Proverbs- Part 4

For the longest time, I wished I’d had a personal testimony filled with more drama and action. After all, those stories are ones you tend to remember most in church: the lost soul who was instantly delivered from addiction, or healed from a long illness, or found God after a near-death experience. Those are uplifting stories, and we all need to hear them, but I’m one of those countless Christians whose walk with God is more like a series of incremental gains.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but I’ve had to remind myself that God uses people with my story just as often and effectively as he uses people with striking testimonies. The personal growth that takes a long time also testifies to God’s enduring faithfulness, and the writer of Proverbs seems to want us all to know the Lord in this way.

The “slow and steady” message this Sunday resonates with me for that reason, and a lot of verses tread over this ground.  For example, in Proverbs 21:20 it states that “A wise man builds up treasures, while a fool devours his gains at once.” Furthermore, Proverbs 13:11 asserts that “dishonest money dissipates but he who stores up wealth little by little sees it grow.” Whether it’s building up treasures on Earth or in Heaven, growing your character, or removing sin and falsehood from your life, there is nothing prosaic or faithless about winning small, gradual victories.

Early in my marriage I used to get in trouble often with my wife for not noticing when I could help or when she needed me. I’d carry bags from the car to our apartment, and not notice she had more than she could carry and needed a hand. Or, I’d track dirt on a floor she had just cleaned, or forget an errand she needed me to run.  Most newlyweds have adjustments like that to make, but it occurred to me that I’ve always operated under a flawed paradigm: I’ll take care of me, I don’t expect anyone to help me, and I don’t understand why anyone else has the gall to expect my help or be angry when they don’t get it. Self-reliance is a virtue, but imperceptiveness only deprives you of the chance to show Christ’s character. 

I don’t think Paula ever found it easy to believe I would change until one day we were having an argument in the grocery store, and I noticed a short and stooped woman behind her, trying desperately to reach a medication on the top aisle shelf with her walking cane.  It looked like her efforts were going to get messy, and one of my very few useful traits is being tall, so I asked Paula to hold that thought while I went and helped her. The lady smiled and thanked me, but Paula was nearly overcome at the sight. Here at least was evidence that I was growing, just by looking around.

I haven’t beaten this old way of thinking completely, but in the years since I know I’ve stopped to help motorists with trouble, given people rides, fetched food or water for a colleague suffering over-exertion at work, and more.  These aren’t monumental feats of goodness, no one is going to remember them much beyond the next day, and they certainly won’t fill stadiums on evangelism crusades. But little by little I become a better person than I used to be, because God is faithful to honor the years-ago prayers that Paula made for me, or I made for myself, to ask His help to change.

Maybe bigger feats are in store, I’d like to think so, but at any rate God’s faithfulness has suffered with me and built me over a long time. And it seems to me He likes to do that with all of us ordinary Christians – or he wouldn't have turned a whole book of the Bible into the little guy's training manual.

Written by: Chad Halcom

Edited by: Tamara Sturdivant