Bobby Schuller - The Key To Do The Big Things
All right, no matter who you are, would you stand with us? Hold your hands up like this as a way of receiving from the Lord. Let's say this together. I'm not what I do. I'm not what I have. I'm not what people say about me. I am the beloved of God. It's who I am. No one can take it from me. I don't have to worry. I don't have to hurry. I can trust my friend Jesus and share his love with my neighbor. Thanks, you can be seated. One thing that all human beings share in common is our penchant to do evil, to do what's wrong in God's eyes and in our own eyes, to violate the very things that we think make us good, wholesome, pure, whatever. And we carry these things that compound very often over life.
Two types of sins that are mentioned in the Bible, the sins of commission, and that's the stuff we do to people. But then there's also sins of omission, the time we felt like we needed to stop and help a person, or the time we weren't there for our kids on a special occasion or something. These are these things, and whatever reason, some things way heavier on us than other things, but all of us are weighed down by the same briefcase very often that we've carried from one hand to the other. Sometimes it's something that was done to you. You're not even, you didn't do anything, you didn't even do anything wrong, but you still somehow feel shame about it.
The great thing about God's power and God's goodness is he can break the bondage of all of that in your life, of its effect on your soul and on your mind. Sometimes takes time, but if we respond in faith, God can forgive us, renew us, and completely transform our hearts if we trust in him. I wanna encourage you today, I believe that God made a way for us to be at peace with him. Are you at peace with God? Really important question. When you quiet your heart, look at the sky and smile? I want to encourage you today to be at peace with God by trusting in Jesus. He laid down his life for us, he was crucified and raised from the dead so that we could come before God's throne boldly.
Now, and so I wanna encourage you today to believe in the Gospel, to repent, to make a new life, and do your best. Do your best and forget the rest. You're never gonna be perfect, but to do your best to become more like Jesus in the best way that you can. If you're watching on television, or you're visiting from outside of the country, I also want to encourage you to plug into a good Bible-believing church, and you'll never be the same. So make a choice today to invite Christ in your heart and become a new creation. If you make that decision, text me the word HOPE to the number on the screen so we can pray for you here at the church, and we really do.
All right, today I want to talk about the importance of the little things. We see big things everywhere in life. We see big personalities, we see big buildings, we see big organizations, we see big successes, but very often we forget that these big things that we see, that we want to emulate, these big things that we like, these big things we want to become, they're made up of little things. Big buildings here in the United States. In Los Angeles you'll see some very big buildings, but those very big buildings are made up of very small bricks, of little small choices, of screws and bolts and things over time that made it big. We see movies and they're playing along, you know, videos. Even right now if you're watching, it's probably in the form of a video. We forget that every video, every second of a video is made up of 24 pictures.
So every time you see one second, what you actually saw was 24 pictures going ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. It's actually an illusion. You're not really seeing, you're seeing a bunch of... Isn't that interesting? And all that makes a whole film. There's thousands of these images in a row that are all slightly different from the other. When you listen to a symphony, huge piece, maybe it's 30 minutes long. It's still make made up of small notes. And we all know in music what one note off can do to a song. All these things, these big things that we admire, that we want, that we enjoy, that we like sometimes seem so effortless, like somebody was just born with it.
In most cases they weren't, but you see that in life, there are the, that the big personalities and the big things, the big things that we see and may admire are made up of a bunch of little, little things. You want a big life, it's in the little decisions. If you want a big life, you need to change the little decisions that you make. All of us, we want more from life, but if you want more from life, you need to become more. If you want a bigger life, you need to become a bigger person. If you want life to get better, you need to become better. And this happens when you make a decision to change your thoughts and change your actions and have a new will that's saturated in God's life and spirit. You want to become more, you can. You have to simply make a decision today to be to take the first small step on the 1,000-mile journey.
All of us can have bigger lives, all of us. No matter how big your life is, it can be bigger. No matter how good your life it is, it can be better. No matter how powerful your life is, it can be more powerful. And all of this comes from becoming more, not from the government changing, not from your school changing or your job changing or your boss or spouse or kids changing, it all changes when you change, and you can change today. I believe in you. I'm so proud of you. You're going to do it. You want a big life? Time to focus on the little decisions. And you know what the Bible seems to point out is these little decisions that we think don't matter, they actually matter a lot, and actually, it seems to be according to Jesus's core teachings that the more invisible it is, the more it counts.
