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

by Drew Dyck

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.

But here’s the key to plodding’s power: it’s continuous and constant. Plodders don’t move fast—but they keep moving.

“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.”

When you’re a plodder, you likely won’t see dramatic breakthroughs every day.

When you first start plodding, not much happens. The early results are modest, but that’s okay. Don’t get discouraged.

In the book of Zechariah, God relays a message through His prophet: “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin” (Zech. 4:10 NLT).

He “rejoices to see the work begin.” And He doesn’t demand it happen all at once. He only asks you to take the next step.

It means when God calls you to do something, His abilities matter more than yours. The One who sends is more important than the one who goes. It’s not really about you.

Isn’t that freeing? It makes it much easier to step forward in faith, knowing that God’s ability to use you doesn’t rest on your fragile shoulders.

I hope that’s encouraging to you. It should be. It means that God looks at you, with all your insecurities and weaknesses, with all your past mistakes and current flaws—and still calls you to step into roles to serve Him and bless others.

“If you want to know where God may be calling you, look back. What gaps did you fall in? How can you fill them so someone else doesn’t?”

Josh, a young pastor, was flustered by the situation but the older man was not shaken. “You have more faith than me,” Josh told the man. “No,” the man responded. “I have more experience with a faithful God.”

Intentional repetition creates the space for that relationship to flourish. It’s about familiarity.

we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting.”5

As Augustine said, “Put up with it, because perhaps you have been put up with.”

the sweeter song of God’s purpose for their life to avoid falling prey to destructive voices.

“Listen to the Sweeter Song” held me to what the doctor said. I wanted to get better; I knew if I obeyed the doctor I would. We fasted and prayed for YEARS for an answer and now that it was here, I didn’t like it. But I could show self-control and listen to the sweeter song of obedience….