Why You Matterናሙና

When we talk about obedience and the glory that comes about when regular Christians obey Christ in a regular way, doing regular things, in regular time, with regular skills and abilities, this thought often comes to our mind: This may all be fine, but surely there must be more. So I told the Lord that I wanted to honor Him today at breakfast with my fussy children, but can this morning really be meaningful? I committed this day to God’s glory, but still it is just this day, and it is boring and rainy and drab. This cannot be all. God might want regular obedience, but He must certainly want exceptional obedience too. If He is a great God He must want great people honoring Him with great faith, great works, great ideas—but here I am so very boring and normal and quiet. What about accomplishing great things for real? What about declaring the glory of God in a bigger way than regular, normal obeying? Surely God wants that too, right? He can’t really be content with a bunch of Christians just doing the normal all the time.

This little mind game of ours reveals a major misleading assumption. And that assumption is that we think great obedience and exceptional performances are generally driven by discontent with the normal and the everyday. We think that any person who accomplished exceptional things for the kingdom must have graduated beyond the regular obedience in regular life to be allowed to enter the more hallowed ground of obedience that matters. Surely they don’t have time for the normal anymore, because God is using them in a bigger way. And we long to go ahead like them and not have to worry about the regular obedience anymore. Forget fiddling around trying to deal with this lame attitude I am having today; there are bigger forces of darkness to quell! I’m gonna change the world, not wrestle with my own sin nature! Because of this assumption we let go of the very means that we have for doing something that can (and can’t help but) make a bigger impact. 

People who do something monumental for the kingdom usually do it because it was simply the next step in the path that they have been walking faithfully all along. He who is faithful with a little will be faithful with much. When you embrace the work that God has put in front of you in order to do your duty and glorify God—when you say in your everyday living, “This is more than enough for me, thank you Lord!”—He will always give you more seeds to plant. When we plant the seeds of our obedience in Christ, the harvest will not fail. In 1 Corinthians 15:58, Paul writes, “Therefore my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” Isn’t that just lovely? Your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Things are happening with your labors so long as they are in the Lord. No obedience to the Lord is ever going out into the void to continue to be useless into eternity. Things are happening; nothing is in vain. Your small obedience means something. 

We believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, therefore. Therefore we can have fruitful and faithful lives. Therefore we cannot be moved by little distractions like our own emotions. We are anchored on something infinitely more important, permanent, and true. 

So this hunger for only important obedience or important faithfulness reveals that we are not actively believing in the resurrection. But we are told to see all of these kinds of small obediences through the lens of the most shocking event of human history—the Resurrection. 

The obedience of contentment and gratitude will not stay small. It will not continue on, just you and your tiny obedience, forever. In the hands of God, it will go through the grave. It will change from you and your little offerings to you and your wild fruit. The Christian embraces our every small opportunity to small obedience. 

Why is that? Because we serve the God who makes the small things great. Our small things, given to Him, will be great. You can trust Him for that. 

We tend think of the virtue of contentment as being a great dud. As though it is the virtue that does not want anything and has no opinions. Content, meaning not too hot and not too cold and not thirsty and not hungry. Basically, the most boring emotion that can be had. We think thankfulness is similarly passive. But contentment and gratitude, some of the smallest seeds, grow some of the biggest trees. These are some of the wildest forces for change in this world. 

Contentment says to God, “Where you put me, I will honor You. Where you send me, I will go. Where You are, I will be glad.” Gratitude says to God that you accept what He has given you to do. You will do it, not grudgingly, but in joy. Do you see that? Wherever you take me Lord, my cup will be full. How can a Christian be truly content and thankful and joyful in situations that appear by all accounts to be mundane and boring? Because the Christian’s cup is not full with their situation or with opportunity to be important, or even with how they feel. Their cup is full of Christ.

Always full, always overflowing. How would that kind of contentment be useful? It is not only useful, it is incredibly powerful.