We can learn the largest and loudest of life’s lessons from the smallest and quietest of God’s creatures. As a wide-eyed kid, I wanted to roar like a lion, stomp like an elephant, and tower like a giraffe. But as a focused follower of Jesus Christ, I’d rather look a lot smaller, work a lot harder, and move a lot steadier.
“Look to the ant,” ancient wisdom calls out as the new year dawns. In Proverbs 6:6–11, Solomon warns his reader of the futilities of haphazard laziness and the inherent goodness of disciplined effort. “Without leader, administrator, or ruler, it [the ant] prepares its provisions in the summer, it gathers its food during harvest.” Inspired by the Holy Spirit, this biblical text highlights the urgency of self-motivation and careful discipline for worthy causes. “Whatever your hands find to do, do with all your strength,” Solomon writes elsewhere (Eccl. 9:10). An honorable endeavor is to work hard at a worthy cause, fueled by intrinsic motivation.
A direct connection exists between devotion and discipline. Your new year’s goals and resolutions are forward positions on the horizon in the direction of your daily disciplines. You devote yourself to those goals when your daily disciplines align with your future objectives. A committed ant is devoted to its cause, and its daily disciplines reflect that devotion. The hard truth is that our daily disciplines always reflect our ultimate devotions. Whether the goal is spiritual formation, physical health, academic pursuits, occupational objectives, or anything else, your daily disciplines are revealing the degree to which you are truly devoted to your stated goals. Sometimes our daily disciplines reflect a devotion to something other than our stated devotions: self gratification, unrestrained hobbies, sinful desires, unhealthy ambitions, etc.
What do your daily disciplines reveal about your stated devotions?
For the ant, its devotion is toward self-preservation; if it is to survive, it must work. The ant knows nothing higher. For image bearers of God who are recreated in Christ Jesus, our devoted motivation is much deeper and much more consequential: to glorify God with our lives and to extend His glory to the ends of the earth through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The discipline of our daily rhythms is either moving us toward that goal or away from it. If toward it, we are like the ant; if away from it, we are like the slacker. If toward it, we are truly devoted to it; if away from it, we may be truly devoted to something else.
What do your daily disciplines reveal about your true devotion?
“I am resolved no longer to linger, charmed by the world’s delight,” 19th-century Michigan Southern Baptist music minister Palmer Hartsough penned the lyrics to one of his 1,000-plus hymns: “Things that are higher, things that are nobler, these have allured my sight” (“I Am Resolved,” 1896).
For the ant, self-preservation becomes its highest devotion. For the follower of Jesus, our highest devotion is to know Christ “and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death,” working from the guiding confidence of our future resurrection with Christ (Phil. 3:10–11). What other goal is worthy of our greatest efforts? What other allurement should fill our gaze as we look to the horizon of the Christian life?
SCBaptists, 2025 was a monumental year in the history of our Great Commission cooperation. But much work lies ahead of us in 2026. If the gospel of Jesus Christ is to be known in our neighborhoods and among the nations, our daily disciplines need to move us toward that shared, sacred devotion. Imagine if 600,000 SCBaptists were to live like disciplined and devoted ants this year, devoted to the Great Commission and daily disciplined in its advancement. It’s January 1st. Let’s start today.
— Tony Wolfe is executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.