(The following is a transcription from a video Linda and I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)
There’s a lie that most of the world believes.
And it’s that BIG things are born BIG.
That The Beatles were always an amazing rock band, or that Michael Jordan was always a great basketball player, or that Warren Buffet was always a billionaire.
And the truth is, that even the Beatles were turned down by a record label. Even their producer later on who worked with them said that he would have turned them down based on their audition tape.
And as we have always heard, Michael Jordan was cut from his freshman basketball team. And Warren Buffet didn’t grow up a billionaire. He had to earn it.
Big Things DO Start Small
The lie that so many of us believe is that big things don’t start small. This brings us back to the whole idea of SeedTime because everything starts with a tiny little seed. This is exactly how God does things. You plant a seed in the ground. It’s super tiny, and it just starts growing, but it doesn’t grow big fast. In fact, things that grow big fast often don’t last for very long.
So what does this have to do with money?
And the truth is, it has everything to do with money. Most people think that the difference between having a life of financial struggle and massive financial success is stuff like getting an inheritance from your uncle, or having this really high paying job, or being born to rich parents. And the reality is that for most people that’s not it. It’s about this small little thing.
And most people who come into wealth super quickly squander it away because they don’t know how I manage it. There’s a proverb that says, “Wealth from gambling quickly disappears.” Now, why do you think that is? Because they weren’t ready to handle that wealth.
Meanwhile, there’s another proverb that says, “He who gathers wealth little by little makes it grow.” And the truth is, is that regardless of what hand we have been dealt in life, because they’re very different hands and in some people certainly appear to have better hands than others, regardless of what that is, there is, we have a power over what we can do with the little bit that we’ve been given. And these small things they add up over time. And over a lot of time they add up to really, really big things.
Saving Money Where You Can
So financially for us, once I realized this, I really got excited about this and ran with it because I realized that we can start shaving off whatever, $100 a month by being a little more strategic with our grocery shopping. Or we could save $100 a month by refinancing our credit card debt that we had at the time. Or I could convince my wife to start making coffees at home, and we could save an extra $50 a month or something. And a lot of people are just like, “Well that’s too small a change. I’m not concerned with that. I want the big wins.” And the reality is, those small things really add up quickly and they make a huge difference.
I think the point that we’re trying to make here is, it doesn’t matter how much you have, just start with what you have and start making just one positive change. Anything that you can do that’s small that will just help you along this journey and along this path.
I know for us, like starting a budget was huge. Lauren, the first month she started budgeting, saved $800!! And it was only because she was paying attention to her finances. That was the only difference.
The Parable of the Talents
I can’t help but think about the parable of the talents. And so you have this guy who leaves and entrust his wealth to three different stewards. And he gave each one of them something to take care of. And two of them took some risks, and really tried to maximize what they had been entrusted with. And then the other one didn’t. And he didn’t do anything with it and he was reprimanded. Meanwhile, the ones who took some risks were rewarded.
I think the lesson to learn here is that we’ve all been given something in what are we going to do with it? Are we just going to bury it in the sand and not do anything with it? Or are we going to take some risks with the talents, actual physical talents that we’ve been given, or the resources that we’ve been given or whatever it is. Like what are we going to do with it? And we have that choice to make every single day.
Giving
One of the places in our lives where we really saw this was in giving. It can seem like giving is taking money away from you, but the Bible says it is more blessed to give than to receive. I take that, I hear that, and I think, “Really, is that true?” Like if we actually think that the Bible is true, then aren’t you curious why it’s more blessed to give than to receive? And, aren’t you curious to find out what that blessing is as attached to you giving?
This has been something that is so important in our lives. And we have seen so much blessing. And I don’t just mean financial. We’ve seen a lot of blessing attached to our giving. In unexpected ways many times.
I really want to encourage you to give that a try, go along that path, and see what it holds for you. I can’t make any promises because it’s not up to us. It’s totally up to God what happens in your life. But, when you plant seeds you are going to see a return.
Start Where You Are
I hear people say a lot that “well, I would give more if I had more.” And unfortunately, I don’t think it works that way. Even John Rockefeller who doesn’t exactly have the best reputation, even said that if he didn’t tithe on his first dollar that he made, he certainly wasn’t going to tithe his first million dollars. And he knew that if you want something to be big, you have to start small. You have to start giving what you have now.
You have to start managing the money that you have now or the lack of it. If you’re trying to lose weight, you have to start with where you are now. It really doesn’t matter what it is. If you want something big, if you want a big change, you have to start with the small. Big things start small. They don’t start big.
Asking God for Guidance
I encourage you today, to pray and ask the Lord to show you where it is that maybe you need to make a few little tweaks and a few little adjustments that are going to start you on the path of what He has for you. And a lot of times, these are super-duper simple. They’re really not a big deal and they’re probably things you’ve already been thinking about and want to do.
Just start. It’s really just that simple.
We’ve seen this over and over in our lives where God will take something so seemingly insignificant, and then turn it into something really big. But if we weren’t obedient in that tiny little thing that He was asking us to do, we would have missed out on the big thing you had planned.
God starts things with seeds. And so do not despise the day of small beginnings. Like that Zechariah verse says. And even Jesus said that if you have a mustard seed of faith that you can tell a mountain to move and it’ll be moved. How cool is that?
Taking a Step of Faith
The other point here is, as soon as you take a step of faith, God seems to like swoop in, meet you where you are, and push you forward in the direction that you want to go.
And, that has just happened over and over for us. We’ve watched things where it makes us look a whole lot smarter than we are. It makes us look more spiritual than we are. It makes us look more, fill in the blank. And it’s really not us except for that we just decided to take one step forward, take the seed and plant it.
So that’s your encouragement for today: Big things start small.
What is that small thing that you can start doing today? You might not be able to see how it’s going to get you where you want to go, but God does! He needs us to do work for his kingdom. So run after it…Go for it!
If you’ve seen this principle working in your life, we would love for you to leave a comment below. We want to encourage other people to start where they are. And we want to give more motivation for how this actually works and what it actually looks like.
Be Blessed. Be a Blessing.
The full video is below:
