Dearest Family,
Immediate satisfaction … instant success … same day delivery … bigger is better … enough is never enough … instant gratification takes too long … download now … the more the merrier … behind schedule … can’t do it … don’t have it … sooner rather than later … now or never …
There are a host of ways that we express our need for immediate fulfillment, but also our awareness of limited abilities, capacities and resources. Of course, it is not a bad thing to be focused, to be productive, to have vision, to stick to a plan, to increase one’s efficiency, to pick up one’s pace, to acquire legitimate assets. But on Sunday, I drew your attention to a repeated biblical theme: “little by little”. This is not about lowering our standards or expectations, or settling for less, or giving up on goals and dreams. This is not condoning sloth or neglect, dereliction of spiritual duty or disengagement, disobedience or withdrawal and saying it will all work out for you. (It won’t!) It’s talking about the commitment to obey as best as one is able, regardless of one’s estimation of capacity and ability, possibility or resources, and regardless of how one compares oneself to someone else’s spirituality. Anyway, at the end of the day, it isn’t about our ability to get but His ability to give.
I explained how I went back to Psalm 37 that Pastor TL preached from last week and the first words that my eyes fell on, probably because they were smack in the middle of the page, were just a little further into the psalm than where he was expounding. I read v16: “Better is the little of the faithful than the abundance of many faithless people.” The Bible is full of statements that begin: “better is the little …” What is morally and spiritually better may not be bigger, longer, richer, smarter. I encourage you to listen to the download of the different passages I looked at. Here is my outline of points, different areas in which the “little” was not a hindrance but a help, not a bane but a blessing, not an obstacle but an opportunity.
POSSESSION: (Deuteronomy 7:22; Exodus 23: 29-30)
PROVISION: (Exodus 16:18; 1 Kings 17: 7-20; 1 Kings 18: 44)
PROFESSION: (2 Kings 5:2)
POTENTIAL: (Ezra 9:8; Micah 5:2)
Scripture delivers us from the external judgments of place, size, quantity, capacity, history, location. A pattern is emerging. It is the little that bears the big. The incarnation, the birth of the greatest ministry on the planet, comes out of the place that is little and the least among the clans of Judah.
Little by little, by and through the little, God does enormous things which of course convinces us that it is all of Him and not of us. This counts us all in to the purposes of God: little advances, little manna, little jugs and jars, little space, little place, little job, little known – the key word for the manifestation of God’s greatness seems to be our little. It seems that Jesus, by what He did and said, can use my little and can do something big with what is little. There is hope for my smallness and my small supply, and my sense of paucity is no threat to His potential. Listen to Jesus:
“Let the little children come to me …” (Matthew 19:14)
“Receive the kingdom like a little child” (Mark 10:15)
“I praise you … because you have revealed these things … to little children” (Luke 10:21)
“Little flock, the Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)
“The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed … though it is the smallest of all the seeds” (Matthew 13:31)
“faith as small as a mustard seed” (Matthew 17:20)
“A poor widow came and put in two small coins worth a fraction of a penny” (Mark12:42)
“seven loaves and a few small fish” (Mark 15:21) For 4,000!
“five small loaves and two small fish” (John 6:9) For 5,000! It seems that the greater the need the less He needs to meet it!
“small is the gate that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14) For small people!
Do your own study of scripture.
Goliath saw “only a boy … and despised him” (1 Samuel 17:42)
“Who dares to despise the day of small beginnings?” (Zechariah 4:10)
The Philadelphia church only had “little strength” (Revelation 3:8) and yet it overcame and out-lived every other of the churches mentioned by 1400 years.
Maybe I can conclude with the words of Jesus: “Because you have been faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.” (Luke 19:17) Not till heaven will we fully understand the relationship between small steps of obedience, of faithfulness in a little, and the mighty effects and outcomes they displaced to the glory of God. It is better to steward the little well, to take one small step of obedience to satisfy the intentions of Father God, that take one big stride in the flesh to fulfill the expectations of men.
Yours, little by little,
Stuart