The Little Things

Well, thank you to the Youth Choir. Appreciate very much your presentation and very much appreciate the meaning behind the words of the song. You know, it is so important to be able to put on that armor of God to be able to protect ourselves against what it is that Satan tosses our way each and every day. You know, it's interesting with music. I remember a song we did at pre-teen camp a number of years ago that I will never forget now, the fruits of the God Spirit. It is locked in to my head. And that music has a way of doing that. So it's nice to also then have this in the sense of the armor of God. Well, I managed to forget an announcement. And you know what? I wrote it on the back of one of the announcements because I knew. I'll put it on the back and then I'll know that it's there. Yeah, it didn't work. So, a quick reminder. We are looking for greeters to be signing up for the months of October through the end of the year. So if you are interested to be on the greeter schedule, there is a sign-up sheet on the back of the table back there for anyone who might be interested. And then it says here, over for special music. So I should have started on that side and then I would have remembered how it would have worked. So if you are interested in greeting, and if you are interested in being a part of that, please make sure and get signed up with that on the back table. Well, brethren, I know how to swim. In fact, I've known how to swim for a very long time.

My earliest memories that I can remember involve a pool up in the Spokane Falls—I'm sorry—Spokane Community College, not Spokane Falls, Spokane Community College, and swimming lessons during the summer. What's weird about that—and I've never followed up with her on this—those memories include Patti Sexton. So I don't know if she taught the swim lessons that happened to be at that location that I was at, but I've never followed up with her on that, but I probably should.

But many years as a teenager in the lakes around where I grew up in Spokane—we had many lakes in the Spokane area as well as up in northern Idaho as we spent time with friends out on our boat—not only do I know how to swim, I'm actually a pretty proficient swimmer. I'm actually a fairly proficient swimmer, and honestly it's something I really enjoy.

It's something that I really do enjoy. Over this past year, I've been putting a more significant focus and priority on improving my health and my overall wellness, and ultimately a component of that process has been early morning workouts at the YMCA. My main focus has been on weight training, but for cardio I'm using cycling and elliptical and walking the track and swimming. So that's been one thing that I've added in that's been kind of fun. For those of you who have done or do currently lap swimming, you know what kind of a workout swimming is.

Swimming is an incredible workout. It works both the muscle groups in the upper body and the lower body. It works the core. It works the back muscles. It works your cardiovascular system. I often laugh after I get out of the pool. A couple days later, I'm sore in places I didn't even know had muscle. And so you know you find these things and you realize, wow, this is a full body workout.

It really is. It does a little of everything, and it's a really great method for increasing cardiovascular health. Well, early in the morning at the Y, 5 a.m., there's a group of regulars that's usually there. Not a whole lot of them, but there's a group of regulars that are usually there. And when I go into the gym in the morning, it's the same faces by and large. It's the same folks. There's some new ones mixed in here and there occasionally.

They don't last long, honestly. They come in, you know, after a while you don't see them anymore. But when you look around after a few months, it's the same folks in there every day, and they're on the same machines at the same time. And you get to know, oh, so-and-so's over there, and so-and-so's over there. Well, it's the same with the pool. It's the same with the pool.

There are about three to five people that swim on the same day and at the same times that I do. And after a while, you kind of get to know each other. You get to expect seeing one another in there at the same time. One of them is an older woman in her mid to late 70s.

So she's probably in her mid to late 70s. She has a high level of fitness. She's very clearly taking care of herself over the years. She moves well at her age. She's, you know, very capable. She's actually up in the morning, first thing, 5 30 a.m., at the boot camp classes and the fitness classes that they do run in circles with these younger folks that are in that crew. She's up doing those things and I gotta go back and think. I don't think there's been a day that I've been in there in the morning that I haven't seen her.

And so she's in there pretty regularly. Over the past year, at the end of my workout, I will typically close out on the days that I close out my cardio with a lap swim in the pool and she finishes up her swimming or her workout at about that same time with the same thing. Now I want to be abundantly clear. I know how to swim.

I'm competent at swimming. I am not an Olympic swimmer. I'm not. In any way, I know Michael Phelps, the Olympian at least. I might be able to keep up with Michael Phelps, the pastor, back in Michigan.

