“The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of people.” (Daniel 4:17)
I’ve been thinking about small things lately.
Life is about to change for the Fitzsimmons here in ol’ Vietnam. While the global pandemic – alongside massive, unusual storms of various consistencies – continues to keep humans and systems in upheaval, our quiet lives have remained mostly that: quiet. Netters is now two, with all the emotional surges and defiance and vocabulary growth that brings. He knows just enough of both English and Vietnamese to be confusing, rebellious, dangerous, and utterly adorable. Chad has returned to work at the school, which is preparing to open next week with masks and social distancing in place. Many of our teachers and their families are still on route, and two weeks of quarantine await them; their classes will begin the year with substitute teachers. Among which I, until recently, planned to be.
But the Lord has had another plan for me, one that I am joyfully embracing. On Tuesday, I will be joining the staff of my church, filling in for a friend who needs to return to the United States for an indeterminate length of time. I could amaze you with the Lord’s providential timing for all involved, but that isn’t what I wanted to talk about today. Suffice to say, He has been very good to our little local family of believers here, and we are all excited to watch Him move in our lives and increase our fellowship.
My life for the past year, since meeting Christ on September 10, 2019, has been rich in study and quiet. My Lord has been my patient and brilliant Teacher, guiding me into His Word, giving me insight and deepening my ability to think carefully and slowly, not only about His teachings, but about the state of the world today. He has slowly but surely established me in His family here, providing for me many, many spiritual mentors and friends. And last week, in a beautifully prepared and poignantly-timed workshop, He revealed some of the spiritual gifts with which He graciously blessed me. My heart is full!
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“I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing.”I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the nobles ones in whom is all my delight.” (Psalm 16:2-3)
Some time back the Holy Spirit, as He tends to do, put a phrase on my heart and mind, and it has been following me around for a few months. It continues to come up in sermons, in book after book, and in my notes as I look back through them to write this post.
The phrase is “Moment by moment.”
Just like Him to begin seeding my mind with the meditation that I would need going into this new season. My Father knows what I need before I ask Him.
I marvel at the precarious brevity of life here on earth. But in this marveling, I am tempted toward anxiety. How will I have time to drink deeply of the Lord, to learn from Him, to serve Him well as I serve His church, and to be present and loving to my husband and son? I find myself worrying that I will be unable to adjust to this transition, this new season, and that I will fail everyone He has placed in my care.
I will need to be purposeful, diligent, and conscientious about my time in a way that defies my natural tendencies and abilities.
Defies my natural tendencies and abilities.
This is very much in line with what I am learning about my God. He loves to place His people into situations and positions that are contrary to their strengths, so that we must rely completely and openly on Him for all we need. This glorifies Him! I have no confidence in my abilities to be what He has positioned me to be; it is only in Him and through Him that His purposes will be carried out.
So I take this concern to my Lord, perhaps with a more plaintive tone than I should have, and He reminds me that He is in control. He has chosen this path for me, in part because I have insisted to Him that I wish to submit to His will in all things, and it is His will to equip me “with everything good for doing His will,” for it is God who works in us "to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose." (Hebrews 13:21; Philippians 2:13)
Hence, the marvelous providence of His giving me a simple phrase like, “moment by moment” to hold onto. It has become a life-preserver, a fly-fisher's reel, a battle cry.
Through it, He says, “Come back to Me! Ground yourself, again, on the Rock of My Person, My Salvation, My Sovereignty, My Fatherhood.” He says, “This task that you are doing for Me presently is no less important than any other. I have put this one in front of you; worship Me in it, here, now. Ask Me to help you, again, now.”
"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." (Isaiah 41:10)
Moment by moment.
He is helping me to train myself, you see, to invite Him into every moment of my day: every decision, thought, conversation, action, no matter how small. He has been urging me to cultivate my awareness of His presence. To realize the miraculous truth: He is my life.
The key to living in constant awareness of the Lord’s presence, moment by moment, I think has something to do with the moment of transition. The moment BETWEEN moments. It’s in that split-second where everything can go wrong, sour, when we can slide out of worship, appreciation, trust in Him, and respond to the new moment, the unexpected stimuli, out of our flesh.
Satan is aware of this. I suspect that this is why there are some days that seem to blindside us over and over again. Broken air conditioner. Flooded floor. Unexpected bill. Injury or illness that requires a doctor’s trip. Relentless transitions that wear away our desire and awareness of God.
Transitions, large or small, expected or abrupt, are crucial.
This is why we must read His Word, meditate on it, as often as we can. We must sacrifice other things in favor of it, reduce our interests to a few. The Word is the most consistent thing that the Holy Spirit will use to counter the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is in the split-second transition between moments that He will bring a word to our minds, so encouraging and sweet and perfectly applicable, that we remember Whose child we are, Who is in control.
And before we know it, we are worshiping again, joyful in crisis, settled in chaos.
This is surrender to God’s will. And here’s another thing: I have reason to believe that this is the power behind the message of the Book of James: be doers of the Word, and not hearers only.
