Elijahsha: A Dinky Miracle

We've been in a series for a good while now, and we're we're almost done.

We're almost finished with this one.

It's been called Elijah Shah.

We've been studying the lives of Elijah and Elisha, these two prophets who lived about 3,000 years ago.

Their stories run into each other, so we just sort of smushed their names together.

Um and I've I've just have to say this: I've had a really good time in this series personally.

It's reminded me about some really important things.

It's reminded me about some convictions that I really hold, and and it's always nice when you remember why you do certain things the way you do them.

Because sometimes you forget.

You know, for example, one of the convictions that I really have as a person who teaches and a person who teaches in church is that it's important that I don't just teach with the Bible, but I teach from the Bible.

Because as a person, I can observe things, but God can reveal things.

And we should never settle for man's observation when we can have God's revelation.

And so, you know, it's fine to talk about certain topics and then find some verses here and there that go along with that, but it's a whole other thing whenever we open up God's word and we just say, hey, God, you teach us what you want us to learn from this, to teach from Scripture.

And that's what we've been doing this entire time.

We've been opening up the Word, we've been opening up these stories.

And even if you haven't been here and you haven't experienced any of this, it's totally fine.

Each story stands on its own because each story is packed with the profound and the practical and the powerful that we need for our lives, but we've just been opening it up and reading it, reading what's next and saying, hey God, what does this have to do with our life?

Teach us something that we need to know.

And I think He's been really faithful to do that.

I've really enjoyed this in my life personally.

That's exactly what happened as I prepared for this week, because the story that we're gonna look at this week, it's honestly just to let you know, it's one of the stories that I sometimes have wondered why it's in the Bible.

I've just, it's a story that I'm like, why is this in here?

You know, back in the day when the Bible was originally written, you're talking about scrolls, right?

Like papyrus and and I imagine that that was pretty hard to come by, and it was pretty, you know, laborious to actually write down scripture and preserve it.

And if they wanted to copy something, you had to literally like hand copy the entire thing onto another scroll and pass that along.

I mean, it would have been really nice to edit and make sure that you've only got the stuff that you really need to have because of how time-consuming it was just to record all this stuff.

And the story that we're gonna look at today, the story in Elisha's life, it's just sort of this weird story that almost seems like it doesn't fit.

It shouldn't have made the cut.

Because it's it's a miracle, which is awesome.

But there have been a lot of miracles in Elijah and Elisha's story.

It's just that it's it's like a dinky miracle.

You know?

Which sounds like an oxymoron, but it's absolutely true.

This this is literally a dinky miracle.

I mean, it'd be nice for us just to say it's a it's a minor miracle.

And in the story of Elijah and Elisha, there's huge miracles.

Miracles where there's a lot at stake.

You know, we've seen God bring fire down from heaven when Elijah was confronted by the prophets of Baal in this showdown to see whose God was real and it was epic and the stakes were high and God showed up in a big way.

We've seen people healed of diseases, life-threatening diseases.

We've seen people who were starving and food was miraculously multiplied.

We've seen entire armies defeated because of what God did.

There's actually a story that's just after the story we're going to look at today of a king who sends his army, his like a whole army, just to attack Elisha.

Sends an army for one guy, and Elisha's servant looks out his window, sees this army surrounding where they're staying, and he freaks out.

And he goes to Elisha and he says, Elisha, we're doomed.

This army is surrounding us, and Elisha doesn't panic at all.

He just goes, You know what, God, let my servant see what I can see.

And the servant opens his eyes and he sees the army that's surrounding them, but then he sees this army of angels surrounding that army, and it's really intense and it's almost indescribable.

And then that angelic army blinds the army that was there to attack Elisha, and that army is then led back to where where they where they're from.

Can you imagine being a king and sending an army after one man and your entire army comes back blind?

Like that's epic.

That is God showing off, that is God throwing down.

Those are the kind of miracles that we often think about.

Those are the ones that sort of belong in scripture, the big ones where the stakes are high.

But today's miracle, it's it's dinky.

I'm just warning you.

It's a minor miracle.

But look, look, minor miracles count.

Okay?

Like little miracles, they count.

And if you have the right perspective, if you have the right mindset, little miracles actually happen quite a bit.

