The Importance of Little Things

This editorial was sparked off when recently I was reading a sermon by B. B. Warfield on ‘The Religious Life of Theological Students’ in which he states, “No religious character can be built up on the foundation of neglected duty.”

In general people are switched on by big things - headlines that grab the attention regarding some success story in the business world, or some scandal concerning a prominent public figure.

In the area of mega churches there are those who will travel halfway around the world to see if they could copy the same method, imbibe the same ethos, imitate the same format, in order to have similar so-called success. They forget that the way the Lord may be pleased to work in one geographical area and culture, is no guarantee that He wills to work the same way in another.

Big projects, whether they are humanitarian, or of a spiritual nature, grip many and move them to get on board; if everyone else is supporting them they must be right and should guarantee success.

Missionaries are not exempt from this trap when faced with the temptation to expand their report of what God is doing in order to make the work sound more successful than it is, hoping to make a bigger impact.

However, the mistake is that they are all estimating from a secular mindset and trying to match the secular attempts at so-called success.

The Christian is called to be faithful in the little things - the routine and simple duties of life. Is this not where we all fail? We often hear it said about some sportsman or woman that he or she performs well on the big occasions, implying that when all eyes are on them it becomes an outward performance for all to see. The Christian life is about how we perform ALL the time, even when no one sees us, remembering that God’s searchlight is always upon us.

Thomas Binney captured this thought when he wrote,
Eternal Light, eternal Light,
How pure the soul must be,
When placed beneath Thy searching sight
It shrinks not, but with calm delight
Can live and look on Thee.

In Warfield’s sermon he comes to the root of the matter when he states ‘You cannot build up a religious life except you begin by performing faithfully your simple, daily duties.’ Failure in this lets the little foxes spoil the vines. Our Lord Jesus Christ is our great example of faithfulness in the simple duties of life, shown when He organised the feeding of the five thousand and when He stooped to wash the disciples’ feet.

Of course there are the big occasions and the big projects but the test of success in these is not in the performance of an hour but of a lifetime, through a life of faithfulness in the little things. Ultimately we are not the gauge of success but the Lord is the One Who will test our motives at the Judgement Seat. Then the first could be last and the last first.

In this issue we are covering a fairly wide area of our ministry with the purpose of highlighting the triumphs of the Gospel in many areas where God’s servants are being faithful in the little things, and if God wills, He can go on to use them in the bigger things.

William Smylie

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