What is it that distinguishes ordinary people from extraordinary people?

What separates the people who go on to do remarkable things from the rest of us? It's tempting to think it's talent. Or luck. Or being in the right place at the right time. But when you look closely at the lives of people who actually accomplish something out of the ordinary, the same pattern keeps showing up. They've quietly invested in something most people skip over. They've taken the time to know God.

Daniel, in the Old Testament, is best remembered for surviving a night in the lions' den. But the den is just one episode in a much longer story. What underpinned everything else, his wisdom, his words, his courage, the steadiness that made kings notice him, was a daily relationship with God.

There's a line tucked away in the same book that describes the principle.

"The people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits." (Daniel 11:32)

The word exploit is worth pausing on. It means a bold or daring feat. The kind of thing that, looking at it from the outside, makes you wonder how an ordinary person managed it. The answer the verse gives is simple. They knew their God.

So what does that actually look like in practice? Four areas worth deliberately investing in.

1. Time in God's word

Faith builds when we spend time with what God has actually said. Not just absorbing it from someone else, but reading it ourselves, slowly, regularly, letting it shape how we think.

"Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17)

The word of God isn't a textbook. It's a light for the path you're already walking on. The more time you spend in it, the more you start to see by it.

2. Time with God's people

I'll be honest, sometimes I find God's people more discouraging than encouraging. We're a mixed bunch. But that's the point. We're meant to do this together, even when each other is hard work.

A useful question I keep coming back to when I'm in a gathering of believers is: what is God actually trying to do through this room, and why are we together? The answer reframes a lot.

The writer of Hebrews puts it bluntly: encourage each other every day, while it's still called "today," before any of us drift off into something corrosive. The community matters because the drift is real, and it happens fastest when we go alone.

3. Time in God's Spirit

Worship, in any form that genuinely engages your spirit and not just your head, pulls you closer to the heart of what God is doing. Sometimes that's a song. Sometimes it's silence. Sometimes it's a long walk. The medium matters less than the willingness to actually stop and be present.

The fruit Paul lists in Galatians 5, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, isn't a checklist of things to try harder at. It's the description of what grows in a life that spends real time in God's presence.

4. Time in God's world

Real faith doesn't stay indoors. We're meant to be with God for the sake of other people, and with other people for the sake of God. The two are inseparable.

There's a fascinating detail in Exodus 33. Moses pitched a tent outside the camp, away from the noise and the crowd, and called it the tent of meeting. Anyone who wanted to seek God went out to the tent. The implication is striking: God wasn't meeting them in the comfortable middle of camp. He was meeting them outside it.

For most of us, faith only really grows when we're willing to go to the places we'd rather avoid. The conversations we'd rather not have. The communities we don't naturally belong to. The needs that aren't comfortable to look at. Outside the camp.

I don't want to watch God work from a distance. I don't want to be the person whose stories are all second-hand. I want to tell my own stories about what God is doing, and I can only do that if I keep showing up where the action actually is.

The thing that ties it all together

The common element across all four areas is time. How you spend your time is the most honest window into what you actually prioritise. Anyone can claim a list of values. Look at where the hours go and you'll find out what someone really values.

Two questions worth sitting with.

• What does my faith look like in public?
• What does my faith look like in private?

The gap between the two answers is usually where the real growth needs to happen.

One last thought

There's a quote often attributed to Einstein, probably wrongly, but it lands anyway. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Growth isn't a few giant leaps. It's thousands of small steps over years. The people who become extraordinary didn't take a shortcut. They just kept showing up, day after day, in the four areas above, while most of us were waiting for a moment of dramatic transformation that never came.

So if you imagine yourself ten years from now, more rooted, more useful, more genuinely extraordinary, what would the next small step look like, and what's stopping you from taking it tomorrow?