There is a tension in the Christian life between what God does for us and what God expects us to do. He is always at work doing something in us and for us that we can’t accomplish on our own power. But the Bible is also clear that God expects us to actively participate. Here are two key scriptural passages that offer a foundation for our topic today.
“Whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.
But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand; and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on the house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” (Jesus, in Matthew 7:24-27)
Jesus is the rock on which we build a foundation of life that will stand in the midst of storms. But we build. Whether on sand or stone, we build. After talking about people who were commended for their faith, Paul wrote,
“Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith...” (Paul, in Hebrews 12)
Jesus is the author of our faith and the finisher of our faith. But we “throw off,” “lay aside,” and “run with endurance.” Part of our union with God – the practical outworking of our communion – is that we participate in what God is doing.
There is often little information about 95% of the characters’ lives in the Bible. In the Old Testament especially, we get the details we need to move the narrative along, but it’s portions of their lives. It is easy to get caught up in the big moments that define the lives of Biblical characters. We forget that while they are important, they didn’t suddenly become the kind of people we see. There were years that formed them.
We don’t have a lot of biblical detail about Noah’s years before the ark building, but one does not get the reputation for being ‘blameless in his time’ (Genesis 6:9) in a moment. That has to unfold over time to get that title.
By contrast, I doubt that Jonah become a bitter, rebellious prophet overnight. Something had been building for years in him in the ordinary moments of life.
When we think of Moses, we often think of him confronting Pharaoh and parting the Red Sea. We can forget the 40 years he spent as a fugitive shepherd in Midian learning humility, patience, and restraint after killing an Egyptian. Before Moses confronted Pharaoh, he had to learn to tend sheep.
The actions and attitudes we see in the disciples were not some kind of personality quirk that God put in them to teach us a lesson in jealousy or bravery or betrayal. The disciples became those kinds of people over time.
Even with Jesus, we read that “Jesus grew in wisdom, maturity and in favor with God and people.” (Luke 2:52) There are 15-20 years of Jesus life for which we have no biblical record. There were apparently no marquee moments to add.
Next week we are going to talk about Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. That’s his start to becoming a missionary to the Gentiles and church planter. But he lived for years in obscurity after his conversion, studying and training (Galatians 1). His calling was instant, but his formation took some time.
The high or low points of their lives, their ”ten minutes of fame” experiences that were recorded in Scripture, are related to what happened during the rest of the time in their lives up to that point.
I was watching bowl games this week, and there was a moment that stood out to me. There was a player having a fantastic day, and the announcers noted that this player would go to the school’s training facility during the offseason and work out all by himself. He had put in serious time just ordinary day after ordinary day, which prepared him for his extraordinary moment in the spotlight.
It’s cool to see this in sports, but there are other areas of life where we can observe commitment and then see output. No matter who you are and whether or not life has been good to you or hard for you, there is no substitute for faithful, committed hard work to take you to a better place than you are now.
From what I can see in the Bible, it is no different with character building. God has given us the privilege and responsibility of being what theologians call “significant moral agents.” In other words, what we do matters. Reaping and sowing is a principle God himself embedded in the world.
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap corruption; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” (Galatians 6:7-10)
On the cross, Jesus took upon himself the cost for all the corruption we have sown into the world and our lives and emerged victorious from the grave. That’s what God has done for us. We are invited to participate in what Jesus accomplished for us.
In the context of the life that Jesus offers, whenever we plant something spiritually or morally in our life, an appropriate crop begins to grow. We learn from this. This is the building of our character.
Here is a biblical truth that can be hard to accept: God does not gift character. God gifts identity and then empowers us to build character. God radically changes our identity through salvation (we are now children of God – Galatians 3:26). That’s salvation, God’s gift to us. But we also talk about sanctification, which means there is still work to be done, because we have a lot of room to grow. All of us in this room are a testimony to this.
It’s important to remember that God does not wait until we are perfect until He can do something with us. The Bible is loaded with stories of flawed people that God used for the good of the world and for His glory.
So this is not about becoming good enough so God will choose you or use you. If that were the standard, none of us would ever be chosen or rise to the occasion. This is not about God noticing us because of how awesome we are.
This is about how the Bible shows discipline and character developing in the slow, ordinary, plodding times of life as we participate in what God is doing in us.
It’s not a popular thought. We live in a society that encourages us to see life not as a walk of baby steps, but of huge leaps and bounds.
If I am going to lose weight, I want to be the biggest loser. 20 pounds over a year is hardly worth my time. I want to win the show on TV by dropping 100 in a week.
If I want a home makeover, I don’t have time for small improvements over time. I want an extreme makeover now while I am on vacation.