But I am no means a professional. I'm proficient. That's pretty well it. She, on the other hand, is incredibly skilled. She's an incredibly skilled swimmer. And since she passes and laps me with regularity, often in the lane right next to me, you have a lot of time to think about how you've been lapped by somebody that's close to twice your age. It has a certain way of humbling you, but like with swimming, you realize you don't often have, you know, earbuds or anything in to distract you from what it is you're doing. You're alone with your thoughts for that 30 minutes of just back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And so you get to thinking. And there's a lot of things that you think about while you're being lapped by somebody who is twice your age. And you're thinking, why are they, how are they doing that? And so you start to notice the form. You start to notice what it is that they do. And one of the things that I've noticed in the process is that as a swimmer, she's incredibly technically skilled. She's very technically skilled. Her form is impeccable. She glides through the water. She's fast and smooth. She makes swimming look absolutely effortless. It's clear that she has swum for many, many years. And when it comes to the mechanics of the sport, she's a master. When it comes to the mechanics, she's a master. Now we know this intuitively. There is a huge gulf between competence, knowing how to do something, being maybe even, you might say, proficient in something, and being a master or being skilled at those things. And that gulf ultimately is bridged by knowledge and is bridged by practice. Knowledge and practice.

For example, I know how to swing a hammer. I kind of know how to swing a hammer. I know how to drive a nail in with a hammer. However, if you were to watch me do it, you might actually question whether that is true or not. I'm competent at that, but it is very clear that I've not done it a lot. And it would take a lot more practice and a lot more technique for me to achieve a level of expertise that I could be considered skilled. And it's that way with a whole lot of things that we experience in life. In the case of swimming, there are very specific mechanical things that have to be done in order to propel yourself forward in the water efficiently. I was actually sharing this story with Linda Hansen, who's also a skilled swimmer, a very skilled swimmer, and she suggested that I talk with a specific lifeguard at the Y who does instruction, swim instruction. Well, she's telling me about this person. I've never seen them in my life at the Y in the morning, well, lo and behold, the following day, after that conversation, I go into the gym like it was ordained, and there he was. And so I managed to ask him, I said, hey, would you mind watching me swim a few of these laps, provide some suggestions, provide some things? I said, I'm noticing that I'm not as efficient as I'd like to be, you know, all that, all that, whatnot. And I said, would you be willing to do that? He said, absolutely, go for it. He just had me go. Have you ever managed to be relatively proficient at something while basically doing all of it wrong?

I'm just curious if you've ever experienced that. Because that was me. That was me, me in my form, basically doing all of it wrong. However, still able to somewhat proficiently swim. My pole was wrong and needed to be adjusted. My kick was ineffective. It had too much hinge in the knee. My rotation was off. I was reaching across my body, and I shouldn't be doing that. The list went on and on and on and on and on and he kept going. I'd come to the end of my swim, and he'd go, um, um, and I'm like, oh no, not again. What have I, what have I done? Why have I asked for this? But I humbled myself and I listened, and he gave me some little things to adjust, and if we're being honest, many little things to adjust. But what was interesting is I started to implement those things and practice those adjustments. I noticed an immediate change, an immediate change. Now it's going to take some time to be able to do them all at the same time. You know, you start thinking about one, and then you forget about the other one. It's just going to take a little bit to get all those things dialed in so that they're all working at the same time in the same way.

But if I can do that, if I can keep that attention to detail, keep that practice, keep that knowledge going, the form will be more effortless, and I'll be on the right track towards improvement.

You know, brethren, life is made up of little things. Life is made up of little things. Small, almost imperceptible decisions that can change the course of a day, frankly, sometimes can change the course of our entire life based on these small, little decisions. The title of the message today is The Little Things. And with the time that we have remaining, what I'd like to do is examine this concept and understand why it's so critical for us to get these things right. Why is it so critical for us to get these things right?

Sometimes, when we take a look at the little things in life, in our human reasoning, we tend to think that because they're little, that they're just not consequential at all, that they're really inconsequential. They don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but realistically, that couldn't be further from the truth. That could not be further from the truth. Changing the hinge point of my kick while swimming from the knees to the hips. Turns out I was mostly just bending at the knee, not at the hip. Instead, using the hip to swim, which causes the massive chain reaction that moves everything else in the leg and causes your kick to be more efficient. Theoretically, intuitively, you think about that. It's just a difference in a hinge point. What is the big deal that could come from that? But it's massive.

