My team has been going through the Listening prayer devotional the last week or so. It’s about practicing being in tune with the Holy Spirit and doing our best to follow His leading. One thing that seems to keep coming up for me is to be faithful in the small things. Baby steps. At first He’s going to ask us to do some relatively easy stuff. Then it might get harder. Maybe He’ll ask you to do something bolder. Maybe He won’t. But He probably will.
This past Friday my team was at our usual ministry which is teaching basketball (God has a sense of humor). Our first class was over and went well. The second/third classes are the youngest group of kids (first graders) and they are usually split. One class only had 5 students that day we we just combined them. That class was also really good and we were left with free time for 45 minutes while we waited for our next class of middle schoolers. For the first few minutes we went and watched the second half of our team teach English.
But there was a kid. He had watched us the whole last class with the younger students. He had been in one of our middle school gym classes earlier in the week. He was shooting the basketball and I felt like I was supposed to just go hang out with him. Nothing huge. Just shoot around. I didn’t even really have to talk. So I did. We played for the entire break and then into the recess time after that and it was just fun.
One of the teachers ended up competing with us so I got to know him and then one of the young people from our church joined. Once recess started George (the original kid) had to leave but it had grown into a small group of the middle schoolers playing once they came out for their break. Fast forward to the next class. The group I’d been playing with were all in the next class. Honestly I think it was my favorite class yet and it was because we already had relationships with the students we were teaching. We’d already earned their respect and it made the class super easy and fun because we were just competing with them. They felt our energy and reciprocated it.
Come to find out later that that class is usually one of the worst. The kids that I’d played with beforehand are usually a pain for their teacher. They’re usually disobedient and won’t participate. I can’t remember a single instance when one of those kids even hesitated to do what we asked of them.
All of this from one small step. One decision to follow a gut feeling. One kid shooting a basketball. One God showing up big when I was faithful in something small.
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