Present Obedience Opens Unseen Doors

Seldom do we see the significance of the present moment. From our perspective the daily tasks of life often seem mundane. Yet God is present, and he is at work. How often he is forging perseverance in our hearts! How often the Lord is building character in our lives and testing us, to see if we will truly obey him!

When we follow God’s leading, he then builds upon our often-hidden obedience of today as he works out his plans for tomorrow. We do not know what those plans may be. Often we have a guess, and sometimes he gives us a glimpse of what is ahead. Nevertheless, none of us really knows what God is planning. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,” says the Lord in Isaiah 55, “So are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts."

When we are faithful in little things, God opens bigger opportunities and greater responsibilities.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade describes it: “We must therefore allow each moment to be the cause of the next; the reason for what precedes being revealed in what follows, so that everything is linked firmly and solidly together in a divine chain of events. The world of ideas, imagination, argument no longer nourishes and sustains souls. They no longer see or know where they are going, no long depend on an effort of will to overcome the fatigue or endure the hardship of the journey. Everything happens in a profound sense of their own helplessness.” [1]

God is present in our least task. He is there far more than we realize in our loving service to others, especially in our least-favorite task! Faithfulness unnoticed by human eyes flings wide open the doors to God’s plans for my future.

[1] Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, trans. Kitty Muggeridge (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1989), p. 21.

© 2012 Glenn E. Myers