Just Show Up: How Small Acts of Faithfulness Change Everything (A Guide for Exhausted Christians)

by Drew Dyck

One is that we’re not called to change the world. God doesn’t require us to do something big and dramatic to fulfill His call on our lives.

Instead, God calls us to small acts of ordinary faithfulness. This kind of success doesn’t come in spite of life’s responsibilities and challenges, but in the midst of them.

They just showed up. That has become a mantra for me. A prayer. It might sound a little silly, but I repeat it to myself when I’m disappointed or discouraged. Just show up.

Showing up is a simple commitment. But it’s not a trivial one.

Without faith, it’s easy to give up. If your only confidence is in your own strength and abilities, you’ll throw in the towel the moment life throws a few punches at you. You might show up when things are good—when the weather is pleasant, and the sun is shining. But as soon as dark clouds appear and the winds of life start howling, you’ll pack it in.

Plodding is slow, laborious. It doesn’t sound very sexy. But here’s the key to plodding’s power: it’s continuous and constant. Plodders don’t move fast—but they keep moving.

What is a plodder? Just someone who shows up. Over and over again. Plodding isn’t glamorous. But all those little steps add up. And God uses them in amazing ways.

The secret to plodding is patience. “I’m struck by how often the life of faith is described as a ‘walk,’” writes pastor Luke Simmons. “It’s steady plodding, one step at a time. And sometimes the win for the day is just that you kept walking.”5 It’s a point echoed by my friend Daniel Darling. In writing about the story of Noah, he observed, “We look at the big boat, but the way Noah trusted God was by picking up his hammer every morning and hammering in another nail.”6

That’s true for kids and for adults. Social scientist Adam Grant says that when someone is hurting, presence matters more than words. In hard times, people don’t want to be told to look on the bright side. They want to know you’re on their side. Even if you can’t help them feel better, you can always help them feel seen. The best way to support others is not to cheer them up. It’s to show up.

We also have a particular calling. That’s the call on your life that applies specifically to you. It involves questions of career. Should you be an electrician or an event planner? A painter or a paralegal? As Westerners, we tend to overemphasize this one, honestly. God cares about your occupation, but I don’t think it’s His number one concern. And it’s not the most important thing about you. The apostle Paul was the greatest missionary of all time. But what was his “job”? He was a tentmaker. That wasn’t his primary calling, of course. It just paid the bills.

Here’s the unglamorous truth: Usually, we find God’s will as we obey Him. As we act with integrity and faithfulness in our current situation, He lights the path ahead. This is how your particular call and common call are related. When you focus on fulfilling the common calling, the specific calling of your life has a way of becoming clearer.

As pastor Glenn Packiam put it, “When our awareness outpaces our agency, we are left with anxiety.”

C. S. Lewis warned about this dynamic. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know. God may call any one of us to respond to some far away problem or support those who have been so called. But we are finite, and he will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.10 Lewis wrote those words in the middle of the twentieth century. Just imagine what he’d say if he could see our world today. Now, 24-hour cable news and social media drive us to invest our attention in the lives of strangers while ignoring the needs in our own backyard. I’m learning that it’s okay to fight this tendency and narrow your scope of concern. That it isn’t callous. It’s acknowledging reality. As Lewis said, we are finite, and God doesn’t expect us to respond to every problem. We have limited time and attention and energy. And the people God has placed in front of us deserve the lion’s share of it.

Tish Harrison Warren makes a similar point in Liturgy of the Ordinary. “I often want to skip the boring, daily stuff to get to the thrill of an edgy faith.” Yet she found there’s no shortcut to spiritual vitality. “The kind of spiritual life and disciplines needed to sustain the Christian life are quiet, repetitive, and ordinary.”

Eugene Peterson writes, “Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshiped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship.”4 That doesn’t mean feelings are unimportant. Or that we’re doomed to slog through spiritual practices without inspiration. But it’s the very act of showing up and seeking God that often generates feelings that weren’t present to begin with. Again, Peterson is helpful: “We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting.”5

Part of the problem is that when we dive into spiritual disciplines, we fail to account for a simple truth of human psychology. We’re creatures of habit. What is a habit? According to Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, “a habit is a behavior that starts as a choice, and then becomes a nearly unconscious pattern.”7 As you repeat a behavior enough, something changes at the neurological level. The behavior literally wears a rut in your mind. “Neurons that fire together wire together,” say brain scientists. The result? Over time, what once took effort and intention becomes almost effortless and automatic. If you develop good habits, they can carry you. You don’t have to think too much or try too hard. You just do it.

