The Lord first laid this verse on my heart a couple of months back with regard to a personal initiative that I believe He is calling me to take up. Someone who absolutely delights in chronicling everything that Jesus tells me in multiple journals, I made a quick note.
But as I did, a really funny thing began to unravel in the days and weeks ahead.
What began as a fancy name for a future enterprise slowly morphed into a most stunning personal revelation. Seeking to share what I have learnt, allow me to welcome you to a tiny segment of my personal walk with Christ called,
“Small Things with Great Love.”
I believe that it was Mother Teresa who first contrived this phrase in her well-known adage,
“We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
Though there is much to say about our faith walk with the Lord, what I love most about it is that it can all be summed up into one simple law, the law of love – ‘and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Mark 12:30-32, ESV)
More often than not, I feel that as children of God who are learning to walk with the Lord, we can tend to overcomplicate things. We can start to think about our calling and destiny in terms of something quite spectacular and grand which will happen, ‘one day when.’
One day when I get my degree and start my practice..
One day when I get married and start my ministry..
One day when I get my breakthrough and the path ahead is cleared..
But what I have discovered is that all we ever have is the ‘here and now.’ As long as we are sowing in love in our lives on a daily basis, we can be rest assured that whatever the Lord has promised us in the ‘then and there’ will manifest most organically as a result of our humble obedience and loving devotion – right here, right now.
1.Loving God well
Our primary calling in life is to know God and love God. I have learnt by experience that what this basically means is a lifestyle of unbroken fellowship with the heart of our Perfect Father, something which doesn’t only happen in and through our spiritual disciplines like prayer and quiet time with the Lord (though those are really important!), but rather in and through the beauty of an authentic heart-to-heart connect with the Lord through the hours of our day.
In my own personal walk with Christ, I have discovered that one way to effectively put this truth into practice is to remain in a relational dialogue with the Lord as we walk through whatever it is that we are called to in our day-to-day life.
Whether it is in the context of family, community, business, workplace or ministry, what confounds us is never beyond the wisdom of heaven. I have learned the value of taking my questions to Jesus, instead of striving to find solutions in my own limited strength. What inevitably follows is not only a satisfactory response from God that promises resolution, but also strength and strategy for the journey as I embrace my process, knowing that God controls the outcomes and therefore, they remain secure.
The net result of such a lifestyle, friends is a deepened and more dependent relationship with the Father where He leads, and we follow. Walking in humble steps that keep Him involved in our daily lives not only demonstrates our love for Him, but also brings the awe and wonder of God into our otherwise mundane lives, keeping the adventure fresh and exciting.
Love, I’m learning, is its own reward.
2. Loving ourselves well
Fuelled by the transforming power of grace, rest and self-care; I am also learning the power of loving myself well. We cannot pour from an empty cup, but for my cup to run over, I not only have to receive the love of God for me in its fullness, but let my experience of that love transform the way I see myself and love myself.
Grace
Talking of grace, our Father personifies it fully in the person of Jesus and as I take my cues from Him, I am learning to not be too hard on myself but rather give myself the kind of grace that I receive from the Lord too. Letting Him teach me to understand myself with mercy, not judgement has one of the most challenging yet satisfying part of my journey to wholeness thus far.
Though the times I fail or falter are many, learning to correct my posture in such times from self-condemnation to self-compassion has begun to awaken me to the truth that God does not call me to a life of perfection, but rather perspective. I wasn’t created to have it all together, but rather to bring all the messy parts of me to Jesus, letting His perfection fill in the gaps. For in Him, I am complete. The Lord couldn’t have said it better when He spoke thus to apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV)
And because it is, I am learning to let go and let God. Letting God not only inhabit those spaces of my soul where His power is made perfect in my weakness but also take over as it relates to the situations and circumstances of my life, which brings me to the topic of rest.
Rest
Friends, though there are many ways to practice rest, I have found that they are all rooted in one common truth – trust.
Our most basic human instinct is to have control, but the word of God says that love always trusts (1 Corinthians 13:7). Control has to do with fear, but love will inspire trust. As image bearers of God being transformed into His likeness which is the purest love ever, a huge part of our process with the Lord has to do with releasing control and replacing it with simple, childlike trust.
I am discovering that when I do what the Psalmist describes in Psalm 56:3, ESV “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you,” I immediately enter into a place of deeper rest as a result of placing my trust in the right place – Him.
Not in my limited ability, and not in the broken state of my circumstances, but rather in Jesus – the author and perfector of my faith (Hebrews 12:2). Each time I sense fear creeping up, tempting me to take control, I have to be very intentional about acknowledging that the Lord is sovereign – over every nation, every household, every heart. And if He said it, He will do it.