The more unseen it is, the more it counts. The less applause we get, the less we post about it, the less people know about it, the less we hear a comment about it, the more it counts. Classis question, if a tree falls in the wilderness, how does it go? Does it make a sound? Is that how the expression goes? Something like that? If a tree falls in the wilderness, does anybody see it? Does it matter? Did it happen? And the answer is yes, it happened, because God saw it happen. In fact, the Bible says that not just trees, but if even one little hair from your head falls, God sees it.
The Bible says that even if a sparrow falls from the sky, God sees it, and it's under his loving gaze. Part of believing in the gospel and walking in Christ is understanding that even though nobody has ever seen it and probably nobody will ever see it, that there are some hidden reward in doing the little things no matter what. What is that reward? That reward is a bigger you. You want a bigger life, a bigger soul, a better life, you want more from life? You become more. You wanna become more? Start doing the little things that nobody can see. That's the reward. And this is what the Bible teaches us. From the scripture reading today we see a story, and I'll just paint it in my own imagination if you don't mind.
This is how I see it, okay? Goes something like this, about 3,000 years ago in a little town called Bethlehem there was a young cute little boy, and he had seven older brothers and a really influential and powerful dad who was probably a chief of some kind. And all of his older manly brothers were going off to war, and they were going off to fight, and he says to his dad something like I can fight, dad. I can go with you guys, bring me along, I'll help you out. And his dad says to him, no, little David, we need you to stay here and protect the sheep. If you leave, who's gonna to care for the sheep? We need you to protect the sheep.
And so they go off to fight. Little David says to himself in his cute little chubby-cheek voice, protect the sheep. Protect the sheep. I just picture him, you know, he's out there with the flock of sheep, and they go way out to pasture in Israel, you know, because there's not a lot of, it's not Scotland. You know, it's like you have to find these little patches of brownish-green hay way out in the middle of nowhere. So you picture little boy David taking these sheep out to go eat, and maybe when he's five years old, you know, you just picture him feeding them. He knows them all by name.
You know, little Tenderloin and little Snowflake and little Cottonswab. And I don't know. Next time I do this, I need like a bunch of names from the choir, but we'll do it next time, because there's a lot of jokes in there. He knows them all by name, he loves them, he washes them, he cares for them, he loves them, and maybe when he's five, he sees a tarantula crawling on one of them and he's scared, but he goes fwah! Gets rid of the spider, you know, and helps, helps little Foxtrot, I don't know. And then, uh, when he's six years old, he sees that there's rats eating some of the special food, and so he's grossed out by rats, but he chases them off when he's six years old.
And then when he's eight years old, they have to stay the night out in pasture. It's too far to get home, and so they're going to sleep out there. In the middle of the night, a fox comes and bites one of the sheep on the leg and tries to drag it off, and he fights off the fox even though he's afraid. And then he gets a staff, and he gets a sling, and when he's 11 years old, a pack of wolves try to attack his sheep, and he wards those off, and he's feeling stronger and he is stronger. And then a little bear comes and the bear tries to eat the sheep, and he's 14.
Now he's strong enough, he fights off the bear. And then he's 16 years old, and a lion comes, and he remembers what his father said 11 years ago to the day, little David, protect the sheep. And he says to himself, if I die, I die. A good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep, and he fights off the lion, and he saves the sheep, and they live to see another day. And one day the great prophet Samuel is called by God to go find a king. He's in Bethlehem somewhere. And so he goes, and God says go to the house of Jesse. He's in that house. So he goes to Jesse's house to make a sacrifice and honor the Lord.
And the people are terrified, and he says, no, I'm just here to bless the Lord. This is gonna be okay. We're gonna have a barbecue. And he invites Jesse to come. And Jesse brings seven of his sons, and his eldest is there, and he looks good. He's tall, he's handsome, he's charismatic, he's buff, long hair, awesome beard. I'm adding some of this. But Samuel, the Bible says Samuel says to himself when he sees Eliab, he goes surely this is God's anointed. And what is God's response? No, no, not him. The Bible says in 1 Samuel that, "The Lord said to Samuel, 'Don't consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him.'"
