06/15/2025
It's colossal, it's stupendous, it's amazing, but just not what the Lord wants you to do. Do we think we are million-dollar men and women of God who are too good to be doing the minimum wage work of the kingdom? Maybe we need to think twice.
“He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: and he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much.”
Luke 16:10 ASV
As I read this scripture it dawned on me that many times we think something is small when in fact it is enormous. When Jesus laid aside His outer garments and wrapped a towel around His waist to begin washing feet it was nothing new... I am certain that He had washed many feet before. This was the custom of the time. To wash the feet of visitors to your home was commonplace... for a wife to wash her husband's hands and feet before bed... an every night occurrence, but, this common act became something monumental when Jesus said these words to Peter...
“Jesus answered him, "What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand."”
John 13:7 ESV
And after this small insignificant and humbling act was complete Jesus said...
“Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.”
John 13:16-17 ESV
When God gives us a small task to perform, who are we to think we are above doing it? Do we think that our spiritual gifts and skills place us above His calling? What will we have missed by not washing feet? Everything! Have we fooled ourselves into believing that our years of studying scripture or Seminary has given us a greater insight into God’s Word than the beggar on the street corner into whose ear God has whispered a truth? Has our intelligence or the perceived importance of our calling made us too proud and vain to wash feet or otherwise serve humbly?
A while back I watched on television as the new Pope Francis washed a wretched man's feet on the Vatican square and then after drying them bent low and kissed them. Would I have done that? Maybe would have washed them, but would I have kissed them as he did? I pray that I would have answered that call with such humility. In fact, there are 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide; how many would have washed the feet of an indigent... much less, affectionately kissed them? How about the pastor of your church, or the deacon who asks if you need prayer... or you?
"There are many of us willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do the little things." - Dwight L. Moody
Those who do the little things for God usually go unnoticed by us; they just pick up the paper towels from the bathroom floor or come early to bible study and pray for the room, the teacher, and invite the presence of the Holy Spirit. Being good at the little unseen things means that these people are unheralded by everyone except God, who sees them always, knows their hearts, and is pleased that they are answering His call. Harriet Beecher Stowe understood the virtue of these “lesser?” saints when she wrote...
"To be really great in the little things, to be truly Nobel and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization." - Harriet Beecher Stowe
How worthy are we actually? Has our pride overshadowed our humility? Has our intellect made us deaf to the wisdom offered by a lowly beggar who we disdain for having slept beneath the steps of our church and begged for alms? Has our piety robbed us of the ability to wash and kiss his filthy feet? Are we of proud minds but made foolish in our hearts?
“And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.”
Luke 11:39-41 ESV
Prayer:
Father, thank you for calling us to do the little things of faith, and into your service where we will bow humbly to your will. Thank you for allowing us to serve only you, and to gather no pridefulness or self-appeasement which would deflect the glory we are meant to be yielding to you alone. Heavenly Father, we thank you for those times when we come to realize that even the small requests you have made of us carry within them an anointing of great significance and consequence. Help us Lord to hold those seemingly insignificant things tight to our breasts and to keep our service free of the stain that our pride places on them. Abba, make us pure and holy for you, and able to deflect the praise and glory of others to you and you alone. Lord Jesus, show us how to wash feet and help us to understand the blessing in serving God in this and every humble and hidden way. Jesus, teach us to serve our Heavenly Father on our knees, and in so doing let us see your loving smile and feel your warm embrace comforting us as we pray quietly in thanksgiving, and ask all things of Him in your Precious Name. Holy, Holy, Holy, is our God who seeks humility and meekness in us. Holy is He, and His Spirit, who gives direction and understanding to all we do as we answer His call and do His will. Hear this our prayer Abba and be with us all the day long; bending down low and placing your hand on us as we kneel and lay prostrate before you, then lifting us up so that we can bear witness to your great pleasure in our having completed all you have asked… even in the smallest and most humbling of tasks and ways we serve you. Help us Lord to take our pride and to dash it upon the rock of humility so that we can praise, honor, and glorify you from our knees… now, and forevermore.
Amen!
“Moses was a very humble man, more so than anyone on the face of the earth.”
Numbers 12:3 CSB
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Philippians 2:3-8 ESV
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
John 3:16-18 ESV
Rich Forbes