This is a gentle reminder that I give myself several times a day, and the more I do, the more I am able to trust Him and the more at rest I am internally.
Self-care
The third counterpart in the realm of loving ourselves well that I have found, friends is self-care.
Taking the time to engage in an activity that serves to rekindle our passion and zest for life while simultaneously connect us to the heart of the Father is a wonderful way, I believe, to remind ourselves that we are worthy to be taken care of, to be nurtured, to be replenished.
A personal revival is always at the core of revival in our families and communities. Though there are several things that we can indulge in, I have learnt that commiting to what is most authentic will be the most fruitful.
For some of us, this can look like catching up with a trusted friend over coffee at Starbucks. For some, it can take the form of reading through a fictional novel that transports us and stimulates our imagination. For some, it can even be fixing a jigsaw puzzle in the cosy comfort of their home, while for others, it can look like long walks and evening strolls with Jesus.
Let me share a true story at this point. On the other side of having begun this post, I found myself thrust into an unexpected trial. Since my temperament is basically like that of a finisher, I had kept a target of 2-3 days when I would write, finish, edit, pray and publish. However, the process that the Lord had in His mind for me, was quite different.
Though I don’t believe that He causes our troubles, I do believe that He uses them for our development. And this much I knew, I had hit a valley.
As the Lord shepherded me through this difficult time, I learnt how to love myself well in a whole new way. Walking out the impact I had endured hand-in-hand with the Father, I was compelled to give myself grace even if I never completed what I had begun. And perhaps, especially then. I was inspired to take adequate rest not only physically, but also spiritually as the Lord challenged me to trust Him to complete that which He had begun. Any voice of self-condemnation was replaced by the voice of self-compassion as I took the necessary measures to heal, recover and rebound well.
Coming out on the other side, I am so pleased to share that as a result of learning to love myself well through this time, I have come forth more refined, more rested, more whole, more free and more empowered. I also feel better positioned to love my neighbour more authentically because I know what it is to love myself the way God loves me.
3. Loving our neighbour as ourselves
I believe that God deposits the seeds of a prosperous future in our present. We are summoned by Him into a lifestyle of daily devotions and daily missions where it is not so much our ability that qualifies us, but rather our availability before the Lord.
The people that He has called us to love and serve are always around and about us. So, I will share here a couple of questions I have started asking God in prayer that have empowered me to be the hands and feet of Christ to help those around me:
– Who can I help today?
– Who can I encourage?
– Who can I pray for?
– Who can I bring loving correction to?
– Who can I forgive and bless?
As I write these questions for you to ponder, I am struck by the fact that all these questions have one thing in common –
‘Who.’
I feel we can often stumble over the ‘what’ in terms of our calling/destiny. My own experience testifies. But what I am learning and seeing is that the Lord wants us to pay attention to the ‘who’ – His son or daughter that is right in front of us. And as we do, He promises to make all things manifest in His perfect way and timing.
In other words, the question perhaps is not so much as, “what am I called to do?” as it is, “who am I called to love?”
Personally, this approach has been hugely rewarding for me. I have since found myself more present in my day-to-day life. Whether it was organising a vehicle for a young girl stranded on the street desperate for a ride to her destination, fetching medication to aid the recovery of my auto-rick guy, or agreeing to speak the truth in love to a family member; walking in tune with the rhythm of the Father’s heart postures me to be more aware of and attentive to the needs of the people that God has placed in front of me – right here, right now.
For it is our obedience in the here and now that is instrumental in unlocking the realms and doors of our destiny in the then and there, simply because all that we are and all that we do is grounded in the primary call of beholding and becoming love.
The value that God places on love above all else is clearly revealed in the passage that says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3, ESV)
I believe that God here is saying that no matter how accomplished we are, no matter how much knowledge we possess, no matter how theologically sound our doctrine is, if we have not love, we have nothing at all.
Conversely, even if the areas of our calling and destiny seem a bit obscure, we don’t need to despair. We are encouraged by heaven to start small and begin right where we find ourselves. We can all learn to love God, love ourselves and love our neighbour as ourselves right where we are at. And as we do, the Lord promises to go before and do what only He can do.
So as we walk in radical obedience friends, may we be encouraged to remember that our tiny acts of faith executed on a daily basis will inevitably add up to a glorious destiny. For the liberating truth of the Simple Gospel is that we don’t really need to do grand things for God to make a difference, but only small things with great love.
🤍🎅🏻🤍
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