NO SUCH THING AS LITTLE (PART III)

“What You See in the Mirror”

By Akin Ojumu

For many of us, what stares back at us when we look at ourselves in the mirror is the smallness of our stature. Like the children of Israel who went to spy the Promised Land, we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers crawling on all four before the giants who inhabit our Land of Promise. In the eyes of our mind, we see in ourselves a smallness in the stature of our thoughts, intellect, hopes, dreams, goals, accomplishments, growth, endeavor, wealth, and health. 

Society has programmed us to think that the color of our skin and the accent with which we speak make us small. We are small in our family, we are small in our home and, and we are small in our marriage. When our more successful friends look at us, all they see is the smallness of our state in life. Even those we got church with, think we are small because we are not one of the powerful men of God.

Our overbearing bosses at work make us see ourselves and our ideas as small. We see the little we have left as balance in our bank accounts as evidence of our smallness. And when we look at our sphere of influence, it is small enough to fit on a pin head. 

This all-encompassing smallness, like a burqa, forms a covering shroud over every area of our lives. The pervading smallness we see in ourselves blinds us from seeing anything good in ourselves. We are therefore, like a rudderless ship, wandering about life aimlessly and hopelessly with no guiding vision and no definite purpose.

As long as the image of ourselves we see when we look into the mirror is small, the smaller the seed of greatness within us shrinks. Unless and until we let go of the grasshopper mentality and embrace the greatness of God’s finished work in us, greatness will continue to elude us. 

Sadly, the thing about a small mindset is that the aura is so pervading, it can’t be contained; no amount of air freshener can cover the odor. The world can smell the putrid stench of smallness that oozes from us a long way off. And that makes us even smaller in their eyes. The smaller we are in the eyes of the world, the smaller still we see ourselves. And so, a vicious cycle of smallness ensues.

“But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.” (James 1:25).

God’s grace is our only hope of escaping from our prison of smallness. It’s His Word that can render asunder the shackles of littleness on neck. In order to be free from the stranglehold of our inconsequentiality, we must turn our eyes from the looking glass of meaninglessness and fix our gaze intently on the perfect law of liberty.

“But we all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:18). 

To break the chain of unworthiness, we must gaze intently in the mirror of God’s glory. When we do this, He has promised to transform us into that same image from one degree of glory to the next degree of glory.

““Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm that it may not pain me!” And God granted him what he requested.” (1 Chronicles 4:10).

Just as Jabez prayed and God broke his chain of smallness, I pray that God will infuse your spirit with newness of life and that you would fall in love with His Word and feed your soul with the Spirit of life that emanates from the pages of Scripture in order that you may begin to see yourself exactly as God sees you.