Little by Little

“You shall not be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you.” - ‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭7‬:‭21‬-‭22‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Many people probably wouldn't know this, but a few years ago I had a blog called ‘ My Faith Files’ which lasted for about 3 years before discouragement took over and I closed it down. I was discouraged with the pace of my life and also the progress of my work here. I was discouraged by how little progress it felt like I was making.

I had all these grandiose expectations from the vision I had seen of what God was going to use my service for, and I expected it to immediately come to pass. So, when it wasn’t looking like what I had envisioned I was disheartened. Have you ever felt like that?

And truth be told, I do struggle with patience, so I was expecting my little seed to turn into the biggest of oak trees overnight. The idea of the ‘‘little by little’, or the patience required was ultimately underwhelming for me then.

Process is the hardest part of a vision I think - the space between what you’ve seen or heard, where you are and the time it takes to get there is often the most discouraging part. The darkness of the tunnel always seems so daunting. But to build something of substance, something that can and will stand the test of time, takes so much longer, requires so much more diligence, and involves so much more fruit of the Spirit than we often expect.

God had promised the children of Israel over and over about the land He was going to bring them into, the promise given to their fathers and to be manifested for the sons. And on the cusp of the promised land God had to remind them of the process.

I can see the imaginations of the sons running wild for so many years, how they spoke to each other over dinner about how quickly they would take over, how they would divide the land and the spoils of it...  

...But they had not owned land in over 400 years. They would not have known how to tend to the land, how to ensure viability and fruitfulness. They would not have known how to be good stewards of the land they were going to enter into, so God took them through a period of process. If you get something ‘fast’ you tend to lose it the same way, because there is oftentimes no tenacity, no cultivation or understanding of stewardship.

So little by little, they would conquer land, learn how to tend and cultivate it, recover and refresh, and then take over more land - rinse and repeat, till eventually they would (and did) take over the whole expanse of land, having developed the skills and the abilities to look after the ‘much’.

The same is with us, during the process, God is building in us our character and teaching us the skills necessary to be good stewards of what He has promised to give to us so we are not ill-equipped and overwhelmed with the blessing .

So whilst it may be itchy or discouraging to not be gaining the ground you thought you would in the time you thought you would, remember that the process is important for the destination. At each interval, we are learning how to be good stewards of the little, so that we can be great stewards of the much. We have to trust God with the pace of the building and the process of our lives, if we truly desire something to last.

““One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” - ‭‭Luke‬ ‭16‬:‭10‬ ‭ESV‬‬