Sometimes I think it might be easier to be faithful to Christ when life is hard.
Do you know that feeling when you get to the other side of a crisis and once you finish basking in the way everything held together, you wonder what it will take to recover your tight-fisted grip on the faithfulness of God that sustained you through your trial? It’s an odd mashup of realizations and recalibrations. It’s one part relief that the trial is over, one part loosening your death grip on what it took to survive. And because Christ is the survival mode for every Christian, we let that hard-won steadfastness slip a little when the pages of life turn over to a quieter chapter. Desperate prayer slides to the edges of our minds, hungry Bible reading becomes an ordinary rut of daily living that may or may not spark any flashes of that gritty faith that kept us so near the Father’s side. We stand in sanctuaries feeling numb, without the tears and the trembling. Apathy creeps in and—
—we begin to slide. There’s a hollowness, a missing that pounds in our chests. We miss, well, not the trial itself—but the way Christ was everything to us when nothing else was sure. Something, anything besides mundane, day-to-day obedience would be nice. A split sea, anyone? How about a pillar of cloud or fire to let me know God is near? I’d be certain to tighten my grip on my love for Christ if something big were going on. Rescue me from monotony, O Lord, before my love grows cold! I cannot see You at work in the confines of the ordinary. But the fires of faith don’t have to die when doused in the ordinariness of a plain today. Obedience in small ways will steadily stoke the fires of faith and affection for God even if we cannot see the embers catching flame.
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What do you think of when you consider book of Joshua? A severed Jordan River? Marching and shouting around a city that crumbles without even one battering ram? A scarlet cord and a family kept alive? A harlot with faith deeper than yours? A sunset delayed to lengthen a day of battle?
Those big stories of faithfulness and miraculous events are the ones we like to tell, and with good reason. They ripple with the extraordinary. Jericho, we think. Wouldn’t you have liked to have been there for that? Wouldn’t our faith be so strong after witnessing such an incomprehensible event? The Israelites did a lot of things right during those big, memorable stories. Walk through a river and trust the ground is dry? Absolutely. March around a large, imposing city with nothing but trumpets and our voices? No problem. Keep fighting while the day gets longer instead of shorter? We’re here for it. They obeyed in the big things.
But you know what they weren’t good at? Obeying God in the small things. Over and over, Israel failed to keep God’s commands in seemingly small, insignificant ways. They didn’t always follow His directions fully during the conquest. Partial obedience revealed partial allegiance to Yahweh. Failing to drive out specific groups of people that God had warned them about eventually led to the idolatry (see Josh. 19:47, Judges 18), to Israel’s enslavement of other people groups (Josh. 17:12), to plagues as punishment for their rebellion and idolatrous intermarriage (Num. 25, Josh 22:17), and to a fusion of idolatry with worship of Yahweh (Josh. 24:23). Refusal to obey fully always turned their hearts away. God had given continual promises to His people that He would be with them, that His laws were for their good, and that He would provide for them as He had always done. All they had to do was obey Him. Just day-to-day obedience. Avoid idolatry, make decisions that don’t lead your hearts to follow false gods, work the ground and settle the land without adopting the idol worship of the previous inhabitants. It seems like a small thing, really. Just don’t worship anyone other than Yahweh. Worship the One who rescued you. It’s Adam and Eve and the serpent and the tree and the fruit in their hands all over again. Trust that what God says is true and for your absolute best interests. It was such a small thing, really.
The lack of obedience in small things would always eventually lead Israel to idolatry, to drifting from the God who rescued them and made them His own people. We like the dramatic stories of walls falling and dry river crossings but deemphasize the daily obedience to God’s Word because that’s not as gripping or faith-growing.
But the daily, mundane acts of obedience and faithfulness have a direct impact on our spiritual growth. In his commentary on Joshua (which is one of the better commentaries I’ve read), Dale Ralph Davis reveals our resistance to the importance of the small, obedient acts of faithfulness:
“However, here is a testimony to all of God’s people: we frequently and strangely prove faithful in the great crisis of faith, remain steadfast in severe storms, perhaps even relish the excitement of the heaviest assaults, yet lack the tenacity, the dogged endurance, the patient plodding often required in the prosaic affairs of believing life; we are often loath to be faithful in what we regard as little.”[1]
We might regard the daily motions of intentional prayer and Bible reading and fellowship with God’s people as “little,” but I assure you they are not. God is more than able to use our everyday obedience to sustain us. Faithfulness in the little things builds the spiritual muscle memory that later sustains us in the crises of life, teaching us to default to Christ no matter what life circumstances may come. If you want to default to faithfulness when the skies darken with sorrow, use your ordinary days to teach your heart to stand firm. We can, perhaps, see greater swaths of growth after a tragedy or a long season of fist-squeezing faith, but God is indeed at work in what we regard as little and ordinary. Davis writes,
“God’s power still works among us, not necessarily in the quick flashes but over a long time, which calls for simple, durable fidelity over such time. Even though God is at work, many days still consist of washing your face, brushing your teeth, taking out garbage, and attending class. That’s what ‘you have need of endurance’ (Heb.10:36).”[2]
Rescue me from monotony, we might pray. But “dogged endurance” is still good soil for the fruit of persevering faith to grow in whether the skies flash with fearsome storms or the sun rises and sets with utter ordinariness. God still works. He is still near. You can still grow. Still hold fast. No little obedience is insignificant.
Faithfulness in the little things builds the spiritual muscle memory that later sustains us in the crises of life, teaching us to default to Christ no matter what life circumstances may come. Share on X
[1] Dale Ralph Davis, Joshua: No Falling Words (Scotland, UK: Christian Focus, 2000), 116.
[2] Ibid., 104.
Photo by Elena Rabkina on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.