You see, the Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at? The heart. So he's a hard no, six other sons just as tall and handsome and strong as the last. No, no, no, no, no. Finally he gets to the last son, he scratches his head assuming this is all there is to pick from. And he says to them all is there no other? Is that it? Is there no one else? And they all look at each other and shrug their shoulders, and they go, well, there's David the baby, but he's just out doing the little stuff. There's David, he's just out there protecting the sheep.
It's interesting in the Bible, God refers to himself as a shepherd many times. And it's interesting, because a shepherd's work is actually typically a teenage girl's job. It's a noble job, but David didn't care about that. I'm doing this job. And God honors him, and he says that's him, that is him. Because God sees the heart. The Lord sees the heart. Now, beware, O you Western listener. When we hear the heart, we think of our feelings. We think of what we feel. My heart, you know, we think about our emotions. We think, and this is not what the heart means in the Bible. The heart is metaphorically the location of the will, the will. It's what you choose to do. It's not your emotions, it's your will. It's what you choose to do despite how you feel.
And this is an important characteristic when we read about this word that's so often used in the Bible, the heart. When God talks about your heart, he wants to know what are you actually gonna do even though you feel a certain way? Even though you feel tempted or even though you feel depressed, even if you feel bored, even though you feel afraid, we still do it. Do you still got what it takes? Will you still press through? Oh. The heart is not what you feel, it's what you do in the Bible. A man says to his wife he cheated on her, and he gets caught. And of course he says, honey, I know it seems like I love her, but I don't. My heart is with you. Everybody say hogwash. His heart is not with his wife, it's with his girlfriend, because it's what he chose to do.
A lot of men will use this ploy on women, because women are very often empathetic and sympathetic and wanna sort things out, highly relational. It's hogwash. I almost used a joke and I didn't, I cut it. I'm getting better. Mother and her children, caring for her children, feels guilty about her emotions, and she says I've got four kids, maybe she's single and she's put all the kids to bed, and she just wants to relax and watch some TV or take a bath or something, but she just, after putting the last kid to bed, and she's changed their diapers and so many diapers and taking care of the children, and now she has to get a little work done on the computer, she feels guilty because she doesn't feel love, you know, feel a lot of love necessarily towards her kids, or she feels frustrated because she's so impatient she thinks, or because whatever, she feels frustrated with them because they don't listen to her or whatever, and she feels guilty for feeling those emotions, but God doesn't care about that.
God cares that she did the work. The heart is not in the feelings, it's in the doings. It's what you do despite how you feel. So you ask the question, does she love her children even though she doesn't feel anything when she's tired late at night? And the answer is absolutely. Look at what she did. That's what God cares about. And that's the difference between the heart, it's been a while since I was in seminary, but I believe in the Bible the emotions are actually in the belly. So the belly is where the emotions are. That's where hunger, metaphorically, hunger, anger, lust, greed, it's located in the belly. And this is very often why in Judaism and Christianity, fasting is a way of having contempt for the belly, for the flesh. It's saying I'm gonna do what's right even though I feel this other way. I'm gonna overcome my emotions.
So what is heart? Is it what you feel? No, it's what you'll do despite how you feel. Isn't that good news? And we want to be careful of legalism and things like that, but at the end of the day, God wants people who have the heart. So was David afraid when he saw the spider? Yes. Was he afraid when he had to scatter the rats, when he had to chase off the fox and the bear and the lion? The answer is yes, but he chased them off anyway. That is someone who has heart, and that's what the Lord sees. He sees your heart. Will you choose, will you choose to do what's hard? And the answer is yes, because you have a good heart.
Don't feel guilty about your emotions, feel guilty about making bad choices. And if that's what you've been doing, change your heart. So how do you change your heart? You don't try harder, here's how you change your heart. In athletics, we call it progressive overload, progressive overload. Means that you train for it. You start to do the little things so you could, you do the little heart things so you can do the big heart things later. It's like this, most Americans cannot do a pull up. Pull up is very hard.
