Are You Thankful for the Small Things?

If you have been a Christian for any length of time you have heard a sermon based on Matthew 25: 14-30 which begins this way: 14 "For it is just like a man about to go on a journey, who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them.

Most often the sermon is either about using your spiritual gifts, or about giving or getting involved in the church and I would also use this scripture in that way but for this post I am going to take it in a different direction. Even though I will begin in a different direction we will end up in the same place as many sermons or talks about this scripture.

As I was going through pastoral training and then after being ordained I have talked with pastors who were either planting a new church or trying to grow one that already existed. Being ordained myself I try to take scripture and apply it to my life as a pastor. I believe that when pastors take on a new assignment they are like the slaves who have been called before the master and entrusted with His possessions while He is away.

Some of us have been given the responsibility of overseeing a large church or ministry while others of us have been given a smaller church or ministry. In applying this scripture to those responsibilities I believe God will ask us what did we do with the possessions that He placed in our hands. Did we help the church or ministry grow first spiritually and then in size? But most importantly He will ask us how did we view our assignment to the church or ministry that we were responsible for? Were we thankful for that little bitty church or did we look at it with an attitude being ashamed that it was known as that little church? 

For someone reading this post God is challenging you right now to own up to looking down on your ministry and calling it a small thing. In this passage God is calling us to grow the possessions He has given to us but He first is asking us to be thankful for what we have been given so that He can grow it. I believe unless we are thankful God has given us something to be responsibile for and to look at it as a prize possession given to us to shepherd it will not increase spiritually or in size. If you have been guilty of looking down on your ministry or church then I encourage you to take time to ask God to forgive you and to show you the beauty of your ministry. Once you have done that I believe the small thing He has given you responsibility over will begin to grow in a Naturally Supernatural way. He will grow it directly in proportion to your thankfulness for it.

Father, Bless the pastors and ministers who are reading this today. If they have been unthankful for the ministry You have given them stir them to repentance. Renew their thankfulness for the possessions You have placed in their hands. *From the ashes of their dreams raise up something beautiful.   In the authority and power of Jesus name amen 

* "Without Walls" by Randy White
What is written at this blog is always to me first and then to others. I write from my own experiences and if you identify with it then cool.