I can think of many Christians who made awful decisions that blew up their lives. In most instances, it occurred in a season of isolation. They had withdrawn from their church community before making these tragic choices. I’m sure they thought they didn’t need Christian friends, that they were fine on their own, but they weren’t. Like Glenna said, “Isolation is a liar.”

Dave Gipson wrote, “Anyone can worship alone in the woods. But you really have to love God to put up with the broken, wandering people who show up to worship with you on a Sunday.”3 It’s a great point that cuts both ways. At church, you must put up with other people. But they have to put up with the broken, wandering person known as you. As Augustine said, “Put up with it, because perhaps you have been put up with.”4

The idea of an individual Christian, cut off from the community of believers, is alien to Scripture. When we disconnect from the church, we are the ones who suffer. We need each other for encouragement and accountability and support. Something powerful happens when we worship God together, something that doesn’t happen when you slap the snooze and stay in bed on Sunday morning.

We all suffer. Eventually. You might avoid it for a while. But sooner or later, it comes for you. “Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward,” is how the writer of Job put it (Job 5:7). Suffering is inevitable, inescapable. It’s just part of life. You can’t walk through the rain without getting wet.

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

“Mostly, children can handle anything as long as there’s some stability. Same person, same house, same cheese and macaroni.”11 It was a point reiterated by parenting experts Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson in their book The Power of Showing Up: “You don’t have to be perfect; you can’t be…. They [your children] don’t need every advantage, and they don’t need a superparent. They just need you—authentic, flawed, and fully present you.”

When they close the casket on you, no one will talk about your dazzling performance at the office. No one will care about what you drove. No one will remember what you posted on Instagram. But they will remember your presence. They will recall you picking them up from school or sitting in the stands at their soccer game. They will remember you praying with them or dropping off a meal when they were sick. They will feel your arm on their shoulder when they needed support. They will remember that, imperfect though you were, you were there. They will remember that you showed up.

Of all people, Christians should be most accepting of our finitude. We know, as Scripture reminds us, that we are “dust” (Ps. 103:14), “a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14). Furthermore, the Bible links accepting the brevity of life to wisdom: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).

As those of us in the thick of parenting often remind each other, “vacationing is just parenting somewhere else.”

We might shake our head at how often the ancient Israelites fell into idolatry, yet we aren’t so different. Yeah, we probably don’t literally bow before a stone deity, but whenever we turn to something else for the satisfaction that only God can provide, we’re doing the same thing. We’re digging our own cisterns. And like God warned, they cannot hold water. If that sounds too abstract, let me get practical. Your phone is a dry cistern. It can’t quench the desire for connection and love that you crave. Your work is a dry cistern if you’ve tied your sense of self-worth to it. That 401(k) that you keep checking obsessively is a dry cistern. The security it promises is an illusion. The peace you seek can only be found in trusting God with your future. The likes and comments on social media are dry cisterns. They’ll never provide the approval that your soul craves. Even your relationships with others can be dry cisterns when you heap expectations on them that only God can fulfill. In the end it doesn’t matter what cistern you choose. It will never hold water.

What was the difference between the ones who left and the ones who stayed? The only difference I could see is what they did with their trials. The first group ran away from God while the second ran toward Him. Instead of letting doubt and disappointment fester in darkness, they dragged it into the light. They brought it all to God. They hashed it out. They joined the great biblical tradition of prophets who expressed their grievances to God, often in harsh and accusatory language. But like the prophets, they didn’t stop talking to God. Even when they were only half-convinced He was listening.

Parenting gives you a crash course in theology. Think about it. You have someone made in your image. You love this person so desperately you can hardly stand it. Yet half the time they’re convinced you’re trying to make them miserable when everything you’re doing is actually for their ultimate good!

I’ve noticed another thing as my children grow. They trust me more. Don’t get me wrong. They still argue and complain. But they no longer assume I’m a sadistic monster bent on destroying their lives. Why? Because they know I love them. They’re starting to understand that, even when they can’t comprehend my actions, I still have their best interest in mind. That’s a good theology lesson too. If we have a bedrock trust in God’s goodness, we don’t need to know everything. We don’t need to solve every theological riddle. We can keep walking through the storm, confident that we’re led by a good God.