Luke 16:15 And Jesus said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
To God quality is far more important and quantity matters little.
Since humanity’s moral fall in the garden, his vision has become clouded and confused, even delusional. One evidence of this is humanity’s proneness to confuse values and to put quantity (“bigger is better”) before quality in his appraisal of things.
The Christian faith reverses this order.
The Word of God ignores size and quantity and stresses quality first. If the quality is there, the quantity will be the natural default. This is evidenced no more clearly than in the most important parable in the Kingdom of God – the Parable of the Sower.
There are two important ‘pearls’ in this text:
Everything starts small – like a tiny seed.
Success is founded on quality - the quality of the soil.
It’s the seed that is planted into good soil that produces the greatest quantity.
Christ came as a seed, an embryo, in a woman’s womb and was born in an outback barn. No fanfare. No lights. No front-page headlines. This is how God does things. He chose a person of the highest quality and a place with the lowest quantity.
That great maxim, ‘It’s not how you start but how you finish’ rings no more sweetly than when it comes to the Kingdom of Heaven. God will hold you back from the limelight and position, to perfect His work in you. Then He releases you like an arrow that hits its target with precision and power!
Resist the temptation to justify yourself in the eyes of others, i.e. work colleagues, family members, or peers who may look at your life and your commitment to God and His church with disdain. Trust God and His ways. Start small and focus on the little things that require attention in your life.
Give your greatest attention to what’s unseen, your heart, the soil that provides life to the seed of His Word within you. You are a co-worker with God. Your role is to protect your heart – God’s role is to produce His fruit. The quantity of fruit always comes back to the quality of the soil.
Then give attention to the little things that make such a big difference…
Your diet - less sugar, less fatty and processed food; more water, more fruits, and vegetables
Your sleep - earlier to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise
Your personal organisation – plan ahead, always deliver, always deliver on time
Your money – Tithe, be generous, don’t spend more than you earn
When you get the heart right first and bring order into key areas of life, you will see quality and quantity flowing through your life.