Despised
A church consulting group produced a report on how to engineer church growth. They recommend using data analytics to understand your target audience, networking in the community, and building a structured onboarding process for new members. But none of their church growth tips included prayer. As long as a church ran its playbook with excellence, organizational growth was guaranteed.
Zechariah 4:1-10
Then the angel who had been speaking with me returned and roused me, as a man is wakened from his sleep. He said to me, "What do you see?" And I said, "I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top. The bowl has seven lamps around it, with seven channels to each of the lamps. And two olive trees are beside it, one on the right and the other to the left." Then I spoke up and said to the angel who had been speaking with me, "What are these, my lord?" And the angel who had been speaking with me answered and said to me, "Do you not know what these are?" And I said, "No, my lord." Then he answered and said to me, "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD of Hosts. 'Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain. He will bring out the capstone with shouts of 'Grace, grace to it!'" The word of the LORD came to me: "The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands will also complete it. Then you will know that the LORD of Hosts has sent me to you. Indeed, who has despised the day of small things? They will rejoice when they see the chosen stone in the hand of Zerubbabel. These seven are the eyes of the LORD that range across the whole earth."
As the prophet Zechariah sleeps, God sends an angel with a vision. Even if Zechariah was awake and working, he hadn't done much. The poor community has no army, failing crops, and hostile neighbors. The temple foundation has been half-finished for nearly twenty years. Even their governor has been named Zerubbabel, or "seed of Babylon," to remind everyone that he serves at the pleasure of a foreign kingdom. In the dark of night, the angel shows him a lampstand with the perfect number of lamps: seven. Even better, oil is delivered by not one but two olive trees. It's as if God showed us a golden chandelier that filled our homes with light and it doesn't even need to be plugged in. Only light can defeat darkness, and the angel is saying: God will do this all by himself (see John 1:5). Zechariah cannot make sense of this miracle. He confesses to the angel: "I do not understand what God is showing me." His humility prepares him to receive the rest of the angel's message. Just as God can fill darkness with light or replace a mountain with a plain, he can use Babylon's governor to build himself a temple. He will not need any human capacity to do it. The God who has every resource is saying the temple won't be built with anyone else's resources. When the community's elders look at the embarrassing beginning, they start crying. They despise the unimpressive attempt (see Ezra 3:12). But the Lord sees everything across the entire earth. He knows about the pyramids of Egypt and the grand temples of Babylon. In his estimation, the temple will be glorious because he will support its construction. The problem with small beginnings is discouragement. What's the point of small talk, a first meeting with a new friend, reading one verse of the Bible, or saying a desperate prayer? They seem so insignificant that they aren't even worth doing. During Uncommon Pursuit's first couple of years, our website only received a few hundred views per day. Every morning, I asked myself the question: why keep going? But when God promises to complete the work and tells us that its completion will give us joy, we are spurred to take action. It took four years for Zerubbabel to finish the temple, and it stood for five hundred years. But right before Jesus was born, King Herod started a building project to make it look more impressive. One day, Jesus observed the rebuilding process and explained that if God's temple was destroyed, he would raise it up in three days. Everyone scoffed. When they understood his humiliating plan to die on the cross, they mocked him. Could there have been a more despised beginning than his suffocating body? Yet that was also the Spirit finishing the true temple. Jesus didn't need to see a business plan. He only needed to see what God was doing. When we see the work of God, we will also shout: "Grace! Grace!"
What are you trying to accomplish without God?
What "insignificant" spiritual activity have you been avoiding?
Steadily following Jesus with one friend can reshape marriages, families, and even generations. Who comes to mind? What keeps you from reaching out?
Open your hands before God. Ask him, "What's the small thing I need to trust that you can accomplish by your Spirit?" When he speaks to you, tell a friend what you saw. Then, take the next small step of faithfulness.