"Young and Unimportant"?

One of the Devil’s biggest lies is to tell us that being faithful “right now” does not matter. Someday, when we have an opportunity to do something big for God, then we can be faithful, he tells us. Our Enemy tells us this lie because he knows that, no matter how young or unimportant we are, serving faithfully now is crucial for God’s purpose in our lives. As a young person, it is powerful to look to the example of someone who used his life well and served God faithfully — even though he was “young and unimportant.”


As a young man, David was still living at home, serving in his father’s house. He was the youngest in his family and had a job that probably seemed about as unimportant as you could get — tending the sheep. He could have griped about not having “something big to do for God.” He could have argued that it was a waste of his time and talents to be sitting alone in a field watching sheep all day. He could have done his work grudgingly and half-heartedly.


Instead, David accepted his circumstances as being from God’s hand, and he made the most of what he had been given. He served God well in the “small things,” which God used to prepare him for bigger deeds in the future. David single-handedly fought and killed the wild animals that attacked his father’s flocks — an experience that prepared him for single combat with Goliath (1 Sam. 17:36-37).


David was also an accomplished musician, even from a young age (1 Sam. 16:18). The Scriptures do not tell us this, but it would make sense if he had used his time watching the sheep to practice the harp and to write songs of praise to God. Gifts of song-writing and musical talent do not usually come without plenty of practice. In the same verse (1 Sam. 16:18), we are told that David speaks well. Could it be that he used his time alone in the fields to practice that as well?


Imagine if David had accepted the lie that “right now does not matter.” He could have ended up spending his whole life waiting for “the big thing,” and if it had come, he would not have been ready.


“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Ephesians 2:10

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