Start Small, Dream Big
“Small decisions can lead us to great destinations or great destruction.” -Matt Bradner
Including my years as a college student, this was my 22nd time attending the Campus Outreach New Year’s Conference. (Personal favor, do not stop and do the math to calculate my age.) And without fail, God has used this event to rock my world every time. One of our keynote speakers, Matt Bradner, challenged us with the principle of sowing and reaping (see 2 Corinthians 9:6) -- our small everyday decisions in life will accumulate into large outcomes. Matt unpacked this principle using King David’s journey -- the runt in his family whose older brothers were all serving in the army. David, who was left home guarding the family sheep, was beckoned to deliver food to the men at battle. Fast-forward. In the end, it is that boy David whom God uses to defeat the enemy Goliath and free His people. To God be the glory, who accomplishes much with little.
Do you want to be used by God like David? Certainly, David was not perfect. In fact, later in life, it was David’s small decisions that led to his great moral failure in 2 Samuel 11. Nor is David the hero in the Goliath story. God is. And yet, God has given us this wisdom principle of sowing and reaping to guide us in life. David had a history of trusting God with the seemingly small things in life and that set his life on a trajectory to then trust God when faced with great difficulty that day on the battlefield.
Today, I’m reminded to be faithful with the small things in my life. Reading our church’s daily devotional is one great example. We don’t have to read the bible every day. We get to. It’s our great privilege to read God’s Word and let this small daily decision shape our future character bit by bit.
Another quote from the conference equally struck me. It was not from a speaker but from a Michigander attending for the first time, “Evangelism, I have always said I value it. But today I realized I never do it.” {Pause. Read those simple yet profound words a second time.} Humbling to admit but it’s those “small” words of confession that can be the start of incredible, life-changing results.
Confession is hard. And yet it is so good because when we admit our weakness, that is when our mighty God can best be seen right there at our side eager to carry us into the battle and onto victory. My prayer this year for myself, my team of missionaries and volunteer leaders, and the CAM students I’m working with is this -- that we would all face our weaknesses head-on day by day, look to God to be our strength, and ask Him to lead us into the harvest field sowing gospel seeds. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see incredible results of friends' and family members' lives changed forever? The results are not our responsibility. We must leave them in the hands of our Sovereign God and simply do our part. Oh, God, use us for your glory! Amen.