Image: Adrià Crehuet Cano | Unsplash

Great lives are made up of mundane tasks.

• Getting out of bed every morning
• Making sure the kids are clothed and fed
• Going to work
• Thanking a friend
• Being honest
• Helping a neighbor
• Showing up at church

We’re always told to pursue excellence. To accomplish great things. To be world-changers.

Okay.

I agree.

But life isn’t made up of one moment of excellence after another.

It’s made up of one ordinary action after another.

It’s about simple, consistent, sometimes boring faithfulness.

God Rewards Ordinary Faithfulness

When you’re following God’s will for your life and you string a bunch of ordinary, but necessary actions together, extraordinary things can happen.

Keep the kids alive and well through the school years and before you know it they’re strong, independent people making a great contribution to the world.

Show up to preach sermons, pray, comfort hurting people and do discipleship, and eventually that unhealthy church will become a healthy and vibrant church.

Live and speak in a Christlike manner and people’s lives can be changed for eternity.

Keeping Focus In The Fog

It’s great to dream big dreams. It’s greater to accomplish the small, mundane tasks day after day that make it possible for some of those dreams to actually see the light of day.

When you’re in the middle of the mundane tasks it’s easy to lose sight of that.

Sometimes it seems like those kids will never grow up, this church will never make a difference in the community, and you’ll never get through those classes and get that degree.

Middles are hard.

That’s why some days the bravest, most awe-inspiring thing you’ll do is to simply not give up.

Excellence isn’t about the days when you feel inspired to take on the world. It’s about pushing through the days when you feel like giving up, but don’t.

God’s purposes for you, your family, your ministry, your church and your life won’t be accomplished through one mountaintop experience after the other.

They’ll be done through a long series of small steps done with faithfulness, patience, obedience, love and integrity.

Copyright © 2018 by the author or Christianity Today.
Click here to read our guidelines concerning reprint permissions.