In fact, in the last two weeks, I've had two minor miracles.

You may not count these as miracles, but I don't care.

They're minor miracles to me.

Uh, number one, the Maple Street Biscuit Company opened up on Town Lake Parkway like a week and a half ago.

And, you know, this may not count to you.

You may have not heard of this place.

I want you to know first and foremost, I am not paid to say what I'm about to say.

I'm wearing their t-shirt, not as an endorsement.

I'm just a fan, okay?

A year ago, Christmas, I'll never forget it, life-changing moment.

Went to Chattanooga with my wife.

We were walking down the street, we saw this restaurant in Chattanooga, we said, that looks good.

It's a breakfast restaurant.

Breakfast is easily the best meal of the day.

100%.

Because there's restaurants that serve breakfast all day long, which tells you there's never a bad time to have breakfast.

Ever.

You don't see restaurants that at 6 a.m.

are like, you want to, you know, I don't know, you want some soup?

Like, no, I don't.

But you want some eggs at midnight?

Yeah, I'll do that.

Right?

Breakfast is is good at any time of the day.

It was a breakfast restaurant.

I love breakfast.

I walk in and I order something that like, like I think when we die and go to heaven, there will be colors we've never seen.

Okay?

And we'll go, wow, I didn't know this existed.

And that's how I felt when I took a bite of my food.

I was like, these are there's flavors that are combining together that I didn't know were possible.

These people deserve, like, I don't know if there's a Nobel Peace Prize for cooking or something like that, but they deserve it.

It was it was amazing.

And so I ate there at the Maple Street Biscuit Company in Chattanooga.

It was life-changing.

I took a picture of my food and I showed it to you the next Sunday.

That's how excited I was.

Then we went again a few months later.

I walked in, I ordered the same thing, because I'm that guy that I just, if there's something amazing, I'm like, what if the next thing isn't as good?

I just I stick with what I know.

And I ordered it, and it was amazing.

And I told Megan, I've got to go find the manager.

And she said, Please don't.

Please, you're so strange.

We go to places and you like, you want to go talk to people, and I just please eat with me.

And I said, No, this person needs to understand their contribution to the world.

I've got to find this person.

And so I walked up, I said, I'm just looking for who runs the place.

And like, oh, it's this person.

I talked to him, I said, I want you to know, I love your food.

Like, literally, come to Chattanooga just to eat here.

It's that good.

And thank you for what you do.

Thank you for what you do.

And this person looked at me and said, Well, where are you from?

I said, I'm from Woodstock, Georgia.

And they said, We're actually opening one in Woodstock, Georgia.

And I was like, Are you?

If you're joking, I'll kill you.

Like, I'm not.

There's knives and forks everywhere.

I've got plenty to use.

Like, don't do this to me.

Like, no, we're opening one in Woodstock, Georgia.

And I just want you guys to know, feel free to eat there.

They are closed on Sunday, unfortunately.

Um, you know, them and Chick-fil-A, they're they're they're doing their thing, but you can't eat there today, but if you eat there later this week and you love it and you enjoy it, you just need to understand that God did that for me.

Okay?

They're here because God loves me.

I believe that.

I believe it's a miracle, and you all get the joy of reaping the benefits of that miracle, but it was for me, okay?

It's for me.

Miracle number two, dinky minor miracle, but miracle nonetheless, is my TV broke earlier this week.

And you might be saying, well, why in the world is that a miracle?

Guys, my TV broke the week of Black Friday.

As a man, there's nothing I enjoy more than useless technology.

My favorite thing is is technology that doesn't even need to exist.

It just does.

And it's awesome just for the sake of being awesome.

I love tricked-out technology that's just cool.

And for years, for years, I've been telling Megan, you know, there's these things called 4K TVs.

And if you're like me, you know what 4K means.

You know what terms like HDR mean, high dynamic range, it's very important.

Um I've been waiting to buy a TV that does all these cool things for years, just because they exist.

But it's really hard when your wife doesn't value the same thing to convince her that it would be a good idea for us to spend several hundred dollars on a piece of technology that's just an upgrade of what we have that works perfectly well.

And so I haven't been able to justify it.

For the last three or four years on Black Friday, I'm looking at the deals because on Black Friday I don't understand why, but it's like the people who make TVs, they're the ones who say, just take it.