I remember the first time I tried to do a pull up, I could barely get one in high school or college. I've been working out a lot lately. I can do 20 or 25 now, which I think is pretty good. But I'd need, like, a gun to my head to pull up that last like two or three to get the last few. But did you know that the world record for pull ups is 651 consecutive pull ups in one thing? And the world record for 24-hour, most pull ups in 24 hours is 8,008. Pretty cool.
Now, think about that for a moment. Every single person, the person that did 8,008 pull ups at one time in their life could not do one. What changed? It's a real question, what changed? Well, first they did one pull up, and then they did one pull up again, and then they did one pull up again, and then all of a sudden they eked out a? A second pull up, and they did two pull ups and two pull, and then they eked out a third, and they did that enough times that they could get to the point where they could do 8,000. Isn't that amazing? Wow.
And this is how the heart is. We want to be whatever, we want to write a novel, sing some famous song in Broadway, lead a huge church, build a huge business, but what we forget is those big things are made of progressive overload, of a heart or a mind that has put in the effort to become those kinds of things. You say to yourself, I feel like God wants me to be a pastor or an evangelist, but I can't preach a sermon. Well, can you pray with someone? Start praying with people or leading little Bible studies. You say to yourself, I could never lead a business. I want to, but I don't feel like I ever could. Could you lead a small group? Could you lead a volunteer group in the church?
You say, I feel like I've got a novel inside of me. I've been dying to write this novel, but I just can't seem to do it. Can you write one page? Write a short story, write another one, and just do the work. If you do a little, you'll become a lot. If you do a little every day, you'll become a lot over time. You don't have to be legalistic. I hate legalism. You don't have to be doing it all the time, but just do a little bit every day and that makes all the difference. Heres one way of doing it or thinking about it. A guy named Steven Pressfield, wonderful writer, put it this way. He said become a professional. Become a professional with your dreams.
Now, every single person in this room is a professional in some way. Let's say you are a fry cook. Well, just anybody, being a fried cook might not be your dream, but you get up, you put on your little uniform and your hat and you go down, you clock in, you cook the fries, you cook the burger, you put it in the bag, you put in the receipt, you hand it to the person with a smile most of the time, you finish your eight hours, you clock out, you get your check. That's what it means, being a professional means, you show up, you do the work. You don't feel like it most the time when you go to Starbucks or do whatever it is that you're doing, but you are a? Professional.
Now, what if we were to become a professional with our dream? If you have a dream to play piano, look at piano the same way you look at your job. You get there at the same time, the same place for a set amount of time, and you do that long enough, you're gonna get paid in piano giftedness. You want to be a writer, start writing, be a professional, sit down and write for a given amount of time. Lock the door, turn off your phone, and write. William Faulkner the great novelist was asked once, how did you write so much? Do you only write when you're inspired? And he said, "Yes, I only write when inspiration strikes. But fortunately for me, inspiration strikes at 9 AM every morning sharp". Huh?
Let's carry this a little further. What would it look like for me to be a professional dad? For me to have the heart of a dad? That means even when I don't feel like it, even though I'm not into it, even though I'm a little bit tired or I have work to do, I put a smile on my face, and I'm there for my kids 'cause they need me. That's what it means to be a pro dad. Huh? I don't think about how I feel. I think about what my kids need for me. What's it mean for me to be a professional husband? It means that I don't say this marriage gets good when my wife gets better. I go, this marriage gets good when? I get better, right? That's what's missing is me, so I be a professional husband. I do my best even though I don't always feel it to be there for my wife.
That's what it means to have a heart for your wife. And to be a professional Christian, if I can say something so, uh, you know, maybe it sounds inappropriate, be a professional Christian. I am going, I don't always feel like it, but I'm gonna read my Bible, I'm gonna go to church, I'm gonna give to charity, I'm gonna do what I need to do to prove to God that I'm honoring him with my life. See, God sees my heart, not my belly, isn't that good news? God sees our heart, not our belly, and yes, emotions are important. Don't neglect your emotions, don't pretend like they don't matter or something like this. They can have a big impact on you, but at the end of the day, what matters is what we choose to do and who we choose to be.