It's massive. Not only that, it creates a little bit of a rotation in the hips, which stabilizes you in the water. The leg is more efficient. Ultimately, as you whip that hinge in the thigh, the knees, the shins, and feet follow, and you can move through the water more effectively because you have more movement. Little things matter. Little things matter. While we were in Nigeria on this latest trip, Mr. Moody gave a sermon on the Camp Sabbath that included the text of a centuries-old poem entitled, For the Want of a Nail. How many of you have heard of For a Want of a Nail? Okay, a couple of you have. It was originally published as far back as the 1200s, kind of conceptually, not in the form that it was in, but ultimately it was passed down through history, has had a wide range of variations. A version of it was found in the Poor Richard's Almanac, which really largely popularized the poem in its current form today. The poem reads as follows. It says, For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For the want of a horse, the rider was lost. For the want of a rider, the message was lost. For the want of the message, the battle was lost. For the want of a battle, the kingdom was lost. All of that for the want of a horseshoe nail. A horseshoe nail aren't real big. I've got a reasonable facsimile here in my pocket.

They're not real big. You can kind of see it. It's just about an inch and three-quarters long, square-headed nail, basically. What they do is most horses, depending on their size, require anywhere from about four to eight nails per hoof. They just drive these things into the horseshoes, bend them over, grind them down, whatever they need to do to secure them. But as you might imagine, those horseshoes take a pounding. They take a pounding. That's where that horse has contact with the ground, and it's hitting constantly. Since those nails are bedded in the horse's hoof, if the horse loses a few nails, the integrity of the shoe is going to be affected. And with each foot strike, it can become more and more and more unstable. If it becomes too unstable, the horse can throw the shoe completely, which affects the horse's gait due to injury, and eventually the horse will become hobbled as a result of becoming footsore.

You know the poem that Benjamin Franklin printed in the Farmer's Almanac, brought to bear this concept that for such a small, seemingly insignificant thing, the entire horse was lost. But not only that, the poem talks about how that created a cascade effect. Because the horse was lost, the rider wasn't able to do their job. Because they weren't able to do their job, the message that they were carrying was prevented from arriving. Because the message never arrived, the army lost the battle. And because the battle was lost, the kingdom was lost. All because of a roughly two-inch long square horseshoe nail. Brethren, what are the horseshoe nails of our spiritual lives? What are the little things, the details of our spiritual lives, that we have to get right? Turn with me please to Micah 6 and verse 8. Let's begin today in Micah.

Micah 6 and verse 8. There's a few places in Scripture that we can see God very specifically list out his desires and expectations for his creation. Micah 6 is one of them. There's a couple of other places, and we'll visit a couple of those as well. But Micah 6 and verse 8, we see a description of what it is that God asks his people to do, what it is that he desires for his people to do.

Micah 6, and we'll pick it up in verse 8. You can see kind of in this little discussion here, it's asking some rhetorical questions throughout 6 and 7. And then 8 is the conclusion to those questions. Micah 6 verse 8 says, he has shown you, O man, what is good. He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? What are God's expectations? What are God's expectations? What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? Justice and mercy and humility. We know from God's character, we know God is God who desires fairness, desires impartiality. He desires those who love mercy, those who are both thankful for the receipt of that mercy, but also those who are willing to extend that mercy to others. He desires people who are humble, desires people who are willing in that humility to walk with him, to obey him, to go through and follow his lead, to allow him to bring them where he desires to bring them, living their lives as God desires them to live. You know, in our Deuteronomy reading that we've recently gone through, the church is going through and reading, we recently read Deuteronomy 10. Let's go ahead and start flipping back over to Deuteronomy 10 because in Deuteronomy 10 is another location in which God outlines his desires through Moses to his people before they're about to cross over. Deuteronomy 10, and as we read through, as you're turning over there, as we read through the book of Deuteronomy, one of the things that we see that kind of helps us to understand God in his mindset a bit is that God is a God of details. The details absolutely do matter to God. Throughout his instructions to Israel, as we see him instruct Israel in a variety of things, he is so specific on what they can and what they cannot do in their worship of him. He tells them point blank, these are things that you cannot do to worship me.