You know, it's normally a thousand dollars.

We'll just give it to you if you show up.

If you show up early enough, here's a TV.

You know, that's how Black Friday works.

It's magical that way.

And I couldn't convince Megan to let me go buy a TV on Black Friday, but then God reached down from heaven this week and he broke my TV.

And my wife looked at me, and I mean, it was like, it was the same experience I had when the the person at Maple Street in Chattanooga said we're doing one in Woodstock.

My wife looked at me and said, Justin, can you go buy us a TV?

And I was like, I was born for this.

Like, I've been waiting for this for years.

I already know exactly what we need, and the deals were awesome because it's Black Friday.

I bought a TV, it's gonna be here any day, it's gonna arrive, it's gonna be the best thing, you know, in the world, other than my children and Jesus and all that stuff.

It's gonna be really good.

Okay?

It's like, it's on the list.

It's a minor miracle, it's a dinky miracle, but it counts.

Alright, I'm I am joking, not about buying the TV, but you know, maybe God did it, maybe he didn't.

But here is an actual dinky miracle recorded in scripture in Elisha's story, 2 Kings chapter 6, starting in verse 1.

2 Kings 6 · chapter mention

It says, one day the group of prophets came to Elisha, Elisha was like the leader of the prophets, and told him, as you can see, this place where we meet with you, it's too small.

Got too many prophets.

So let's go down to the Jordan River where there are plenty of logs, and there we can build a new place for us to go meet.

All right, he told them, go ahead.

Isn't this a riveting story so far?

Just remember, this made it into the Bible, okay?

Please come with us, someone suggested.

I will, he said.

Again, it's just you're on the edge of your seat.

So he went with them, and when they arrived at the Jordan, they began cutting down trees.

But as one of them was cutting a tree, his axe fell into the river.

What?

Oh, sir, he cried, it was a borrowed axe.

Where did it fall?

The man of God asked.

When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and he threw it in the water at that spot because, and then the axe head floated to the surface.

Grab it, Elisha said, and the man reached out and grabbed it.

And that's the end of the story.

God performed a miracle to rescue an axe.

That's in the Bible.

And it's it's I mean, it's so crazy, right?

Because A, there's not a lot of wow factor here.

It's like they went to the river and the axe falls in the water, and the guy's like, oh no, that's not my axe.

I borrowed it from a friend.

And Elisha's like, hold on, and he throws a stick in the water and then it floats, which is really cool.

I think that is a miracle.

Metal doesn't float.

Right?

I'm not like, if you don't believe me, take an axe today, find a river.

There's several around this area, and throw it in and watch, see what happens.

It's not gonna float.

God performs a miracle, he literally breaks the laws of physics to rescue this axe so this guy can give it back to his friend who it's like it's just not a big deal.

The stakes are not high.

Like, what is the worst that happens if the axe is at the bottom of the river?

The guy who owned the axe is gonna be a little ticked off.

But it's an axe.

And granted, 3,000 years ago, axes were probably harder to come by than they are now.

You didn't just go to Home Depot buy an axe.

You know, it's the Iron Age at that point in time, basically.

So you've gotta you've gotta like mine for ore and then refine it, and that was a very hard thing, and it didn't happen all the time.

So it would have been harder to find an axe.

The equivalent in our world today would be like this if you borrowed a friend's truck, because you needed to do some work, and then you you wrecked your friend's truck.

You you're no one's injured, like it's everyone's okay, but the truck is is damaged, and and that would be bad, but it's not the end of the world, right?

It's like, hey, in the grand scheme of things, big deal.

It's a truck, it's a thing, it's replaceable.

That's what's going on here.

It's an axe, and it's in the river.

Everyone's fine.

Everything's gonna be okay.

The dude's gonna get over it.

You can buy him another axe, you can buy him a better axe.

You know?

It's so odd that God performs a miracle to rescue an axe.

Because it just seems like such an inconsequential thing.

It's just sort of it's dinky, right?

This is a dinky miracle, but it makes it in the Bible why.

You know, anytime you're reading scripture and something strikes you as odd, stop there and and and ask yourself what God's trying to say.

Because oftentimes when something strikes me as being really odd, really strange, that's the perfect time to have a conversation with God.