In the book of Acts, there's a fun story where the apostles say to the church at large, we need someone to care for the widows. We need somebody to do the little things so that we can go preach and pray, because that's what God's called us to do. And some guy named Stephen, who, whatever, works in a hardware shop or something, just everyday kind of guy, raises his hand and says I'll do it. I'll look after the widows so you guys can go preach and pray. And so he does, and guess what the Bible says in Acts chapter 6 and 7, it says that out of all of them, he had the most miracle-working power, and he gave the best sermons.
Now, think about that for a moment. They neglected it so they could do that very thing, but he was the greatest among them because he was willing to do the little things that they didn't care about. The little things matter. The little things are what're gonna make you a bigger person. Don't neglect them. And don't forget that it's also little things that can tear you apart. How many people here know that termites are little things? Isn't that true? Germs are little things, and they stopped the whole globe from spinning, it seemed like, for a whole year during COVID, right? And germs take a big strong man and have him on his knees, right? Germs will get you. Calories are little things. Boy, they will get you.
In our family we call calories flavor points. I remember when I was at CPK we used to, you know, I go to CPK, California Pizza Kitchen, and I'd get the salad because I wanna eat healthy, I wanna take care of myself, and then California passed a law that said you have to post if you're a chain, all the calories for every dish. And I went down the menu, and I found that the lowest calorie item on the menu was the cheese pizza at 1100 calories. And this delicious salad I've been eating had almost 1700 calories in it. That's like a whole day worth of food in my salad.
Oh well. You know, the Romans struggled with this because they would have bridges that would be built, and they would collapse, and so they passed a new law where any bridge builder, engineer who made a bridge didn't have to pass anything, didn't have to get an approval or anything, all he had to do was sleep under the bridge with his family for one week while all the horses and people went walking over it. You know why? Because nobody could tell what differed a good bridge from a bad bridge, but the answer is the little things no one can see. When they were excavating the temple in the 20th century and they were pulling out, you know, dirt and all the stuff, they started seeing stones and examining things.
One of the stories I love so much is obviously on the outside of the temple, there's all these ornate carvings and flowers and all sorts of beautiful things on the outside, but when they pulled the stones from the foundation, from the inner part underground that no one presumably should have ever seen, they still found the same ornate carvings, why? Why? Because the Jewish builders who were making a house of God didn't care what other people saw, they knew that God would see it, and they knew that even God can see even underground. Let them see what we do even in the places nobody else can see. What wisdom there is in that.
It's so interesting, too, because there's like as an employer, our church now employs probably about 70 people and seeing the world through the eyes of an employer, it's amazing. You'll have a bunch of people apply for an amazing job, and you'll have two people, one guy will just work out, will just barely win over the other, and it's amazing how many times that happens. You really can't decide. It's one small thing when you make a decision. Have this friend of mine, John, who got his dream job, and he applied for the job, he got it, he was thrilled, but they said the only thing is you've got to shave your beard, and he came back and he said I'm not gonna take a job. They want me to shave my beard.
And I said shave your beard. It's your dream job. You care more about your beard than you do your dream? And this is why men do better when they're married, I think. Men benefit from marriage so much, because the wife would have said you shave your beard and you go down there and you say yes. They'll listen to me. Earl Larmar, a good friend of mine, he's the chairman of the board in Australia. He and his wife have been extremely generous to our church and other charities all around the world, they've done very well in business and other things in ministry, and my wife and I were hanging out with him, and she loves to ask this question, she said, what's a piece of life advice you would give to us?
And one of the things he said, I never forgot it. He said picture horses racing and when the horses are racing, they're usually so close to each other. And the one who gets first place is sometimes just a nose ahead of the one that gets second place. But the rewards between the two are so big that the one who gets in first place might get $2 million, but the one in second place, even though he lost by just the nose gets $100,000, and think about just a little difference gets a vast greater reward. I think that's how it is in life, my friend. I wanna encourage you, your life before you in a way, a dream and a possibility that is attainable when you get the decision in your heart to focus on the little things that will build a big life, and you will.
And I believe in that, and I believe in you, Lord. We ask in Jesus's name that you would help us become all that we can be for the people in our lives that need us to be all that we can be, not for ourselves but for the people we love. Help us, Lord, to see the things that we can change today, to become who you see in us. We love you, it's in Jesus's name we pray. All God's people said amen. And now the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you his peace in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.