We spend so much of...
Illustration
We spend so much of life "waiting on the big thing to do" that we miss the whole opportunity of life in faithfully doing the little things.
As Jesus tells us in the parable of the last judgment, "It is in the small things that you do that you serve me. I was hungry and you gave me to eat ..." The godly are amazed, for they never thought of those small things as serving Jesus. Jesus must assure them that their faithfulness in daily activity is the way they serve him, seeing God through their neighbors.
The ungodly are also astonished. They suggest they were keeping everything for the big moment when God would appear and then they were going to gladly serve him!
Jesus responds, as though to say, "You amassed your wealth and gathered the good things for yourself! You were not looking for nor expecting me or you would have seen me in the needy, the everyday people in whom I was daily with you. Now you have no choice but to turn it over to me, but do not plead as though you were waiting for this moment! You and I both know better! Now you are left without all this ... and without me!"
Life is that way. God asks us to serve divine purposes in small and almost insignificant things. Naaman's servants say in the verse before the text, "If the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather, then, that he says to you, 'Wash ... and be clean'?" Naaman's faithfulness in doing a simple thing was an obedience unto the Lord by which he gained wholeness.
We call it "faith" today to believe that God means what he says when he says it ... even if it is only to do a small thing ... and we do it!
As Jesus tells us in the parable of the last judgment, "It is in the small things that you do that you serve me. I was hungry and you gave me to eat ..." The godly are amazed, for they never thought of those small things as serving Jesus. Jesus must assure them that their faithfulness in daily activity is the way they serve him, seeing God through their neighbors.
The ungodly are also astonished. They suggest they were keeping everything for the big moment when God would appear and then they were going to gladly serve him!
Jesus responds, as though to say, "You amassed your wealth and gathered the good things for yourself! You were not looking for nor expecting me or you would have seen me in the needy, the everyday people in whom I was daily with you. Now you have no choice but to turn it over to me, but do not plead as though you were waiting for this moment! You and I both know better! Now you are left without all this ... and without me!"
Life is that way. God asks us to serve divine purposes in small and almost insignificant things. Naaman's servants say in the verse before the text, "If the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather, then, that he says to you, 'Wash ... and be clean'?" Naaman's faithfulness in doing a simple thing was an obedience unto the Lord by which he gained wholeness.
We call it "faith" today to believe that God means what he says when he says it ... even if it is only to do a small thing ... and we do it!
