Recently I gave a sermon on Ephesians 6:10-18, where Paul describes the armor God has given his people, both individually and corporately, to stand against the attacks of the Enemy. As a part of this, I talked about taking the time to put on the armor daily by praying through the passage, which is something I myself do most days. I find when I pray through each part of the armor thoughtfully, I tend to be more ready for what the day has to throw at me.
Yet here is the rub: the day very rarely throws anything big at me. It is more often the little annoyances that throw me off-kilter: the spilled glass of water, the computer not booting correctly, my car popping out of gear, the whiny tone of my son’s voice, the thoughtless comment of a colleague. These raise my ire far more than something bigger, like illness or the loss of our beloved pet. Why is that? It’s because Satan loves to use the small things to make us stumble. As I was pondering this, I remembered how C.S. Lewis describes precisely this idea in Perelandra. The demon possessing Weston uses very petty, silly, and childish methods of annoying Ransom with the goal of preventing the hero from protecting the Queen of Perelandra.
And this is an interesting insight for me. We are supposedly aware of the devil’s schemes (see 2Co. 2:11), but sometimes we don’t keep them in mind and are brought up short by them. As I have mentioned before, Satan is a pragmatist, he will use everything—both evil and good—to prevent us from being effective for Jesus; and it seems the small stuff is much more effective for making us sin than the big things are. I won’t rob a bank, but I will grumble against God. Both are sin, both keep me from being effective, but the latter is much easier to do than the former.
So as I go through life, I will be looking for the small stuff and getting my Shield of Faith up to prevent the tiny darts from striking me. That way it will already be up when Satan launches that huge flaming bolt and I will be protected from the effects of the big things. For, as Christ says, it is our faithfulness in the small things that proves we will be faithful in the big (Lk. 16:10).
How about you? How do the small things affect you and what do you do to not allow them to cause you to stumble?