I like to travel.
Before I leave for any trip I pray the same prayer, “Lord show me something new while I’m gone.” I could write for days the moments that I have had with Jesus while on the many adventures I have taken, but I’ll save those for another day.
It didn’t take being in Paris 24 hours before He so kindly answered that prayer.
As we walked up to the Eiffel Tower for the first time, I was amazed. It is truly worth the trip just to see that alone. It is everything you think it is going to be and more. All I could keep saying to my friend Abigail, was “it is just so big.” Ask her. I probably said the same sentence at least ten times.
We started making our way back to the metro station, walking in silence, and it was just like the Lord whispered into the crisp Paris air, “I am big, you be small.”
I would be lying if I said the transition back from camp wasn’t hard. I went from speaking every single morning for two months to not. I went from thousands of high school girls to nine girls on a varsity volleyball team. But I have kept begging Jesus to remind me that my influence is just as great where I am now as it was this summer. It would be easy for me to believe otherwise and I have my moments where I start to trip up all little, only to be caught up in His grace once again.
It’s what we all want right? Influence.
I am seeing influence is not measured by quantity, volume, or even by the extent you are seen. Influence is measured purely by willingness and availability. Your influence will match the measure of the willingness you have to serve in the small.
David sets the example for us. David never earnestly waited or even prayed for the day he would become a king. David didn’t even know the option of being a king was on the table. But David was the most qualified to be a king for that very reason. David served faithfully as the shepherd in that field of his until God said otherwise. David’s influence became great because of his willingness to be small.
Are you tending to the field God has you in right now? Or are you dreaming of only living in the palace?
Too many of us want to be kings when we are not willing to be shepherds. God called David when it was time but that did not mean that God wasn’t using David where he was before then.
For me, I have to be willing to go back into the shepherd field when God says go back. I have to be willing to put down the mic if God says that’s not where He has me right now. This summer, it was a privilege to be given a stage, but if I ever get to a place where I am only willing if the stage is my platform than I never ever want the stage again. So many of us long to elevated. Our generation has become one that idolizes the profession of “Christian celebrity” or the concept of bigger is better. All the while we are missing the fact we were never made to do anything other than bow.
It is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.” Romans 14:11
We do not have to wait to take the posture we were always meant to live from. We can lower ourselves now. We can become small now. Because I believe the lower we are willing to go and the smaller we are willing to become is the minute that our influence will be capable to spread further.
I want to be David. I want us all to be David. Never concerned about being elevated but instead always just saying, “If this is where you want me God, this is where I’ll stay.”
In Acts 12, the minute Herod let people praise his name instead of God’s is the same minute that he died. When we go lower and become smaller, Jesus gets to be seen more and more. Even when we are privileged enough to get the stage, we must do a clean sweep of our ego and pride, and set it for Him. We start treading in dangerous water when at any moment our image becomes our motive. It’s never about us. It never will be about us. I have to constantly do a motive check and ask myself, “are you making Jesus’ name famous? Or your own?”
My greatest reminder right now to fight back against my flesh is: He is big. He doesn’t need me to be.
What He needs is our heart for people to come to see Him to be a steady beat. He can use that. Maybe you are taking the stage. Maybe you are the stay at home mom. Maybe you are the college student trying to find where you can be a part of a ministry. Maybe what you know you are called to do isn’t happening just yet. Maybe you are simply just taking a step back from what you know you were meant to do. Across the spectrum, He only needs peoples hearts to be burning with a desire for the lost to be found.
Wherever you are, make yourself think of David.
I wonder how many conversations David had with God in that field of his that nobody will ever know about. They were probably the sweetest and most intimate conversation ever.
Your influence does not have to big to be deep. That’s become my new prayer. Lord, don’t let me have big influence let me have deep influence. The thing about depth is that it doesn’t require a certain amount of people. It only takes one. Find your one.
Even just one is enough.
xoxo,
someone still learning how to be small