And it's interesting, as I as I thought about this miracle, out of all the miracles to choose from in Elisha's story, God reminded me about something incredibly important.

Something that I think we we often lose sight of.

And if you're here this morning, you've been following for G you've been following Jesus for years.

This is a dynamic that we have with God that oftentimes uh we need to be reminded of.

Because when we're not reminded of this, when we forget this, it changes how we interact with God, it changes how we approach God and not for the better.

And if you're here this morning and you haven't made the decision to follow Jesus yet, that's something you're still kind of figuring out.

You're here, you're seeking, that's awesome.

I'm so glad you're here.

I I hope that this dynamic that we're gonna talk about through this story, I hope it hits you.

I hope you you understand this from the forefront of your relationship with God, right on the front end, because if you can go into a relationship with God, understanding this important, important dynamic, it will it will vastly change your experience with God for the better.

And this is this is the dynamic.

God cares about little things.

God cares about little things.

This axe is a little thing, it's anticlimactic for a reason.

You don't sit here and read the story, and when the axe goes in the water, you go, no.

It doesn't matter.

It's a dinky little thing, it's an axe, and yet God rescues the axe.

God cares enough about this guy and the fact that his friend's gonna be mad or whatever.

I don't know why the guy should be that mad.

His friend doesn't have an axe to attack him with, he's safe, right?

But but God cares about small things, to the point that he's willing to do a miracle, to perform a miracle for some little reason.

Psalm chapter 37, verse 23 says, The Lord directs the steps of the godly, he delights in every detail of their lives.

Psalms 37:23

You probably heard that phrase, the devil is in the details.

No, God is in the details.

God delights in every detail of your life.

God cares about small things.

This is a big deal.

And by the way, this is something that Jesus definitely demonstrates.

Jesus is the clearest picture of God that we'll ever get.

That's what the Bible actually says.

He's the perfect representation of God, he is the mirror image of God.

So if we want to know what God's like, what God values, what God cares about, we look at Jesus.

Jesus makes it all clear.

And Jesus did something similar in his ministry.

He performed a miracle for a really inconsequential thing.

It's in John chapter 2, it's actually the first miracle that Jesus performed.

John 2 · chapter mention

It says the next day there was a wedding celebration in the village of Cana in Galilee, and Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration.

But the wine supply ran out during the festivities.

Oh no.

Right?

They ran out of wine.

It's the same reaction that you have to the axe fell in the river.

Like, okay, that happens.

He says the wine supply ran out during the festivities, so Jesus' mother told him they have no more wine.

And I love Jesus' response.

He says, Dear woman, that's not our problem.

My time has not yet come.

In other words, Jesus is saying, Okay, this is not a big deal.

This is some wine ran out.

They've clearly been drinking plenty of wine for it to run out.

They're good.

But his mother told the servants, Do whatever he tells you.

So his mother knows that something's about to happen.

Standing nearby were six stone water jars used for Jewish ceremonial washing.

Each could hold 20 to 30 gallons.

These are huge jars.

Jesus told the servants, Fill the jars with water.

And when the jars have been filled, he said, Now dip some out and take it to the Master of Ceremonies.

So the servants followed his instructions, and when the Master of Ceremonies tasted the water that was now wine, not knowing where it had come from, though of course the servants knew, he called the bridegroom over, and he said, This a host always serves the best wine first, and then when everyone has had a lot to drink, he brings out the less expensive wine, but you have kept the best until now.

This miraculous sign at Cana in Galilee was the first time Jesus revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

It's the first miracle Jesus does, and it's it's just kind of dinky.

I mean, it's cool, and depending on how much you like wine, it might be really cool, but like it's it's not a big deal.

They're out of wine.

Who cares?

This is not like the times that Jesus raised someone from the dead.

This is not like the times that Jesus healed lepers or miraculously multiplied food or walked on water.

This it's not, it's just sort of like okay.

But it illustrates this very important detail.

And it's that God cares about details, God cares about the small things.

And this becomes very personal when you understand something that Jesus says in Luke chapter 12, verse 6.

Luke 12:6

He says, What is the price of five sparrows?

Two copper coins?

Thanks to inflation, it's probably like six now.

