Month: November 2019

If God loves us, then why is everything so bad? Why won’t God fix it? If God is all-powerful, then why is it still not better? 

If we’re honest, these are the anguished questions we all ask in times of deep suffering. This week, our series on the holiness of small things takes an unexpected turn. We’re looking at the Apostle Paul’s thorn in the flesh—a mysterious condition that threatened the health and ministry of the world’s most powerful evangelist. This portion of Paul’s letter to the burgeoning church in Corinth gives us one answer to these universal, anguished questions.

I hope you’ll listen in as we lean into the holy power of small things—even painful small things—to accomplish the glory of God.

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This month we’re learning the Kingdom truth that God works through small acts of faithfulness done in great love. We’re learning not to despise or discount a person, a ministry, or a gift simply because it is little. We’re learning not to assume that everything that God does is only ever big.

But we also have to learn to actually trust God with what is small. It’s one thing to give a small portion of what we have to God. But what if a small portion is all we have? What if a little is all we have left? Are we still called to trust the Lord with, literally, what we have to survive?

Dangerously, uncomfortably—scripture suggests the answer is often yes.

This week we’ll learn the lesson of the widow at Zarephath—how having only a little neither excludes us nor excuses us from being the source of God’s abundance in a suffering world.

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This Sunday, we face something about ourselves: we are small.

Yes, God is big. But we are small. And, in America, we think that nothing small is good. We think that only big, popular, powerful things matter. Whether we realize it or not, we think and believe that small is irrelevant; small is embarrassing.

But “God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are.”

If we despise small, we reject the way of Jesus, and I’ll be the first to confess to you: I struggle with this holy truth.

The world as we know it—its systems, structures, values—is passing away. And God is ushering in a new reality. A Kingdom in which small is holy; small is powerful.

Small things are catalysts for big transformation.

Listen in as we seek God’s revelation on “The Holiness of Small Things.”

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