Little By Little

Do you have any goals? Do you have any clear directives from the Lord and you are praying and laboring toward that end? Dreams are easy to imagine but harder to see become reality. Especially when those dreams come from Jehovah. When He plants His dreams and desires in you they often look impossible. They can be intimidating right from the start.

God gave Israel a dream. It started with just one man named Abram. Part of that dream included possessing what came to be known as the promise land. I bet God has given you a promise land. Something you are believing Him for, trying to achieve for Him and laboring towards fulfilling.

Promise lands look great from a distance. The only trouble is you often have to possess it. That means you have dispossess something to get it. To put it another way there are usually obstacles standing in the way between and God's dream. It may be money, the resource of people, lack of education or experience, waiting for an open door, and dozens of other things. Promise lands are those things God wills for us. It is that out of reach reality He has promised us. That is why we call it the promise land. God promised as far back as Abram He would give His people that land.

They doubted. Consequently all the doubters had to die off before God would let them enter. That took 40 years. The time finally came. Before Moses died God spoke through him to give Israel some final instructions. I came across an interesting verse this morning in the book of Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 7:22 (NKJV)
22  And the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.

Did you see it. God told Israel He would drive out or thrust out the other nations little by little. That is often how God's dreams are achieved. A little bit at a time. We would like to see it all at once. We often are not ready for that. God uses the journey to prepare us for the fulfillment of the dream. Little by little.

A lot can be accomplished little by little. I both love and dread the fall. I love the crisper cooler weather. I love the changing colors of the leaves and all the fun fall festivities. At our house I dread the annual falling of the leaves. This has become an annual chore the boys and I abhor. Our lot has an abundance of trees. We have cut down over a dozen small trees on this lot and you can hardly tell. Two years ago we hauled off 21 truck bed loads of leaves. Not garbage bags. 21 loads of just leaves filling up the truckbeds to the top. We got blisters from raking even with gloves. I thought the job would never end. Little by little we came and conquered.

Little by little books are written. First, sentences are strung together to make paragraphs and then paragraphs become chapters. Finally the chapters are put together comprising a book.

Litle by little ingredients put together make delicious food. Little by little diplomas are earned as one assignment and one class at a time are completed. Taylor is finishing his last assignment this semester to graduate with his bachelors degree certified to teach history. It has been a long road to get to this point. Many holidays when he came home all he did was homework. Little by little he worked toward the fulfillment of God's dreams.

I am not sure what your promise land is. I know mine. It is daunting. I am encouraged that God will bring us to those things if we trust Him and obey little by little. Little progress is still progress. It may feel like sometimes moving forward is an inch at a time.  God can take an inch and turn it into miles by His power. We must stay with it.

So much of what God wills for us requires perseverance as well as faith. Little by little. One prayer. One small step of obedience. One step of faith at a time. We move forward.

God had his reasons for not giving Israel all the promise land at the same time. They were not in a position to maintain or protect all of it. They had to grow into the promise. The same is true of us. Are you growing into God's promise little by little? Are you able to celebrate the little victories along the way as well as the bigger ones?

It has taken me a long time to learn this. I have been a dreamer all my life. I always have dreams, goals and ambitions.  Many times they have proven to be dreams of my own imagination. I also have God given dreams. For decades when God gave such dreams I just wanted to get to the end. I wanted to see the fulfillment. I missed out on something important. I did not find joy in the journey. I so busied myself wit the end result I did not always enjoy the people who helped along the way or the things I learned in the process.

God's latest dream for me is bigger than what I wanted to tackle. I have strong peace it is the dream I am to pursue. More and more God is bringing it into clarity. This time I am determined to enjoy the process. To find joy in the journey toward the realization of the dream. I want to enjoy the people who are laboring with me to see it fulfilled. I want to learn along the way. I want to celebrate each victory as little by little as we inch forward toward God's promise land for my family. I hope you will do the same little by little. Charles Spurgone once said, "By perseverance even the snail reached the ark." Let us make progress even if it is only little by little.