Yet God does not forget a single one of them.

In other words, God cares about sparrows.

And the very hairs on your head are all numbered, so don't be afraid, you're more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.

This says that God cares about you.

We know that God cares about small things to the point where he's willing to do miracles for small things.

Axes, wine.

And then we know that God cares about us.

He cares about us to the point where he knows the number of hairs on your head.

If Megan woke up in the morning and I said, babe, while you were sleeping, I counted the hairs on your head.

That's how much I love you.

She would just say, That is very creepy.

Um please don't ever do that again, you know?

Like you have to really be obsessed with someone to care.

Do you even care how many hairs are on their head?

To wonder that, how many hairs are on their head?

But God cares that much about people.

See, so God cares about you, and he cares about the little things, and that means that God cares about your little things.

Think about that for a second.

God cares about your little things.

One of the things I hear pretty often in conversations with people be describing situations they're going through in life, problems they're having.

It's just something that happens a lot in the conversations I have with people, and sometimes as they're talking about it, I'll just ask, well, have you, you know, have you prayed about it?

Or you want prayer.

Sometimes they'll offer that.

Hey, you want to pray about it.

And sometimes people will say, you know, sure.

But you can tell they're not excited to do that.

They're not, maybe it didn't even cross their mind to pray about it because it just doesn't seem like a big deal.

I notice this dynamic so often in people who follow God is that we like to pre-qualify our prayers.

We like to pre-qualify our situations and figure out which ones are worth God's attention and which ones aren't.

So sometimes things will happen to us, and and and personally it's a big deal because it really affects us.

Even though it's a small thing and we know in the grand scheme of life, it's not a big deal.

It's like an axe falling in a river, it's something like that, but it really bothers us.

We'll we'll on the front end say, I know this isn't that big of a deal, I shouldn't be upset about this, I shouldn't be this bothered by it.

And so we don't pray about it, we don't take it to God because we just don't feel like it's worth God's attention.

It's not big enough to bother God with.

It's a very normal thing to think.

But it's that dynamic, that understanding that God is so big that we better make sure we only bring Him the big things that that often reveals a major misunderstanding of who God actually is.

I'm just trying to imagine if I had a rule at home as a dad that, hey, don't talk to me unless it's something big.

You know?

Don't bother me unless it's something really, really big.

And my kids just knew, hey, leave dad alone unless it's an emergency.

What kind of relationship would that be?

I'm totally okay with my kids bothering me with very small things.

And by the way, they do.

Okay?

But I don't mind that much.

I mean, some sometimes it does get on my nerves because I'm not as good of a dad as God is, but I don't mind that much because they're my kids and I I love them, and you are God's child.

You are his son, you are his daughter.

You're not bothering God when you take your small things to him.

In fact, what you're actually doing is you're acknowledging who God actually is.

You're acknowledging his love for you.

You're acknowledging the fact that he cares about you so much so that he knows the number of hairs that are on your head.

He cares that deeply about you.

And when you bring your small things to God, you're acknowledging that God cares.

And God is willing, apparently, from Elijah.

From Jesus' story, God is willing to do miracles if it's necessary to solve small problems.

I've experienced this personally in my life.

Several years ago, two or three years ago now, Megan and I were about to celebrate our 10-year anniversary, which is a big deal.

Ten years.

It's a decade, you know.

You never know if you're gonna get another decade, so you've got to celebrate those decade anniversaries in a big way.

And so it's the 10-year anniversary, and I'm like, man, we need to do something awesome.

You know, we we hadn't really gone anywhere as a married couple since our honeymoon.

We've got kids now, so it's it's hard to go places, you know, uh at least to go far.

Chattanooga's about the furthest that we go, but now that Maple Street's here, we probably don't even need to go there anymore.

Um, there's no reason.

It's just there's no reason.

They have nice museums, but you know, I don't know, it's not the same.

So anyway, uh, we were looking for a place to go, and I thought, man, I want to do something big for our 10-year.

And I had it all planned out, and I was looking at you know prices online of different places that we could go, and I was like, this is gonna be awesome.

This is, you know, we're gonna celebrate our 10-year anniversary, right?

She deserves this.

And what I was banking on was getting money back on my taxes to be able to pay for that stuff.

