Maybe the Simple Things Are the Great Things

When it comes to studying the Bible and applying it to our lives, sometimes we go after the big, flashy tasks. We want to do great things out of love for God and this isn't a bad thing in and of itself.

However this is an example of our culture bleeding into our faith. Society, as shown by a popular pinning website, values the showy acts of devotion. To society, love is a carriage ride in the park as a musician serenades your love with a song you wrote. A big act of love.

Yet love is also in the smalls acts of devotion. Buying a favorite snack for your honey. Doing the dishes. Helping around the house. Giving a back rub without any strings attached. Small acts of love displayed in daily life.

This spurning of the small acts to go after the big, flashy acts did not originate in our culture. In fact, a similar story is recorded in 2 Kings 5. In this story, Naaman came to Elisha to be healed of leprosy. He expected a showy display from Elisha or some great, heroic act to get well, but he is told to dunk himself in a dirty river.

In our faith, we want to wow the socks off of God in a large display of valor, but we sometimes neglect the small acts of daily obedience and daily dying to ourselves. We want to do miracles, cast out demons, or prophesy, but it is harder to daily love your neighbor/enemy, to forgive your brother, and to turn the other cheek.

Yet, Jesus taught, in Matthew 25, that if we are faithful in the small things, we will be given bigger responsibilities.

We lament to God that we aren't skilled/talented/trained enough to do a big act of devotion, but we aren't obeying His commands like He instructed, each and every day.

God instructs His people to keep His commands multiple times in the Old Testament: Leviticus 22:31, Deuteronomy 5:29, Proverbs 3:1, Proverbs 4:4, and Proverbs 7:1-2.
Jesus repeats that instruction another 3 times, showing that when we keep His commands, we show that we love Him and we remain in His love: John 14:15 and John 14:21 and John 15:10
Jesus even taught that disregarding His commands (and teaching others to do likewise) would make you the least in Heaven. Matthew 5:19
Paul reiterates that keeping God's commands is what counts. 1 Corinthians 7:19
To say that this is important to John is a bit of an understatement: 1 John 2:3, 1 John 2:4, 1 John 3:22, 1 John 3:24, 1 John 5:2, 1 John 5:3, and 2 John 1:6

We don't have to have theology decrees and understand everything in the Bible before we put His word into practice. We can read a passage or passages until we get to a part that requires obedience and a response...and then do it.

Far too often, we take the clearest, most practical verses and write them off as inconvenient and impractical in our day, age, and culture. So we don't actually do what God is clearly requiring of us. Or we put the command into a solely spiritual context. We make loving our enemy a spiritual, mental act, but we fail to show that love with an action that costs us something.

So, will you join me in camping out in the Bible-in the Gospels to start with-as we search for clear instructions to apply to our lives?

Be warned, the clearest instructions will have a high cost-they will require dying to ourselves daily to live for Christ.

It's the simple things that turn out to be the great things in the end.