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I’ve often heard it said that we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. And though there’s wisdom in such advice, I’m writing you today about that very thing.     

The small stuff.     

Not the minor, inconsequential details of life that make no eternal difference, but the small things that originate with God. The little promptings of His Spirit that are so subtle they can easily be overlooked. The gentle inward leadings that seem so slight they are often simply dismissed.     

Why would I want to write you about little things like that?     

Because when they’re perceived and acted upon, they can produce massive results. Like tiny seeds planted in fertile soil, they can produce towering trees of greatness. They can literally become building blocks of the Kingdom of God.     

I haven’t always realized this because I think of a kingdom as something huge and mighty. I think of the United States, for example, with its vast economy and GDP. I think of its assets, its armed forces, and its workforce composed of millions of people. I don’t think about something small.     

But, lately, as I’ve studied God’s Word, I’ve noticed He’s really into small things. He talks in the Bible about “jots and tittles” (Matt. 5:18), about adding “precept upon precept; line upon line...here a little, and there a little” (Isa. 28:10), and not despising “small beginnings” (Zech. 4:10 NLT). He describes in detail the most seemingly trivial items in the Old Testament tabernacle and attributes to them great significance.     

In the New Testament, Jesus even goes so far as to say that God’s Kingdom is “like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and...like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened” (Lk. 13:19, 21).     

Talk about small stuff! Mustard seeds and leaven are absolutely miniscule. Yet Jesus compared them to the Kingdom of God because they both produce big results. The little mustard seed can grow into a tree up to 15 feet tall. A tiny fleck of leaven can expand to 70 times its original size.     

As believers, you and I have the same potential. No matter how small we may appear to be right now, we can become something much bigger. We can take the seeds of our lives and plant them. We can continually act upon the slightest promptings of God’s Spirit and, as we do, His influence on us and through us will expand...and expand...and expand.

Oh, dear friend, God’s little things matter! When we respond to the little thoughts and nudges He gives us, they can change not only our own lives but the course of nations.

The Speech That Almost Wasn't   
If you doubt it, consider the events that precipitated Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. That speech is one of the greatest ever delivered in the history of our nation. Yet it started in my hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, as a tiny seed in the heart of a woman named Rosa Parks.     

She was riding the bus to work one day in 1955. A Caucasian man got on the bus, and the driver told her to give the man her seat and move to the back of the bus. If she didn’t do it, she’d be arrested and fined. But she sensed the nudge of the Spirit and planted a seed.     

Her seed was, “No.”     

That one word of defiance, that one act against racial injustice began a citywide bus boycott and sparked the movement that ended legal segregation in America. It opened the door for Martin Luther King, a 24-year-old Baptist pastor, to emerge as the greatest civil rights leader this country has ever seen.     

And what a leader he was! Less than 10 years after Rosa Parks planted her seed, he addressed a crowd of 250,000 people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The previous night, his advisors had told him to deliver a strictly political message. But just before he stepped forward to speak, he received a nudge—from someone else who had received a nudge.     

He heard a familiar voice from behind him say, “Tell them about the dream, Martin!”     

The voice belonged to Mahalia Jackson, a gospel singer and friend. Her small suggestion changed the direction of his speech and of our nation. It prompted Dr. King to set aside politics and say instead...
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream...     
Those words ignited a nuclear reaction across America and around the world. They not only inspired the 250,000 people that heard them, they’ve continued to touch multiplied millions ever since.

Yet as massive and weighty as those words were, they might not have been spoken that day if Rosa Parks and Mahalia Jackson hadn’t done their parts. If they hadn’t planted their small seeds by saying “No” and “Tell them about the dream,” who knows where America would be today?

Copyright © Lynne Hammond Ministries
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Author Biography

Lynne Hammond
Web site: Lynne Hammond Ministries
 
A teacher and an author, Lynne publishes a newsletter called Prayer Notes, has written numerous books, and currently serves as the national prayer director for Daughters for Zion. Her passion for inspiring and leading others into the life of Spirit-led prayer continues to take her around the world to minister to believers whose heart cry, like hers, is “Lord, teach me to pray!”
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