And we just had a child the year before, and you know, apparently when you have kids, you get tax breaks.

That's why we keep having our kids.

You know, it's like, well, this is this is actually gonna save us money if you really think about it.

It does not.

Um by the way, if you're thinking about having kids for the financial benefit, just that you need to change the way you think and pray, different things, okay?

Um, but but I thought we were gonna get money back.

And turned out we got we owed money, which was great.

And so what I thought was going to pay for our our vacation actually became like a little financial crisis.

And we had to scramble real quick to uh to get that money so we could you know pay the government more, which is great.

We were happy to do it.

And so I was I was pretty devastated because I I again believe that my wife deserved a great experience for our 10-year.

But you know, that's how life goes.

Things like that happen.

And even though it bothered me greatly, I I pretty quickly went into the realm of, yeah, in the grand scheme of things, this isn't a big deal.

We'll be okay, we'll we'll find something fun to do.

A few months later, someone actually reached out to me to ask for my help with something, and uh, and it happened to be that they needed my help on this project that they were working on, they were doing, uh, the same exact week of our anniversary.

And I told the person, I said, Hey, look, I I'd love to, I'd love to help you with this, but the problem is I uh I have an anniversary that week, and I haven't really planned what to do yet, because I don't really know what we're gonna do, but I know we're gonna do something.

Okay, so I just don't know if I can commit to helping you at that week because of the fact that we have an anniversary, I'm sure you understand.

And the person said, Yeah, I totally understand.

And and then they reached out to me not very long after that and they said, Hey, I really was thinking about it, and I really want you involved in this.

What if what if we put you and your wife up for like a nice, a nice little getaway as just our payment for you helping with this?

And I said, Yes.

You know, that would be amazing.

You know how, you know, some people are like, no, I couldn't, I couldn't.

I'm not that person.

I absolutely can and do.

So, and I actually encourage you to be that.

Like if someone wants to do something amazing for you, just go like, okay, and say yes.

Because that's that's how God is, it's grace, right?

Receive.

So I said, yeah, that would be, man, that would be amazing.

You don't you don't have to do that, obviously.

It was way more than my time for this this thing was worth.

But the person really felt like they wanted to do that.

And so they end up sending Megan and I to this place that was way nicer, way nicer than I could have afforded, way nicer than what I had planned.

And we we pull up to this place and I'm sitting there like, wow, this is amazing.

And I told Megan, I'm just blown away.

I'm so surprised that this has happened.

And Megan looked at me and she said, I'm not surprised at all.

And I said, What do you what do you mean?

She said, From the moment we found out that we were gonna owe money on our taxes and we weren't gonna be able to take this trip, I have been praying from that day on that God would bless us with something that was more than what we were planning to do.

And I said, Way to go, Megan, you know?

Like, yeah.

And by the way, if if you're you know, if you're if you're single and you're you're dating someone, make sure that you're going for someone that loves Jesus.

Because the cool thing about it is when you forget to pray for something, they don't.

There have been a lot of times, I'm serious, where I believe I have been richly blessed just because I'm standing next to her.

And God has blessed her because she's been faithful and I'm just in proximity, and that's pretty awesome.

So value that.

But Megan said from the very moment that she found out we weren't gonna be able to do this trip, we weren't gonna be able to afford it, she started praying that God would bless us with something more than we could even imagine.

And here's the deal like, it's an anniversary thing.

In the grand scheme of life, it's not that big of a deal.

It was a big deal to us, but but I mean, honestly, when I think about all the problems and all the issues that I know about in people's lives, even people's lives here, I just, it's not something I'm gonna complain about.

It's not something I'm gonna call my friends about and be like, you won't believe what happened.

We're not gonna get to go where we wanted to go for anniversary.

Like, it's not something that registers that high on the emergency list.

And so when it happened, I just went, oh well, you know, big deal, that stinks, I'm mad about it, but I didn't even think to pray about it.

And I'm a pastor.

Didn't even cross my mind because I'm like, it's just this life.

I'll save my prayers for the big things.

But Megan knew better, and Megan began to ask God to do something about our little problem.

And God said yes.

And he provided something for us that we could not have afforded, and and it was an amazing, guys, it was an amazing anniversary, and I'm like 99% sure that Judah was conceived on that trip.