He's very specific on what they can and they cannot consume. He's very specific on how they can and cannot treat their brothers, how they can and cannot treat the stranger. Much of Deuteronomy contains holiness principles. It contains principles where God is desiring his people to be set apart and ultimately different from the nations around them. But in Deuteronomy 10, God begins to boil down the reasons for this. Deuteronomy 10, and we'll pick it up in verse 12. Deuteronomy 10 and verse 12. Deuteronomy 10 and verse 12 says, Now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways and to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes which I command you today for your good? You know, it has always been God's desire that Israel would fear him. That they would have such awe and respect for God that they would walk in his ways, that they would walk in accordance with his commandments and his statutes, that they would love him, that they would serve him with all their heart and with all of their soul. In fact, God lamented at times, oh, that they had a heart within them, to ultimately follow me, to walk in the ways, to love me with their heart and with their soul. But all these things that God gave them, all these principles, all these holiness concepts that he gave them, it was for their own good. Deuteronomy 10 and verse 14. Pick it up here in verse 14. It says, Indeed, heaven and the highest heavens belong to the Lord your God, also the earth, with all that is in it. The Lord delighted only in your fathers to love them, and he chose their descendants after them, you above all peoples as it is this day. Verse 16, Therefore, circumcise the foreskin of your heart and be stiff-necked no longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. So he kind of gets into some of God's characteristics here. He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. Therefore, in verse 19, love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him, and you shall hold fast, and to him you shall hold fast, and take oaths in his name. He is your praise, he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things which your eyes have seen.

He says your fathers went down to Egypt with seventy persons, and now the Lord has made you as the stars of heaven in a multitude. You're the essence of the law of God. The essence of the law was the circumcision of the hearts of the people of Israel, for them to become malleable, for them to live like God. And that knowledge and wisdom began with a fear of God. It began with a fear of God, a reverence and an awe, a complete trust in him as a child has respect and love for his father. This type of love, this or I'm sorry, this type of fear is often called filial fear, familial fear, and it's usually between a parent and a child. You know, there's a desire to, you know, not disappoint, to not ultimately go against the individual because that individual is of such awe and respect for the parent, or in this case, for God, that they obey also with the potential for there to be some fear of consequences if they don't. Right? I mean, this whole package goes together. But what we see is we see the story of Israel continue. We see they did not fear the Lord. We see that they didn't fear him. And the story of Deuteronomy continues with a promise of cascading effects of that failure should they choose that path once they crossed the Jordan. We might alter the poem just slightly that we read earlier, For the want of fear, obedience was lost. For the want of obedience, God's blessings were lost.

For the want of his blessings, his presence was lost. For the want of his presence, his protection was lost. And for the want of his protection, the nation was lost. As we look around the world today, as we see the condition of the United States, as we see the condition of the nations of the world, on the whole, is there a fear of God? There really is not. And the consequences have followed.

Little things matter. Now, fear as a concept is a huge concept. But if you boil it down to its most fundamental, it is a single decision. In that sense, it is a little thing. Do I, in this circumstance, follow God or not? Do I fear God? Do I desire to please Him? Do I have that honor and that respect and that awe for Him? In 2014, Navy Admiral William H. McRaven was asked to give a commencement speech to the graduates of University of Texas. He was a University of Texas grad. He was a decorated U.S. Navy SEAL. And the very simple and basic concepts that were contained in his speech went viral. Most of you have probably seen it. If you've seen a guy giving a speech in his military dress to a bunch of people telling him to pay attention to the little things, you've seen his speech. It went viral. It went all over the place. But during the speech, one of the things that he advocated for were the little things when it came to our lives. Things that might seem mundane, that might seem almost too basic to really matter in the grand scheme of life, but that Admiral McRaven insisted were critical. He stated the following, and I'm just going to read from his speech here briefly. He said, every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room, and the first thing that they would inspect was your bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers would be pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard, and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack. He takes a moment to say that's Navy talk for bed. He said it was a simple task, mundane at best, but every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that we were inspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs. But the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. And then what he concluded that section with is that if you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And that is so true in so many aspects of life. Israel struggled to do the most crucial little things right. The foundational things. And their example should be instructive to us today. You know, there are significant differences between the experience of the nation of Israel and our experience today. As the Israel of God, there are different covenants, different requirements, but the principles behind both are the same. Let's turn over to Matthew 25. Matthew 25. Matthew 25, we see a parable that Christ shares with his disciples that helps to describe the kingdom of God. Matthew 25, we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 14. Matthew 25 and verse 14.

