Small Beginnings, Big Impact: The Power of Saying Yes to God
- Jack Selcher
- Sep 2, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Summary
Saying yes to God has unpredictable, far-reaching results. Just as small beginnings can create a massive impact, God used 120 believers to spark a worldwide movement that continues today. Spiritual growth spreads through faithful witnesses who share what Jesus has done. God invites each person to contribute using their gifts and passions. Perseverance and grace can multiply simple obedience into life-changing ministry. Saying yes to God, again and again, can yield results far beyond imagination.
When Saying Yes Changes Everything
What happens when people say yes to God? There is no predicting the outcome.
The Power of Small Beginnings
Small beginnings produce colossal effects through the growth potential of living things. Or even through the reproductive process of nonliving viruses. The COVID-19 virus infected more than 768 million people and killed more than 6.9 million as of July 26, 2023.1
From the Upper Room to the World
In the spiritual realm, small beginnings can mushroom into world-changing ministry. The Holy Spirit’s power came upon 120 of Jesus’ followers in the Upper Room in Jerusalem (Acts 1:8).
They were the initial fruit of Jesus’s 3.5 years of supernatural ministry. They were the first people to say yes to His will for their lives. It was a small beginning. But it was exactly the right number to accomplish God’s purposes.
After Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, the number who said yes to Jesus instantly grew to 3,000 (Acts 2:41). Soon, it increased to about 5,000 (Acts 4:4). By the middle of 2023, it was over 2.6 billion professing Christians worldwide.2
That growth is the result of people who tell others what Jesus has done for them. It has continued for 2,000 years through an unbroken chain of people who have said yes to Jesus, extending from the 120 to you.
The “Good Infection” of Faith
The “good infection” of Jesus’ life passes from person to person like COVID-19. We cooperate with God in that venture.
We cannot plant Jesus’ life in others, but God usually does not do it without human witnesses. Our witness makes a difference. Instead of many dying from the “bad infection,” God saves, transforms, and fills with faith, hope, and love many through the “good infection.”
Your Role in God’s Expanding Kingdom
So, how is the Holy Spirit of Jesus moving you to contribute to this worldwide extension of His kingdom? The answer is related to what you are enthusiastic about and good at.
How can you use what you are good at and enthusiastic about to further God’s kingdom on earth? Small beginnings, perseverance, and God’s enabling grace (2 Corinthians 9:8) can bear more spiritual fruit than you can imagine. That is what matters, not fulfilling your dreams.
The Power of Saying Yes to God
I have experienced the power of saying yes to God. You can too.
My small beginning was saying yes to God’s call into vocational Christianity after resisting it for about five years. After that, I gathered more than forty years of life and ministry experience.
All that prepared me to write more than six hundred blogs after retiring from pastoral ministry. Unexpectedly, God has used some of those blogs to touch more than fifty million people through boosted Facebook posts in the Philippines, India, and nine African countries.
Two hundred sixty of those blogs formed “His Power for Your Weakness,” a book African pastors have used to teach Christian faith basics to more than 17,680 people in the last four years, with 7,590 saved as of January 2026. We have provided Chichewa Bibles to 12,325 people who attended the classes.
It began with a simple yet difficult yes to God’s calling away from a secular job I enjoyed to a far more fulfilling life of bringing joy to others.
Small spiritual beginnings can eventually yield colossal spiritual effects. It begins by saying and continuing to say yes to God!
1. WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard | WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard With Vaccination Data
Comments