So, like, there's that.

Okay?

So our life changed forever on that trip.

So, in a lot of ways, it was actually a very expensive trip now that I think about it.

But whatever, that's all about perspective.

God cares about the small stuff, and he cares about your small stuff.

So the question that we have to ask ourselves is really simple Am I bringing the small stuff to God?

Like, what what what little thing is bugging you right now?

Like, is there is there anything, is there one little thing going on in your life that is really bugging you, it's really driving you crazy, it's upsetting you, but it hasn't even crossed your mind yet to pray about it.

Because it's just not that big of a deal.

And you're instead of praying about it, you're just telling yourself to get over it.

You're telling yourself don't don't worry about it, don't think about it, forget about it, just just move on or whatever, but have you stopped and instead of forgetting about it, instead of moving on, instead of not worrying about it, have you just brought it to God?

Do you bring your small stuff to the God who does miracles for little things?

Like praise God for dinky miracles because it shows us that he's willing to do big things for little problems.

And if you have a little problem today, maybe God is waiting for you to ask him for help.

Maybe God wants to do some big thing for your little problem to show you just how big his love for you is.

Because he loves you guys, he loves you.

And when you have something going on in your life, I don't care in what part of life it's in, I don't care how much it registers on the grand scheme of life's problems, because God cares about you, he cares about your little thing.

So bring it to him.

Never ever ever pre-qualify your prayers, never ever, ever sit and make a list of which things are worth praying about and which things aren't, which things are worth God's attention and which things aren't, because God can do it all.

God is not like us, he doesn't have limited bandwidth, he doesn't have limited resources.

So there's never a moment where God's having to choose, like, oh, do I help this person or this person?

I can only help one.

That's how we have to be in life, but that's not how God is.

So bring everything to Him.

Philippians 4 6 says, Don't worry about anything, instead, pray about everything.

Which means that if there's not, if there's anything you haven't prayed about that's going on in your life, pray about it.

Because we should pray about everything, the big and the small.

Like, I'm serious, praise God for dinky miracles like this in the Bible, because now we know that God actually cares about the small stuff in our lives.

That's important.

That's huge.

And worship team, if you guys want want to come out, we'll wrap up.

It's really important to pray about little things.

It really is.

Number one, it's awesome when God answers prayers, and he does that so often.

But I think sometimes it's easy for me to lose sight of the fact that God might want to answer my little prayers just to build my faith, so that when the big problems come, I have enough faith to meet the big ones.

Because anytime God answers a prayer, it builds your faith.

And so maybe, maybe part of the reason that we need to bring our little things to God is so that God can show us in those moments that he does care about us, that he's for us, that he's with us, that he can do anything, so that when the big problems come our way, we have the faith that we need to meet those problems head on and know that my God is gonna take care of this.

Because my God cares about the little things, and if he cares about the little things, how much more does he care about the big ones?

In 2010, when when Liam was born, our oldest uh got off to a pretty rocky start.

And I told that story a bunch of times.

He was he was in the NICU for the first two weeks, we didn't know if he was gonna make it.

And it was interesting.

Because I had never prayed like I prayed when he was in the NICU in my entire life.

I had never prayed like that.

I'd never prayed with that much urgency.

And one night I was driving home from the hospital, I was just broken, and I was I was actually questioning God.

By the way, it's okay to do that from time to time, just to say, God, are you listening?

And I said, God, are you gonna are you gonna do something?

Are you gonna show up?

Because the doctors don't seem to know what's going on.

It's been two weeks and it's only getting worse.

Are you gonna do something?

Because I need you to do something.

And God spoke to me in that moment, and he reminded me of two dinky miracles that he had done for me that same year.

Two like little small miracles that he had performed in my life that year.

It's the first year I ever actually experienced something that I could say without joking, without, you know, just kind of turning it into a story.

This was actually a miracle.

One was I was working here with the youth, and we were over in the arena, that's our youth space, and the church had really just been built, but then the economy tanked, and so we had to really hit the pause on all spending.

And that's actually kind of hard with kids because we love, love kids at his hands.

We love the next generation, and we put a lot of resources into making sure that the experience that young people have here is is amazing.

And so we had this amazing space in the arena, but it was just blank, it was empty.

