The Littles

It’s the littles, it’s the littles
    That will always help me grow;
It’s the littles, it’s the littles
    That the Lord wants me to know.
If I’m faithful in the littles
    Then the bigger things can come,
But if I won’t do the little things
    My growing is just done.

– based on Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 360

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However small your talent, God has a place for it. That one talent, wisely used, will accomplish its appointed work. By faithfulness in little duties, we are to work on the plan of addition, and God will work for us on the plan of multiplication. These littles will become the most precious influences in His work.

Let a living faith run like threads of gold through the performance of even the smallest duties. Then all the daily work will promote Christian growth. There will be a continual looking unto Jesus. Love for Him will give vital force to everything that is undertaken. Thus through the right use of our talents, we may link ourselves by a golden chain to the higher world. This is true sanctification; for sanctification consists in the cheerful performance of daily duties in perfect obedience to the will of God.

But many Christians are waiting for some great work to be brought to them. Because they cannot find a place large enough to satisfy their ambition, they fail to perform faithfully the common duties of life. These seem to them uninteresting. Day by day they let slip opportunities for showing their faithfulness to God. While they are waiting for some great work, life passes away, its purposes unfulfilled, its work unaccomplished.

In the Old Testament, the bible character of Joseph is one of the finest examples of submission to the Lord’s character-training program. When his bright future as his father’s favored son was suddenly cut short, he fully embraced his new and much less glorious future as a slave in Egypt.

Being faithful to God, and to his earthly master, put him into good favor again, but then his refusal to sin with his master’s wife again plunged him into the inglorious depths of prison.

But again he accepted his lot, and his faithfulness brought him into favor with the prison keeper.

A while later, he interpreted the dreams of two of Pharoah’s helpers, which interpretations proved to be correct. Although Joseph hoped that one of these helpers would remember him and help to get him out of the prison, this did not happen.

However, two years later, when Pharoah dreamed a dream, his helper then remembered his promise to Joseph, and mentioned him to Pharoah as an interpreter of dreams.

Joseph was taken from the prison, and God gave him the interpretation of Pharoah’s dream, regarding the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine that were to come upon the land. Pharoah was so impressed with the interpretation, and with Joseph’s advice to lay up food for the seven years famine, that he made Joseph second-in-command to himself.

Joseph was thirty years old at that time. He had been about 17 or 18 years old when he first entered Egypt. So 12 years were spent doing the “little things” which prepared him for the greater work as ruler over Egypt. These “little things” consisted of faithfulness in small details of household matters and faithfulness in prison.

His faithfulness to God was proved and strengthened in the kind of situations and work that most men would have despised and avoided. Up until the time he was freed from prison, most people would have considered his life a “failure.” But God is not concerned with making a big show before the world. His work is the development of character. This is the great need of humanity, and it is developed in the faithful performance of little duties and tasks.

Tags: Carefulness, Order, Talents, Work