One of the things I hear most often in ministry is, “I just don’t ever see God doing anything in my life.” The truth is, nothing could be further from the truth.

When we see God’s activity in our life and in the lives of those around us, that becomes a major source of encouragement for anyone to see.

God is active. He has a plan for your life and my life and is working it out to completion. That much is easily clear from the Bible.

But often, God’s activity in our lives is dependent upon our faith. When we believe that he will do something, he often follows through on that. If we don’t expect God to move, we will probably never see him do something. I’m not saying that he isn’t doing something, but we will surely miss whatever it is.

But when our faith gets involved, that seems to add energy to God’s activity, and increases it to the next level.

I believe that we need to expect God to do something in two critical areas of our lives.

God acts in the little things

Too often, we want to see God doing big things, mighty things. And we ignore his involvement in the little victories. But, just as with anything else, we start off with baby steps. Expecting God to act in our day to day stuff is just as critical to our faith and encouragement as seeing God do something huge.

For example, I pray daily for my son as he works on his schoolwork. He is homeschooled, and his distraction level is pretty high. So expecting God to show up and keep him focused is something that we pray for. And when it happens, his mother is encouraged, and so is he. In fact, when he has such a great day, he immediately calls me when he is finished with school to let me know and share his encouragement with me.

Seeing God in the little things helps prepare us to see God in the bigger things. My oldest daughter needs braces. Unsure how we were going to pay for them, we started praying and started watching for God to do something. It wasn’t long until we found out about an opportunity. My daughter wrote an essay, we submitted the application, and a few weeks later, we received notification that she’d been selected for a full scholarship for braces. They are completely paid for.

Expecting God to act in the small things prepares us to see him move in mightier ways.

God acts in our goals and vision

God has a plan for our lives, but he includes us in the activity as well.

I believe that God expects us to set goals and cast vision and dream dreams. And when we do, God takes those plans, those goals, and does something wonderful with them.

One of my key disciplines is my Life Plan. I’ve identified several key areas of my life where I want to be strategic in my growth. But I fully understand that God has to be involved in the growth as well, much more so that I can be.

So I set my goals, I envision my future and destination, and then I pray for God to do something in that area. More often than not, he acts in accordance with the goals and plans that I’ve set. It’s not that he’s conforming to my will in this; he’s planted his will in my heart, because I took it to him in prayer, and the plans I laid out conformed to his will. And when I see him fulfill those plans, it’s very encouraging.

In the same way, if I just float through life with no plans, expecting God to work, I’m probably not going to see much activity.

Take a look at Proverbs 13:4 (GNT): No matter how much a lazy person may want something, he will never get it. A hard worker will get everything he wants.

Seeing God act is a great way to build encouragement into your life. And faith dictates that we expect him to do the things we ask and pray for before he accomplishes them.

Will he answer everything as we desire? Of course not. But as we grow to be more like him, we will see more and more of his activity in our lives.

And that’s very encouraging!

In what ways do you expect God to do things in your life? You can leave your thoughts in the comments section below.