The Nitty-Gritty

April 18, 2008

By Sylvia Turner

The nitty-gritty of everyday life has been on my mind. The daily details of our lives are ever so mundane.

What’s so interesting about answering e-mails, sending e-newsletters, doing the financial reports for a construction project, or the quarterly reports and the mileage reports to send to our missions agency’s headquarters?

What’s so interesting about preparing to teach a class of Bible school students, teaching and sweating through class, driving home through horrendous traffic, preparing tests, correcting them, figuring out grades and turning them over to the administration?

How about the daily job of overseeing that construction project, making sure there’s enough cement, gravel and sand? What about the nitty-gritty of fighting the stomach flu or just plain old fatigue?

I could go on and on, just like you. Most of our lives are comprised of doing the nitty-gritty. It makes me think of a song I learned as a kid, "The Hokey Pokey." Remember that one? I could tweak the lyrics a bit and come up with "You do the nitty-gritty and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about!" I feel turned around a lot of times when I survey all the details and demands of my life.

We have all been called to do God’s will — a glorious privilege — but the everyday life of a Christian is primarily nitty-gritty obedience seldom to be seen or even appreciated by others.

But in the midst of it all, the Lord strengthens and empowers you and me to be faithful. He sees, He knows, and He rewards — especially nitty-gritty faithfulness.

"He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name" (Revelation 3:12, NKJV).

— Wayne and Sylvia Turner serve as Assemblies of God missionaries in Kinshasa, Congo.