It was like a big warehouse, and we wanted our students to walk in and feel at home.

And you know, you don't tend to feel at home in warehouses.

And so I really was thinking about some things that I wanted the youth to have.

I wanted them to have, you know, couches to sit on and a place that just felt like you could relax and be yourself.

And so I was I was thinking through all that.

I'd planned some things that I wanted to purchase to make that space better for them because I think they deserve the best.

And and I went to my boss at the time and I said, hey man, I've got this stuff.

I've tried to find the best prices we can find.

Um, it's it's$3,000 total, which is not a small amount of money.

But in the grand scheme of things, it's not crazy either.

And he said, Man, we just don't have it.

Why don't you pray about it?

And I was actually mad that he told me to pray about it.

Because I was actually coming to him to be the answer to my prayer, right?

But the reality is I hadn't prayed about it at all.

I thought I'd thought about it, I'd planned for it, but I hadn't actually prayed about it, and so I took his advice and I prayed about it once.

And at that time I was actually doing a prayer journal, and so I actually wrote out, God, if it's your will, and I had to put that little disclaimer because I felt weird asking God for$3,000.

Like, God, if it is your will, three grand would be great.

And uh, and it's crazy.

I wrote that down, I didn't tell a person, not one person.

About two months later, we got a letter in the mail from a parent in the youth group, and I didn't know this woman really at all.

I'd spoken to her maybe two or three times, but her son was coming to the youth group, and I guess he was he was getting a lot out of it, and she just wrote in this letter, I was praying for the youth group today, and God told me that I needed to write a check specifically for the youth group.

And I open up this envelope and it's$3,000 exactly.

It was amazing, right?

And that's awesome, but but but hear me out, it's kind of a dinky miracle.

Because I used it to buy couches.

I mean, it's like maybe their knees were sore at the end of a youth night.

I don't know.

Like it wasn't, but I'm saying it wasn't a huge issue.

It wasn't like, oh no, our kids don't have couches to sit on.

What will they do?

Big deal.

But God did like a miracle.

That's crazy.

That that shouldn't have happened.

God spoke to her, gave her the exact number that I prayed for.

I remember flipping back to my prayer journal, just in case I was crazy.

It was written down exactly.

It was$3,000 exactly.

And then there was another one that happened a few months later that I don't even have time to get into right now.

But it was an another dinky thing.

It was this thing that I wanted to experience and found out I wasn't gonna be able to, and so a person that I I love and was kind of leading me at the time said, Well, pray about it.

And I said, Okay, fine, I prayed about it.

And God answered it like tenfold from what I could have ever imagined.

And as I'm driving home from the hospital in tears, asking God if He's gonna do something about my son, God spoke to me and He said, I I gave you$3,000 for couches.

I provided this other little experience that you asked me for.

You think I'm gonna abandon you when your son is hurting and sick?

You think I did those little things just to leave you in this situation?

And it's like it clicked for the first time that the reason that God had done those things in my life was to build my faith.

So that in the moment I was in in this big situation, this big problem, my son in the NICU, I would actually understand that no, my God answers prayers.

My God shows up, my God can do things.

And honestly, if I hadn't brought those small requests to God, I don't think I would have had the faith that I needed to get through that period.

Because it was rough.

So when you bring your little things to God, don't be surprised when God answers those and uses those to build your faith so that it's big enough for when the big problems come.

Because our God shows up.

He loves you, he cares about you, he cares about the smallest details in your life, so bring it all to him.

Bring it all to him.

Let's pray together.

Jesus, thank you so much for loving us like you do.

Thank you so much, God, for being a God who cares about details.

You care about the small stuff, you care about things that most of us would look at and say are inconsequential.

You cared enough to miraculously rescue an axe so a guy could give it back to his friend.

Jesus, you cared enough to miraculously make sure that a party could keep going.

You care about the smallest detail in our lives, and so Lord, help us be people who bring you every detail of ourselves.

Help us be people who bring to you in prayer, in earnest and honest prayer.

Help us bring to you every minute problem, every little frustration, every tiny dinky issue that we're dealing with.

Help us, God, bring those to you with the expectation that you're going to answer.

We love you, Jesus.

We worship you, we pray all this in your name.