In high school, I was a regular player on my basketball team. We won two championships and in the first, I made the game-winning shot. What an incredible moment for our team! It was a “BIG” moment I’ll never forget.
What is easily forgotten is what it took to get me to that moment. I started playing team basketball at the age of nine and it was eight years later that I made that game-winning shot. Why did it take so long?
If you have ever played a sport or entered a competition, you know that your first try won’t win against experienced contenders. Winning requires consistent effort, practice, and correction day after day and week after week. The training is a refining process not unlike the kind of refining that God is doing in us. More often than not, winners of a competition are the ones who prepared as much or more than the rest of the competitors. Their faithfulness to the details along the way produced the result.
For much of my Christian life, I’ve been looking for the “BIG” moments, like Esther’s moment. It is easy to forget that every moment is a big moment in God’s economy. Brushing my teeth, playing with Lego with my kids, mowing the grass, hugging my wife — and every moment in between — are opportunities for faithfulness and obedience to God. When the “BIG” moments come, I’ll be prepared — because God is faithful.
Dear Lord, help me stay the course in life each and every moment so that when the day comes that I leave this earth, I will have finished the race, as Paul stated in I Corinthians 9:24, and may attain the prize of faithfulness. Amen.
Go Deeper — While waiting for the BIG moments, are you missing many small opportunities to serve God faithfully? Will you ask God to help you understand why those little moments are so important?
Read Further — The little things do make a difference. This encouraging article – Having a Life of Significance explains why.
Photo Credit: Faical Zaramod