In Matthew 25 and verse 14, he spoke of the expectations of his servants while he was away.

And this again is a parable that he spoke to his disciples, but it has an incredible amount of meaning for us as we consider what has taken place and transpired with regards to the events coming before the kingdom of God. Verse 14 of Matthew 25 says, Depending on the translation that you have in front of you, the word few there in verse 21 might actually say faithful in the little things. The word in Greek is oligo, which can translate to little or few. The word oligarchy, for example, is one place you see that. But essentially what Christ is telling this steward is that his faithful stewardship over a little, over the few things. You know, you think about the vast fortune that this person had. What is five talents compared to this vast fortune that this individual had?

Ultimately, it's a little thing. When you own it all, when you have it all, this isn't much. Now to us, it's kind of a big sum of money if you run the conversions. But the reality is, this was over a little, this was over a few things. Somebody might argue were small or inconsequential really to the master at the end of the day. He didn't give him his entire fortune to manage. He didn't give him the whole of everything. He gave five to one, gave two to another, and gave one to another. But the expectation was action. The expectation was that they were going to be faithful with those things. The expectation was service. The expectation was service.

You know, that faithfulness provided him the ability to be able to handle big things. You know, you take a look at this individual that's mentioned here in verse 21, verses 20 and 21. That faithfulness over those little things proved his ability to handle the big things, to handle the things that were much larger. And God is looking at us to see whether we are faithful in the little things. Do we fear him? Do we fear him? Do we make that decision each and every day to have that honor and that respect and that awe for God? Or do we not? Do we love him?

Do we communicate with him through prayer and receive communication from him through study?

Do we serve him? Do we serve others? Are we humble? Are we repentant? Brethren, little things matter. Little things matter. And little things matter because ultimately big things are made up of little things. Big things are made up of little things.

Most of what was suggested to me to change that morning in the pool wasn't significantly different from what I was already sort of doing. They were little tweaks, little fine tunings. Okay, the hip and the knee thing was kind of a big deal, but as the swimmers in the audience are going, yeah dude, huge deal. But the reality is they were little fine tunings, little tweaks, little ways of going ahead and doing things. One of the things that I did, and this is the swimmers in the room are just going to cringe, I used to do this long arc with my pole. I would sweep all the way down deep and pull through like, I don't know, like I was like, I don't know, leapfrogging on the ground or something. I don't know. But the guy looks at me and he goes, dude, no. He goes, small hinge, push alongside your body. And I'm like, oh, tried it. Oh wow, that's a lot more water getting moved. Little itty bitty things. Little tiny little things. Not a huge change. Really, at the end of the day, it's not something major. It's kind of insignificant in the grand scheme of it all. But you combine that with several other small changes, and the resulting effect of that is a significant change. All the little things involved, the end result is a significant change. It becomes something bigger. It becomes something greater than the sum of its parts. But rather than the inverse of that is also true. Not performing that little adjustment. Not changing the hinge point. Not doing these other little things has the effect of impairing other aspects and frankly impairing the entire process. Let's go over to Matthew 13. There's another location that Christ provides a parable here in which Jesus likens the kingdom of God to a mustard seed. And there's a lot of other places he likens things to mustard seeds. Mustard seeds are pretty small. They're not real big. We'll talk about that here just momentarily. Matthew 13. Let's go ahead and we'll read the read the parable here, verses 31 and 32 of Matthew 13. Matthew 13 verses 31 and 32. Another parable, it says, He put forth to them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds, but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and it becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come, and they nest in its branches. Christ likens this kingdom of God here to something that is little and inconspicuous to begin. Something small to begin with. That when it's sown, when it's put out there, when it's focused on, when somebody waters, when somebody fertilizes, when somebody tends the ground around it, ultimately what you see is that it becomes a large plant or it becomes a bush, that in this case, they think it's black mustard that he was referring to, a version of mustard that can actually grow upwards of 15 feet in ideal circumstances. So it can grow to a height of about 15 feet under ideal circumstances. But initially, it's small. It's almost imperceptible. Mustard seeds only about a millimeter in diameter, maybe even a little bit less in some cases, but mustard spreads rapidly. It grows quickly. Each day, it grows a little bit more until it reaches its full maturity, and little by little, that small incremental growth leads to a pretty large plant. Because it spreads so rapidly, kind of an interesting aside, some suggest that that may even be an aspect of this particular parable, that there was actually a point in time in which there were laws against planting mustard next to other crops because it would just take over the area.

