Don’t Despise The Small Stuff

Don’t Despise the Small Stuff

Lysa TerKeurst

What seems small in your world? By small, I mean that place where your vision is grand but your reality isn’t. Is it your influence? Your opportunity? Your business? Your ability to give? Your ministry?

Look at that small place. What do you see?

If what you see is less than encouraging, might you take the bold step of looking at it again? Because hidden within that smallness is a gift—one that will yield wisdom you can’t get any other way. If you look closely enough at what seems small in your world, you’ll begin to see how “deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom” will create something new in you.

This small place in your world is where humility is birthed. Humility is that glorious and rare quality that doesn’t take too much credit. Humility knows real success is laced with heavenward glances, bent knees, and whispered praises to the One. The only One.

He who gives.

And He who withholds. Not out of spite, not out of ignorance, not out of deafness, and certainly not out of comparisons in which others are found to be more deserving. No. He withholds out of protection. With loving restraint, He withholds the big to protect the hidden workings of the small. The small we should not despise. It is in these humble places where we experience the quiet nurture, the holy unfolding, the deep stirrings that draw us closer to the heart of God.

Soon, the soul must choose: haughtiness or humility.

If that soul has never tasted small, it will never develop a humble palate. It will crave only big, until it is so full of big that being big inflates and distorts and never satisfies.

But for the soul that has dined on what is small, humility becomes the richest fare. The taste that satisfies. The thing most desired to be consumed. All things humble will eventually be made great.

Oh, the beautiful gift of small!

There is great delight in knowing the truth about what small really is. Small isn’t a belittling of one’s calling or a diminishment of one’s future. It’s simply a place—a grand but unnoticed place. A place we need to protect and remember because it keeps all things big in proper perspective.

Small isn’t what keeps us from our grand vision. Small is what keeps us for our grand vision.

Dear Lord, help me to embrace the small. I want to see with Your eyes what You have planned for me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

REMEMBER

This small place in your world is where humility is birthed. Small isn’t what keeps us from our grand vision. Small is what keeps us for our grand vision.

REFLECT

When in the past have you “dined on what is small”? How did it feel in the moment? How do you feel about that experience now? What have you learned? How have you grown?

RESPOND

Choose one thing today that you will do “small.” Fold and put away your husband’s laundry. Bring your boss coffee. Pull your neighbor’s trash to the curb. Whatever you choose, ask the Lord to increase your taste for the “small” while you’re performing it.

POWER VERSES

Proverbs 22:4; Psalm 37:11