If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. ~ Luke 16:10 (NLT)
Yesterday, we looked at step four to attaining the greatness which God has built into each one of us. To summarize: It’s important to keep your focus on what God is asking you to do at the current point in your journey; not look at others and desire where God has them.
Step five deals with the details.
My personality type is sanguine-phlegmatic. This simply means that I really like people, but I often times don’t pay attention to details and I’m OK with that! (That’s the phlegmatic side. This personality type is generally very laid back.) The trouble it brings me is that I often times overlook simple, small details which can impact the bigger picture. For example, I used to be a manager at an aerospace manufacturing company. When orders were placed, part of my job was to verify whether or not we could actually make the parts the client wanted. I gave the OK to one giant job from Boeing (the biggest airline company on the planet). We produced over $1 million worth of parts for them. There was one small problem. We made the wrong part. The blueprint I had attached to the order was for a different part. So, the guys in the plant produced that part instead of the one the client desired. We had to scrap everything and literally start production over again. Did I mention it was a $1 million job? Yeah. Not my finest moment.
Often times in our spiritual training, we try to rush through things because we want to get the reward at the end – we want to advance to the next step. This is true in our prayer life, our devotional life, our giving, and our volunteerism. We do the bare minimum and then hope that we’ve done enough to move on in our faith journey.
However, God wants us to focus on the details – hone our craft. Work at it. Learn every little detail about it. Is God calling you to preach. Learn from others who are already doing it. Study their styles. Ask them questions. Learn the details. Is God calling you to a deeper devotional life? Don’t race through reading the Bible. Slow down. Look at the details in each teaching and story. Ask questions about who, what, when, why, and where. Get into the details. The strength of our training lies not in the next step, but in the details of our current step.
ChadReisig.org 