithful throughout the day – in all things. That is, doing all things to the glory of God.
That much is hard enough, but we also have another problem. It’s not just our vigilance that gets in our way, it’s also our pride. We know we should be faithful in the little things, but more often than not we believe we should be given much more to handle. Often times the reason for this is because of an overestimated sense of our abilities and accomplishments. That is, that we have been always faithful. “Of course the Lord should put big things before us, look how awesome we’ve been thus far.”
We’ve read the stories in the Scriptures of all the titans of the faith. Moses and the mountain top, Joshua and the conquering of the Canaanites and David and Goliath and so on. In short, there is no shortage of awesome stories in the Bible of what God has done through normal people. And let’s not forget Hebrews eleven. Even though we have a tendency to forget about, or minimize all of the pain and suffering contained in Hebrews eleven, there is certainly some super-awesome stuff contained there that God’s people are to remember.
My point is, we often focus on these massive, larger than life occurrences in redemptive where God displayed His power unmistakably through normal people and then we make that normative for all of our Christian experience, which is stupid and leads many to think that either they are doing something wrong or God is. Either way, not cool.
I have talked to many a young man who has told me (while being super humble) that they just believe that God has always been calling them to do something great, something big…that they (in all humility) were called to more. Ok, cool, maybe He is. I don’t know the mind of God. However, I don’t think any of the guys in Scripture felt this way…ok, maybe Nebuchadnezzar did.
Anyway, my response usually goes something like this, “what if God isn’t calling you to
something big and completely out of the ordinary. What if He is just calling you to work hard and be a good husband and father and die unknown but to a few.” They all, always look at me the same way, like I just kicked their dog…and are wondering to themselves how someone like myself could so brazenly vocalize such obvious heresy.
Why is this the case? Some of this is the arrogance of youth, but much of this sentiment has been reenforced in the man’s mind ever since he was a wee little buck working his way up through the ranks of youth group into adulthood. We mock the world for making snowflakes, though we seem to excel at it, even though our branding may be a little bit different.
Tyler Durden describes a lost generation of men in the disturbing book, Fight Club as follows,
“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
Now, it might be a stretch to say that young Christian men are realizing that they are never going to be “great” and they are very pissed off about it. They know better. So, they are just defeated, bitter and depressed because that’s much more holy. They think that because they don’t have a great war or a great depression, because they are not universally loved and renowned by all in the church and the world, thus achieving what no one ever has, that something is not working. They must do something “big” in order to validate their existence before God and man.
But they have been sold a false bill of goods. Being a Christian is like being a soldier an athlete or a farmer. The one thing that is consistent with all of those vocations is that they must all embrace the grind. Doing seemingly small things repeatedly over long periods of time. Doing small things over long periods of time is greatness. Being faithful in little things over long periods of time may grant you more earthly responsibilities, more earthly success, more earthly prosperity, or whatever. But the great gain of being faithful in little things over long periods is eternal glory.
What, not just, young men but all men should be taught to do is something small today. And then repeat that tomorrow and the next day and the next. And then repeatedly add one more small thing and then another and then another over a long period. And praise God that he used you to amass such a great treasure trove of wealth at the end of your days so that you may inherit true riches. Cheers!
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