NEXT STEPS - "Inventive Faithfulness"

This past Sunday, Paul put a phrase on the overhead that really punched me in the face, the gut and the head. (yes, a triple whammy that knocked me out)

The overhead read: "Patient Progress has given way to instant gratification."

We live in an era, just as Paul so humorously put it, where frustration easily sets in when our instant access to the internet gets deterred by a slight modem disruption or when waiting at a stop light takes longer than we had hoped. (side note: it is not the red light that bothers me, it is the yellow light that is just out of my reach and the knowing that I will then have to sit at the red light.)

Yet, I think of that phrase --- patient progress has given way to instant gratification --- and I can't help but imagine all the countless inventors who toiled for years in anonymity so that we might have the technologies of our modern world. From Galileo Galilei to Thomas Edison, from George Washington Carver to that guy who created TIVO, men and women who have given us amazing inventions that have enriched our lives (and sometimes "enabled" them) worked, failed, experimented, imagined and made PATIENT PROGRESS until they had a breakthrough.

Yet, their labors have led, by and large, to our current need for instant gratification. We EXPECT what they took countless years, and sometimes decades, to INSPECT. We must never forget that toil leads to progress. Patient faithfulness over the little things leads to breakthroughs in the big things.

This sermon series we have been on together, [Extra]Ordinary Living, has been a very practical, feet-on-the-ground series, that offers simple steps to experience so much more than an ordinary life. We have the opportunity to be faithful in our daily devotions, in our finances, in our time management. And remember: if all we experience is patient progress, that is progress, nonetheless. Quick, instant inspirations bring very little lasting reward. Instead, it is the inventive, earth-shattering faithfulness of praying daily, reading the Word, worshipping, loving, financial stewardship and proper time investment that will yield the greatest progress.

Let us purpose in our hearts to work, to be faithful, to be the ones who seek patient progress rather than instant gratification... after all, just like Edison once said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."

For more NEXT STEPS, please visit: http://www.livingwaters.org/resources/next-steps.html