The ninth pattern is Practice the Power of Plodding and chapter 23 is Don’t Despise the Day of Small Things. It starts with the story behind a quote “A small daily task, if it be really daily….” and now my life is fixed. Not really, but if I could do the things I want to do daily on a daily basis, I would be so far ahead of where I am.
A friend asked me why I wanted to bench my weight. Before I could answer he continued on with the concept that one rep bench max and all the stuff that goes along with it is all about football. He played in college, and without football, the need for that explosive strength is not there anymore. I ended up responding that it was not a goal associated with bulk, it was just a number. And it was my goal weight, not my now weight. As I thought through the process, it was where I was before all this COVID mess. I have taken myself from a spot where I was out of shape and I had built up week by week until I could bench my goal weight at least once and I wanted to recover from COVID to at least that same level. But I am not there now, and I am struggling with about half that weight. I really did not have a deep dive into how strong do I want to be or what number was enough. I just was doing my 11 exercises over three sets to failure instead of the one set to failure last go around. and I was moving weights based on the week before. Except for bench that was not improving. I was actually starting to do single are dumbbell bench exercises to work that motion. Small weights, more reps, small plodding towards whatever.
The author throws in his typical plethora of stories to try and hit each trigger a reader might have to learn the lesson. Whether it was complete years a day at a time or days a moment at a time or major tasks by minor ones. The idea is simple one step after another until you get there.
But he moves one from that to focus on not actually the size of the thing, but on the call of God for that next decision. If the next thing is small, do it. If the next thing is a small step of a big thing, do it. If the thing is different from the last, do it. The idea was to finish whatever was started. To plod if necessary to get it done, but once you have set your mind on what God has called you to do, you just keep on until it is finished.
God can handle small things. We think we can handle small things, but God can bless these small things even if we think we can do them ourselves. God can handle big things. No matter how much too big they are for us, God can get them done. If he has called us to take a step, then we just have to take it and rest in His power for the next one to come and be done as well. Success is doing our work one task at a time, one step at a time, one moment at a time, while trusting God to provide the power to accomplish through the effort.
From Philippians 3:14 Forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead. God tells us this through Paul. Plod. It is boring. It is “pleasant”. It is of God. So plod on.