Are You A Plodder

We live in a day of quick fixes, fast food, get rich quick money schemes and instant access to information. People want to graduate from college and go straight to the top of their profession. Fewer and fewer people are willing to pay the dues to get ahead. Newly weds get married and want everything it took their parents decades to earn and accumulate. Few want to wait. Few want to persevere. Even fewer are willing to plod.

The word plod can be defined as "to trudge, to move laboriously, to work with constant perseverance." It is that last definition that suits me. Plodding involves working. It also involves constant perseverance.

Plodding is not flashy. It is not glamorous. Plodding is blue collar. It speaks to a life of toil. It speaks to pushing forward by the sweat of the brow. It speaks to staying the course through exciting days as well as monotonous days, in victory as well as in defeat and triumphantly easy days as well as days of trials. Plodding is slowly pushing forward, never giving up, putting one foot in front of the other and completing the task at hand.

Plodding does not happen instantaneously. I am plodding through a 795 page book on the life of Martyn Lloyd Jones. You do not finish such a reading in one sitting. If you plan to rad through the Bible plodding will come in handy if you read all 1,189 chapters in 66 different books comprising both the Old and New Testaments. Plodding will serve you well over the years in daily devotions through every season of life. Plodding will help you overcome, breakthrough, learn, grow, and succeed. Slowly inching forward is not exciting but it is still progress. By plodding even the slug reached the ark.

Plodding aids the student in school who keeps persevering to write the paper, study for the test and finish the homework even though they are bone weary tired. Plodding helps the athlete strive to get better each day through working out. Plodding helps the parent raising headstrong and strong willed children to keep going and not give up. Plodding is useful in marriage long after the honeymoon is over. Plodding helps the employee keep working with excellence when the luster of the job has long faded away into a daily grind. Plodding helps the minster stand weekly to minister when they feel bankrupt spiritually and have so little to give to help anyone. Plodding helps the missionary wake each day with hope that the long awaited breakthrough will come.

Is this a trait parents teach their children? Is this a trait pastors teach their flocks? Is plodding something we admire in others.? Do we applaud those who have modeled plodding for us? Do we value the men and women who show up day in and day out to perform their work duties with no special recognition or compensation? Do we honor those faithful people who commit to a ministry at church and faithfully serve in their post come rain or shine? Do we ever pat those ministers on the back that are there for us in times of triumph as well as tragedy?Do we appreciate the faithful pastors who plod through exegetical messages teaching the whole counsel of God's word?

It is easy to take plodders for granted. Their progress is slow. Yet over time how much good ground can the plodder gain by constant perseverance. Think on this for a moment. What good could be accomplished through your life if you plodded ahead.

How great would your marriage be. How close would you get to God. How much could you advance the Kingdom of God. How far could you progress in your career. How much money could you earn, save and give away. We underestimate the power of plodding.

I guarantee you plodders do not always feel like plodding but they do it anyway. They have learned to deny destructive feelings. They execute their duties whether they feel like it or not. They honor their commitments whether it is convenient to do so or not. They stay the course until the job is done and then they will show up again the next day to work again.

Are you a plodder? The church and society could use more of them.