Passionate, genuine affection for Jesus will lead to all sorts of vows and promises which it is impossible to fulfill.  It is an attitude of mind and heart that sees only the heroic.  We are called to be unobtrusive disciples not heroes.  When we are right with God, the tiniest thing done out of love to Him is more precious to Him than any eloquent preaching of a sermon...We all have a lurking desire to be exhibitions for God, to be put, as it were, in His showroom.  Jesus does not want specimens; He wants us to be so taken up with Him that we never think about ourselves, and the only impression left on others by our lives is that Jesus Christ is having unhindered way.

Walking on water is easy to impulsive pluck, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is different.  Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus, but he followed Him afar off on the land.  We do not need the grace of God to stand crises; human nature and our pride will do it.  We can buck up and face the music of a crisis magnificently, but it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of the day as a saint, to go through drudgery as saint, to go through poverty as a saint, to go through an ordinary, unobtrusive, ignored existence as a saint, unnoted and unnoticeable.  The show business, which is so incorporated into our view of Christian work today, has caused us to drift far from our Lord's conception of discipleship.  It is instilled in us to think that we have to do exceptional things for God; we do not.  We have to be exceptional in ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, surrounded by sordid sinners.  That is not learned in five minutes.

--Oswald Chambers--
Daily Thoughts for Disciples
July 24