Hope : A Big God for a Little People

So our series on Christmas and the advent series has taken a different type of turn this year. I am almost always prepared with my sermons months in advance, but things have just been different. I had all 5 sermons ready for December and then one day I was reading letters to Santa and ended up changing one message. Then I felt led to let others share during this season so we started that yesterday with Tanya sharing a lot of her life's struggles and how she overcame them based on the hope that God placed inside her. So the messages got all comboed into one big long one and I am just sharing as much as time will allow each week and enjoying it. So today's blog post will be a little bit short, but still worth the read as we work through the Christmas season and think about the hope, love, joy and peace that was delivered when baby JEsus(our Saviour) entered the world. Hope : A Big God for a Little People—Luke 2:1–5 Have you ever thought at all about God’s ordaining in your life. I mean, I loved baseball and sports and always wanted to play in college. When the opportunity was there, I had no desire to. Why? Why did I have no desire to? God took that desire away, and in its place called me into the ministry. Then, to pay my way through college I worked two jobs, one of which was at a gas station where I met Tara. Then, I ended up in a Psychology class where I was going to have to sit near someone I was feuding with at the time, so I asked Tara to sit between us. We ended up talking after class most every day, I took her on a date and the rest is history. But it all started with God changing my heart and my desires. God goes to a lot of trouble to pre plan the good things in our lives doesn’t He? Have you ever thought what an amazing thing it is that God ordained beforehand that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem (as the prophecy in Micah 5 shows); and that he so ordained things that when the time came, the Messiah's mother and legal father were living in Nazareth; and that in order to fulfill his word and bring two little people to Bethlehem that first Christmas, God put it in the heart of Caesar Augustus that all the Roman world should be enrolled each in his own town? Have you ever felt, like me, little and insignificant in a world of four billion people, where all the news is of big political and economic and social movements and of outstanding people with lots of power and prestige? If you have, don't let that make you disheartened or unhappy. For it is implicit in Scripture that all the mammoth political forces and all the giant industrial complexes, without their even knowing it, are being guided by God, not for their own sake but for the sake of God's little people—the little Mary and the little Joseph who have to get from Nazareth to Bethlehem. God wields an empire to bless his children. Do not think, because you experience adversity, that the hand of the Lord is shortened. It is not our prosperity but our holiness that he seeks with all his heart. And to that end, he rules the whole world. Proverbs 21:1 says: "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will." He is a big God for little people, and we have great cause to rejoice that, unbeknownst to them, all the kings and presidents and premiers and chancellors of the world follow the sovereign decrees of our Father in heaven, that we, the children, might be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ. Thanks for reading and have a great day!