Big Drama Christianity, or...?

I've told the story many times of talking impatiently with my wife one Sunday morning and having my nine year old son interject and say,"Daddy, is this the way a Christian man should be talking to his wife? Rather sarcastically I said, "What do you think?" and he said, "It doesn't make any difference what I think, what does God think?" I went to my bedroom and two thoughts immediately hit me. First, my pride reared up. I want to be a hero to my son and I was embarrassed that he'd been troubled by my attitude and words. But that didn't last very long. I soon thought, "How could it be that God could love me so much that he would give a twit of care about this mundane little moment in the Tripp bathroom?" That's love at a level of magnificence that I am unable to capture with words. This was but one moment in one room in one house of one family, on one block on one street in one neighborhood, in one city in one state in one country on one continent, in one hemisphere on one globe in the universe. Yet God was in that moment, working to continue his moment by moment work of transforming the heart of this man.

Is change important? Yes, it is for all of us in some way. Is commitment essential? Of course! There’s a way in which all of our lives are shaped by the commitments we make. But biblical Christianity, which has the Gospel of Jesus Christ at its heart, simply doesn't rest its hope in big, dramatic moments of change. The fact of the matter is that the transforming work of grace is more of a mundane process than it is a series of a few dramatic events. Personal heart and life change is always a process. And where does that process take place? It takes place where you and I live everyday. And where do we live? Well, we all have the same address. Our lives don't careen from big moment to big moment. No, we all live in the utterly mundane. Most of us won't be written up in history books. Most of us only make three or four momentous decisions in our lives, and several decades after we die, the people we leave behind will struggle to remember the events of our lives. You and I live in little moments and if God doesn't rule our little moments and doesn't work to recreate us in the middle of them, there's no hope for us, because that‘s where you and I live.

The little moments of life are profoundly important precisely because they’re the little moments that you live in and that form you. This is where I think that "Big Drama Christianity" gets us into trouble. It can cause us to devalue the significance of the little moments of life and the "small-change" grace that meets us there. And because we devalue the little moments where we live, we tend to not notice the sin that gets exposed there and don't seek the grace that’s offered us there. You see, the character of a life is not set in two or three dramatic moments, but in 10,000 little moments. The character that was formed in those little moments is what shapes how you respond to the big moments of life.

What leads to significant personal change? 10,000 moments of personal insight and conviction, 10,000 moments of humble submission, 10,000 moments of foolishness exposed and wisdom gained, 10,000 moments of sin confessed and sin forsaken, 10,000 moments of courageous faith, 10,000 choice points of obedience, 10,000 times of forsaking the kingdom of self and running toward the kingdom of God, 10,000 moments when we abandon worship of the creation and give ourselves to worship of the Creator. And what makes all of this possible? Relentless, transforming, little-moment grace. You see, Jesus is Emmanuel not just because he came to earth, but because he makes you the place where he dwells. This means he’s present and active in all the mundane moments of your daily life. And what is he doing? In these small moments he’s delivering every redemptive promise he’s made to you. In these unremarkable moments, he’s working to rescue you from you and transform you into his likeness. By sovereign grace he places you in daily little moments that are designed to take you beyond your character, wisdom and grace so that you’ll seek the help and hope that can only be found in him. In a lifelong process of change, he’s undoing you and rebuilding you again; exactly what each one of us needs!

Yes, you and I need to be committed to change, but not in a way that hopes for a big event of transformation, but in a way that finds joy in and is faithful to a day by day, step by step process of insight, confession, repentance and faith. And in those little moments we commit ourselves to remember the words of Paul in Romans 8:32, "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us, how will he not also with him freely give us all things?" So we wake up each day committed to live in the small moments of our daily lives with open eyes and humbly expectant hearts.