Act Small. Pray Big.
You are on a break at work, a coworker notices the book in your hands, and asks what you are reading. You could give a real answer. Instead you say, "Oh, just something I picked up," and the moment is gone before you finish the sentence. Ten minutes later you are replaying it, wondering why such a simple question felt so heavy. Most of us have done this more than once. We care about the people around us and we believe what we say we believe, yet the words stay stuck.
Tom McElroy has had plenty of moments like that, and during Cornerstone's World Awareness Festival he talked about what changes when we stop letting them slide. The festival's theme was Rooted Local, Reaching Global, and his answer to how both can be true at once was four words: "Act small, pray big."
SMALL THINGS MULTIPLY
Tom began with a story many of us know. A man walks a beach at low tide and finds a boy throwing starfish back into the ocean. The man points out that the beach goes on for miles and the boy cannot possibly make a difference. The boy says it made a difference for that one. Then someone else walks up and starts throwing starfish too, and now there are two.
Tom followed it with some arithmetic. Double a penny every day for 33 days and you end up with more than eight and a half billion pennies, roughly the population of the earth. Suppose this year you lead one person to Jesus and spend the year teaching them what you know about following him, including how to do the same for someone else. Tom admitted the math breaks down in real life, since not everyone says yes, but the direction is clear. Reaching the world is built from ordinary starts like that one.
WHAT WE HAVE TO SAY
Peter tells believers who they are: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." (1 Peter 2:9) Tom pointed out what that makes us. We are all "full-time missionaries," whether or not anyone has handed us a title, because we are already going to work, to school, and to the grocery store.
So what are we proclaiming? First, that God is good. Plenty of people around us do not believe that, and the psalmist says otherwise: "The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made." (Psalm 145:9) Second, that sin destroys. Tom described a conversation with a coworker who said morality is just something society makes up. He asked her what would happen if everybody always stole from everybody else. "Chaos," she said. "That's what sin does," he told her. He calls a moment like that pulling a weed, taking a false idea out of someone's mind so a true one has room to grow.
Then comes the gospel itself. God made good things for us to enjoy with him, we chose ourselves over him, and his anger at that is real. He also loves us, and Jesus took that anger on himself. Tom compared it to forgiving someone who stole a million dollars from you. You are the one out a million dollars, and you carry the cost. Jesus carried ours.
SAYING IT OUT LOUD
Tom said we proclaim in two ways, by living it out and by telling our story. Living it out looks like Romans 12, which includes the line "Bless those who persecute you." (Romans 12:14) He challenged the church to try blessing people out loud, to their face, in Jesus' name. He does this himself. In his work as a standardized patient, helping medical students learn to treat people well, he once watched a coworker fill the coffee pot and said, "I bless you in the name of Jesus." He said it got real quiet.
Telling your story takes some nerve. Tom shared about a morning in Chicago when an earthquake shook his building while he was praying. When people asked about it later, he left out the praying part, and he still wonders what conversation he skipped. Compare that with the day a fellow standardized patient asked what he was reading. Tom answered honestly, asked if the man had any spiritual beliefs, and the conversation ran for an hour.
GETTING READY
Tom suggested getting ready in three areas. Spiritually, it comes down to a phrase he repeated: "often long alone with God." John Newton, who wrote "Amazing Grace," rose at five every morning for two hours of prayer and Scripture. Mentally, it helps to know what you believe and to have books and mature believers to lean on. Tom keeps a simple opener ready: "Do you have any spiritual beliefs?" Then he listens, because people like to share what they think.
Materially, use whatever helps start conversations. That might be a bracelet whose colors walk through the gospel, or a small button that asks, "Need prayer?" A woman at one of Tom's rehearsals noticed his button and teared up when he asked if she needed prayer. They never finished that conversation, but she knew someone was praying for her.
PRAYING BIG
Prayer holds the rest together. Tom encouraged us to pray alone and with others, whether that means a weekly coffee with a prayer partner or a quick phone call. He suggested putting the church's monthly prayer focus on a mirror, a fridge, or a dashboard, and praying small pieces of it as we go. You can ask the Lord to send laborers into the harvest while you walk into the grocery store. We can ask boldly, because God has said, "Call to me and I will answer you, and will show you great and mighty things that you have not known." (Jeremiah 33:3)
START WITH ONE PERSON
Tom preached his outline backward, starting with the ending, which is that we win. God will be honored among all nations, and that outcome is settled. It frees us to take the small steps in front of us without needing to see the whole beach.
This week, pick one person you see regularly and bless them out loud in Jesus' name. Then pray for that person by name each day.
"I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" (Psalm 46:10)
To hear Tom McElroy's full teaching on this passage, click here.
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