I shouldn’t have to be a singer who works my way to the top through hard work and fortitude. I want to be an idol with a big contract.
And dare I say, we want God to finish working in our life now, and be done teaching us now, to get us past our struggles with sin now, to fix our marriage now, and to answer our prayers now. We don’t have time to just do the next thing. We want the next big thing !!!!
Yet there are plenty of biblical images that reinforce the point that meaningful growth happens over slow, ordinary time.
The Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) Fruit grows slowly - so slowly that I can’t tell from moment to moment that it’s growing, and yet it does.
Running a race (Hebrews 12) It’s not a sprint being described. It’s a marathon that requires endurance, time, repetition, dedication, and fatigue.
·Building a house (Matthew 7) It takes a while to build a house. It’s daily devotion, not dramatic moments.
This past week I was reading some prophecies or predictions for 2026. Most of them are pretty bold and startling about major breakthroughs and years of grandness. You know what I didn’t see?
“God has revealed to me that this next year will be full of countless times when ordinary moments of faithfulness will build His people and His Kingdom. The Holy Spirit will move powerfully and help you not snap at your kids so that over time what you plant as a parent will lead to a good relational harvest.
You will face temptation, and you will need to train: humble yourself, seek accountability, and do the hard work of resisting temptation. You will be overlooked, under-appreciated, ignored and demeaned, but God’s faithful presence will use this to build your character for the good of the Kingdom and for His glory.”
I haven’t seen that yet, because that’s just not that exciting to us. Eugene Peterson once said:
“There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.”
Anyone who tells you there are shortcuts to character are not being honest with you. I once heard a self-proclaimed prophet claim that when God appeared to Him in a vision and told him to be a prophet, God told the man that this calling was so urgent that God would give him 10 years of maturity miraculously. That’s just not how it works. (And as this man’s life unfolded, it was clear that he had not, in fact, been gifted maturity).
There is no escaping this Godly practice of doing the next thing: Being faithful in the walk of life, in little things when there is no apparent inspiration, no applause, no crowd, no obvious, immediate payoff to myself. This is the means through which God so often does His restorative work of grace in us and around us.
Alexander Maclaren once said:
“If our likeness to God does not show itself in trifles, what is there left for it to show itself in? For our lives are all made up of trifles. The great things come three or four of them in the seventy years; the little ones every time the clock ticks.”
As I look back, as meaningful as our marriage ceremony was, the vows my wife and I gave each other offered an inaccurate view of what we would face. It kind of presented extremes: better or worse, rich or poor, sickness and health. I wish we had said something about the ordinary. More often than not the majority of our life has been lived somewhere in between, not leaping from momentous event to momentous event, but taking a Tylenol and a nap and doing the next right thing.
Even as I think back on what became momentous shifts in our relationship, it was the daily ‘next things’ that led to significant change. No one stays married because of a great wedding. Love is built on 52 ordinary Tuesdays throughout the year, not 2-day anniversary get aways. Love deepens through thousands of what seem like unremarkable acts of choosing each other.
Let’s apply this to parenting. Good parents aren’t necessarily good parents because they create momentous moments (though that can be really cool if you can pull it off). Good parents are those whose character has matured by doing the next thing right, day after day. It’s thousands of bedtime prayers and stories, heart-felt apologies, working on consistency, exercising restraint when that one kid makes you late every Sunday.
I’ve been thinking about the past two years of therapy for childhood trauma. I would love so much for God to just clean that up in one dramatic moment of healing. I didn’t want one therapy session at a time; sharing week after week with my small groups; talking with the elders about what was unfolding; and trusting my wife day after day after day to sit with me and endure with me and cry yet again with me. That isn’t glamorous at all. It’s messy, and relentless, and moving at the pace of ordinary. And yet healing and maturity are both happening.
Many spiritual breakthroughs are recognized in hindsight. It turns out that Scripture reading when it feels boring, prayer when nothing dramatic happens, and pursuing community when we’d rather isolate – they all quietly prepare the way for what feels like a breakthrough in the moment, but it turns out it had been building for years.
I’m sure God can make us mature in a moment if He wants to, but there is no record in the Bible that He ever did. He apparently does not want to. He wants us to grow up, moment by moment, relying on His Spirit, reading His Word and living in a community of His people.
Let’s go back to Jesus’ parable in Matthew 7. When the rain comes we as follower of Christ will stand not because we were strong suddenly, by surprise, contrary to all expectations. We will stand because 1) God provided a foundation for our lives, and 2) we built on that foundation by hearing what Jesus has to say about life - and doing it.
This is how discipleship works: committing our lives to following Christ, then learning what it means to walk (with God’s help) in holiness and integrity, putting one foot in front of the other day after day after day, for the good of His Kingdom and the glory of God.