And so they actually had rules against where you could plant mustard, and some are saying, well, that might be actually an aspect of what's being said here as well. But anyway, I digress.

The kingdom of God is like that. In the sense that it dwells in our hearts, it's sown around us, but that principle is the same. As it grows, as it has the opportunity to develop, it grows.

Because again, big things are made of little things. Big things are made of little things. There's a gentleman named Jeff Olson. He wrote a book called The Slight Edge. Jeff Olson wrote The Slight Edge, and he talks about these little small changes that people make in their lives, and the resulting success or failure that comes about as a result of just these little things.

He asserts that successful people practice daily discipline in those little things, in those small details that ultimately have a significant return on investment in people's lives. And so the attention to detail, the focus on those little things, causes us to experience what he describes and refers to as the success curve. Some of you have seen graphs, ultimately exponential growth, where there's very little movement at the very beginning, and then as time goes on, those little things become much bigger and bigger and bigger, like population growth, and then suddenly they skyrocket, right? That's a success curve. That's what he describes in that way. But that the attention to detail and focus on those things causes us to experience that. That success curve, he argues, comes about as a result of discipline. As people slowly and incrementally approach these things, the compounding nature of that discipline bring them to their goal along this curve of success.

Little imperceptible changes at the beginning pay off large dividends at the end if that continues down that road. But he also states that the other issue is the inverse is also true.

If an individual makes choices that incrementally take them further and further and further from their goals, then they move away from success in the same way. In fact, he describes it as the failure curve. He says it's called the failure curve. And eventually he says what happens is someone on that path turns around and looks and wonders, how did I get here? How did I get here? I am so far off of where I wanted to be. How did I reach this point? And he argues that if you backtrack it, and if you follow it back far enough, that you will see little changes and decisions that ultimately led to much bigger decisions down the road. And we see the evidence of that all around us today. Within the United States, especially here in Oregon, we're experiencing an epidemic of homelessness, mental illness, drug addiction, and there's a lot of factors that contribute to this. I don't want to make, you know, oversimplify it, but in most circumstances, in each of these individuals' lives, if you could trace the story backward along that curve that brought them to that point, you would find choices that led to other choices, that led to other choices that may have at the time been small and inconsequential and not that big of a deal, really. But as time went on, it got bigger and bigger and bigger until eventually they're suddenly somewhere that they did not want to be. A little here, a little there, and before long, you find yourself in a place that is a challenge to recover from. Let's go to Proverbs 6. Proverbs 6, because this principle is contained throughout the book of Proverbs. You know, the book of Proverbs contains so much practical wisdom for life, for us spiritually, both spiritually and physically, for that matter, but Proverbs contains all of these things. We're going to pick it up in Proverbs 6, just in this first few passages of the book of Proverbs, because it kind of alludes to this idea of this kind of incremental nature of these types of decisions. And as you're turning to 6, I'll reference something in Proverbs 5. So, for example, in Proverbs 5, what we see is a warning about the immoral woman. And what the author says is, don't even walk on the same side of the street as her house. It says, don't go to her door. Don't definitely don't go to her door. It says, don't set foot near her door, because if you do, she's going to lure you in. Incremental decisions. And then it goes on later in Proverbs 6.