With God, the work and the ‘doing’ of His people is so rarely about them taking the initiative, striving to accomplish things for Him. Rather, the ‘doing’ of the Word throughout the Bible often entails His people stepping aside to watch in awed stillness as God does their doing and fighting for them. Doing for us what we obviously cannot do, so that only He gets the glory.
“Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when I show My holiness in you before their eyes.” (Ezekiel 36:23)
The action verbs belong to God!
How much more so now, in the age of grace?
“But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” (James 1:25)
God has done something, and He calls us to rely upon it. The perfect law that gives freedom is the news that Jesus Christ fulfilled the law on the cross, and He continues to fulfill it in our lives through His shed blood and His glorious resurrection to glory!
Everything we do here on earth is in light of His work, enabled by it, and given meaning in it. He is the context of our lives. He IS life itself! Nothing exists without Him, therefore everything that we do for Him after being awakened to His Truth, no matter how menial, has eternal import in His kingdom!
Let that truth reorganize our priority list.
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“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)
As I have wrestled in prayer about this new season, I gradually have come to a new understanding of how the Lord transforms our desires. So many of my prayers center on me: grant me more faith, more intimacy with You, more wisdom, more power to walk in Your Spirit. And lately, I’ve become aware that the Holy Spirit has been quietly asking me a question: “Why? Why are you asking Me for these things?”
We are supposed to be looking at Jesus and what He has done already, and this looking fills us with the desire to be like Him, to be transformed. He ever wants us to be servants, and to serve in everything as though Christ is the only recipient of our service. To pour ourselves out, as He poured Himself out for us. To follow Him, we must follow His example in sacrificial love. Willingly.
By that, I mean that it must be our will. This is not something that we can make ourselves feel in the heart. Only He can replace our selfishness with true, from the heart self-sacrifice.
The Holy Spirit’s “Why?” wasn’t a rejection of my requests, but a gentle, Socratic nudge for me to think more deeply about my motives. To observe and realize how faithfully He has been answering my prayers, as I have pursued Him over this past year.
To my surprise, I realize that I am, in fact, changing. He has been working in me all this time, in my seemingly self-indulgent studying and solitude. He has made me aware of how I fit into the lives of the people He has placed in my purview. If I am to live for Him, I must live for them.
All along, He has been equipping me for loving action. I long to see what He will do.
Far from resulting in a cessation of my spiritual growth and understanding in my Lord, I am confident that this new season is going to draw me into new heights of intimacy and strength in His Spirit, as He moves me from a life of study and contemplation, to one of practical application of His education, His love, and His gifts for the good of the body of Christ. Everything He has given me, He expects me to use for and give to others: time, money, wisdom, and love.
We must never forget that He is both the Giver and the Gift, the One Who answers, and the Answer.
And so my prayer for this time:
Lord, Father, empty me of self and fill me with Your Holy Spirit - so that I can serve. Equip me, enable me, and energize me to channel all You give me in a way that fills the needs of everyone You put in my life.
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“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31)
As I struggle against the knowledge that there will be days ahead that feel so hectic, catapulting helplessly from sleep to wake to work to family to sleep again, I remind myself that I am where God has placed me. Motives are important. The Lord is more concerned with our hearts than anything. If we are catapulting helplessly in His strength and for His glory, then as AW Tozer said, “There won’t be a common, profane deed that you will ever do. The most menial task can become a priestly ministration when the Holy Ghost takes over and Christ becomes your all in all.”
Take
a breath – for Him.
Hold
your tongue – for Him.
Write
a meal plan for the week – for Him.
Get
up earlier – for Him.
Small things.
When I think of small things, I think of the millions of details, decisions, thoughts, seconds, interactions, and possibilities that make up one single day. But day by day and detail by detail, these insignificant moments add up to a lifetime, add up to centuries of history, prophecies fulfilled, and divine purposes coming to pass in a spectacular, perfect symphony.
My child is a small thing. So is my faith.
What does childlike faith look like? I think of my toddler son, again realizing the Lord’s perfect wisdom in granting me saving faith at such a crucial point in his development. I see him running to us whenever he has a toy, a question, a boo-boo. He is always looking up at us. It has never crossed his mind that we would not respond to him and give him what he needs.
What does childlike faith sound like? “Dada!”
I don’t know what is in store for us all. My prayer for myself, and for all of us, is that we will accustom ourselves more and more to turning to our Lord in every moment, every transition, from day to night, from meal to work to recreation, from interruption to interruption, from snafu to solution. Let us offer our weakness into His hands in total dependence and willing submission that becomes Spirit-powered obedience.
Only consciously weak souls ever lean hard enough on the Lord to walk straight in His risen power!
“That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)
Christian, are you like me, small and unimportant? Our God delights to use small things to do His great works. Whatever small things we did in His name today, He can use. The Lord of all the earth has called our lives for Himself. We each have a place in His purposes. -Anonymous
