Have you ever said to yourself or someone else “I want to make a difference?” I know I have. I didn’t know how to make a difference. Sometimes I had some ideas about changing the world in some big way. Or, maybe just seeing someone and thinking “I can help that person.”

What Are Your Motives?

However, maybe that person didn’t want any help. How do I know that they really need it? I am making judgment without even realizing it based on how someone looks or, perhaps, on one encounter with them.

While my motives may have been in the right place, I also have to ask myself two questions.

“How can I make a difference?”

What kind of difference do I want to make?”

While growing up, I often thought that by doing something great like being a police officer or a lawyer, a doctor or a missionary that I could make a difference that way.

There are a lot of ways that we can make a difference in this world every day. However, one day I came across the following inspirational quote and it totally changed my thinking.

Change Myself First

You see, I finally began to realize that the best way I could make a difference was to change myself. To work on my own sins and motives, my relationship with God, grow in wisdom and discernment, develop my own skills and talents, etc.

I learned that it is the little things done every day as opposed to the big things done once in a while that truly make a difference more than anything else.

It is being friendly to someone, putting a smile on my face, having a positive attitude or being willing to just listen.

If I let God work in  me,  then He will also work through me. By working on the little things, they can become big things.

Pay It Forward

I am reminded of the movie “Pay if Forward” where one young boy for a school project tried to make a difference in the lives of a couple of people.  By the end of the movie, it had spread all over and everyone was ‘paying it forward’.

Conclusion

So the next time you tell yourself “I want to make a difference”, look within yourself first to see what you need to work on. I know I will always have something I can be working on. Life is a journey and we will never obtain perfection in this life, but by remembering the little things, by changing ourselves first, perhaps we can change the world one person at a time.

Click here to find out more about what the Bible says about who God created you to be.

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