We see that play out. The guy decides, well, I'll walk down this side of the road next to the door of this immoral woman, and I'll walk up to the woman's door, and then open the door, and sure enough, now we have a problem. Incremental nature of decisions leading to big missteps. Right? Don't walk on the same side of the street. Don't go near the door. All these aspects of things present. So, Proverbs 6, we see kind of a similar scenario. We see this ultimately play out beginning in verse 9, speaking of the folly of indolence, or indolence, for example. So, Proverbs 6 and verse 9, what we see is, it says, how long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep?

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. And then it says, so shall your poverty come on you like a prowler, and your need like an armed man. Just a little slumber, just a little sleep, just a little folding of the hands. And it says, poverty will come upon you like a prowler. Does that mean that you're going to lose out on everything because you overslapped your alarm once? That's not what this is saying. This is saying, a little here, a little there, a little here, a little there, and over time, those patterns and those habits begin to become established. And when those patterns and habits are established, they become very difficult to break. And eventually, then yes, poverty will come on you like a prowler. Maybe you overslapped your alarm one too many times, and you got fired. And now you're having to deal with that situation on top of all these other things. So yes, little incremental changes like that can either bring a success or they can bring failure. Instead, what we see is that the author highlights the ant.

Earlier in there, he says, it doesn't need to be told when to gather, it doesn't need to be told what to do or when to do it. It works without an overseer. It works without a captain telling it when to rise and when to work. Gets at this idea that the ant, through a little bit of work each day, gathers its supplies and gathers its needed things, ultimately stores away those that food for consumption later. You know, one of the concepts that I've come across this past year as I've been trying to get my physical condition under control is this idea of daily discipline. And this idea that every decision you make is like casting a vote for the person that you want to become.

That's the idea behind this daily discipline concept. And if you make a decision that favors the direction that you're trying to go, it says it's like casting a vote for the new you.

But if you continue to make decisions that keep you where you are, well, you're casting a vote to pretty much just stay the same. The contrary to that is also true. Depending on some decisions that a person might make, you might be casting a vote to decline and to continue to fail. Just like Mr. Olson states, there's a neutral line in which we stay the same. And our small, incremental discipline that takes us towards success or failure, those are your only options.

Each decision moves us one direction or the other.

They're not huge decisions most of the time. They're little things.

But each of those decisions moves us one direction or another towards where we desire to go, or in some cases where we don't desire to go but find ourselves ending up. As we consider our lives not just physically but spiritually, are we regularly casting votes, so to speak, for the person that we desire to become spiritually? Are we making those decisions each and every day to get closer to what it is that we desire to become spiritually? Because little things become big things. Little things become big things. You know, we look at something as significant and as big as our relationship with God. That is nebulous. When you consider it as a whole, that is something nebulous. All these factors go into making this relationship take place. We consider the calling that we've been given. Are we each and every day casting the votes, so to speak, for the relationship that we want to have with God or that God wants to have with us?

Are those daily decisions bringing us closer to God or are they moving us further away from Him? Do our daily disciplines show our fear of God? Do they show our love?

Or do they show our own self-determination and human wisdom? Are we using and relying on our own reasoning? Do they illustrate our apathy? Our lack of care in some ways? Little things matter because little things become big things. It was not until I asked a skilled outside observer to observe my swimming form that I realized what was wrong. No idea. I thought I was doing great. I thought I was doing fantastic. What needed to be shifted in order to become a more skilled swimmer? And so it is with many things in life. The difference between someone who is competent and someone who is truly skilled in something is a thorough knowledge of the ins and outs of that thing and years of practice. Years of living it. And they know and they understand the little things that can be leveraged to have big effects. And those little things streamline the process. They make it more efficient. They make it more effective. Brethren, as we come into this fall Holy Day season, let's examine ourselves. I know we talk about that a lot in the spring of each year, but this examination process, this process of continual improvement, should be taking place year-round. It should be something we focus on. It's something we put our effort into. If you're struggling with something big, if you're struggling with something big, break it down into its component parts. Break it down into its component parts. Determine what it is that those little things are that can be leveraged. What it is that can be put into process here and ultimately be adjusted. It's then a little thing that might make a very large change. Brethren, let's use the word of God as a mirror. Let's use that word of God as a mirror to determine our form, so to speak. Let's see the areas of our lives that could be used to tighten up in a few things. And let's continually be casting votes in each of our decisions that we make to become who God desires each of us to become.