Big Picture, Small Steps

As Christians, we are called to live life with our eyes on Christ. We live with a sense of purpose, the wideness of eternity ahead and a great harvest of lost souls all around.

But living out the big picture of God’s purpose and promise requires us to take small steps.

Sometimes the steps seem more significant than others. Sharing the gospel with a neighbor seems more important than tying a little one’s shoe or choosing to be kind and cheerful to the cashier in a slow checkout line at the store—and, in a sense, it is. But each step we take in obedience to the Holy Spirit’s promptings and the clear teachings of Scripture holds great significance when viewed from God’s perspective.

As we live out the dailyness of our lives, we are to be

“Looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith; Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2

God knows what He is doing, and He knows exactly what each step of your journey and mine will entail. He also knows our hearts and our tendency to be too focused on one or the other, embracing either the big picture, or the small steps.

When we are looking only at the big picture, we neglect to take those steps of obedience and growth in Christlikeness that God plans to use as He weaves together the big picture. Perhaps this over focus on the big to the neglect of the small is why Jesus tells us in Luke 9:23,

“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”

When I searched for that verse in my Bible app, I realized that the command to take up our cross and follow Christ is repeated four other times in the gospels. But this passage in Luke has another detail, one that Jesus knew we needed: to take up our cross daily.

Life in Christ is made up of grand and glorious mountaintop moments followed by mundane, plodding valleys. The moment of salvation is life-altering, irreversibly changing one’s eternal destiny. But after that mountaintop moment, the path leads through the valley of daily decisions to take up one’s cross and follow Christ in the inglorious everyday of life.

When we get our focus set too much on the daily steps of our pathway, we lose the sense of purpose, hope, and victory which the big picture gives. We get easily distracted by the simple necessities of living, and soon forget where we were headed in the first place.

Again, Jesus addresses this in the gospels. In fact, the entire Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 helps us to get our eyes off the earthly and onto the heavenly, but since that is too long to quote here, look at just these few verses:

“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (6:31-33)

Throughout Scripture, we are given glimpses of the glory ahead. Throughout our lives we experience the mountaintop moments that give us a sense of destiny: salvation, “big” steps of growth in the Lord, times when we are overwhelmed by the sense of nearness with God.

But we are not made to dwell on the mountaintops. Like the disciples that went with Jesus to the mount of transfiguration, we must come down to the valley and walk the path of life with all its problems and temptations. However, we can take the mountaintop view of the big picture with us into the valley, living with purpose, hope, victory, and joy while daily taking up our cross to follow Christ.

Dear reader, where does your path lie today? Are you on a mountaintop, or a valley? Ask God to help you keep a sense of eternity as you take each step.

“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” 

Philippians 3:13-14