If God is God, does He speak to us? I mean, does He speak here and now to bog ordinary people like you and me? Now, that’s an interesting question.

It is great to be with you in a new week and look at life again from a different perspective. We live in a world of superstars. We suffer from celebrity syndrome. Many of the people we admire and aspire to, well, they’re in the media, on TV in newspapers and the media tends to pump them up until they’re larger than life. With so many people like you and me, we end up feeling like little people, as though somehow we’re less significant. Maybe God’s like that. Maybe He only shows up for superstars.

Well last week, I introduced you to some superstars in my life, little people in the world’s eyes. This week, I’d like to introduce you to some so-called little people in history who God used mightily.

Let me take you back almost 3000 years to a time when a man by the name of Jehosaphat was the King of Judah. This is a time when Israel had split into two. And the ten tribes at the North were called Israel and the two tribes in the South were called Judah. And this King Jehosaphat, it’s a weird name, isn’t it. “Berni why are you doing this, why are you taking us back to the Bible and all these old-fashioned names. What’s that got to do with today?”

Well it depends on whether you see the Bible as a set of myths like Grimm’s fairytales or Aesop’s fables or a real historical account of what actually happened. And what I see is a real historical account of what actually happened that’s where I am.

So the story of how God did stuff with real people in real situations is His way of speaking to you and me, here and now. So humour me. Jehosaphat let’s call him Josh. So Josh is one of the good guys, he honoured God and God blessed him and all the people and they had peace and rest.

So Jehosaphat as King of Judah, had ten years of peace, there were no wars, it’s a real blessing. Then all of a sudden the Ethiopian army, one million strong decides it’s going to attack Judah. This is serious stuff; this is a war like the ones we see on TV only massive.

An army of one million Ethiopians is about to march on Judah, and Judah has a much smaller army of only five hundred and eighty thousand.

In the book of 2 Chronicles, Chapter 20 and verse 3 in the Old Testament it says that Josh was afraid, he was petrified, and he prayed. Nothing’s really changed has it? People tend to pray when they are afraid, when they have loss or when a disaster happens.

Anyway, Josh prayed and all the people gathered with him and they fasted and they prayed. It’s a huge crowd, because they were taking this very seriously. They were saying “God this army of a million people is marching on us what are we going to do? We can be taken as slaves, we could be killed, the place could be burned down.”

And in this crowd in front of the King as they were praying was a man, just one face, called Jahaziel. Jaza we’ll call him. There were thousand around him and somehow God chose him. The spirit of the Lord fell on Jaza like a bright light. Somehow deep inside him God empowered him.

Now the nation of Judah had recognised prophets. These were men whose job it was to listen to what God was saying. They were gifted to speak on behalf of God, that was their gig. But not Jaza, Jaza was one of the little people. He was a nobody, and God did something. God got Jaza to stand up in front of the King and the whole of the nation of Judah and say something on behalf of God.

Now remember the King isn’t a King like we understand Kings to be today. The King has absolute power and authority. The King has power of life and death over everybody. But Jaza just senses that God has touched him. And in the middle of this tense situation in the middle of a nation and a King who are bowing down before God and they’re petrified of the Ethiopian army marching on Judah. Jaza speaks barely hundred words. This is what it says in 2 Chronicles Chapter 20.

The Spirit of the Lord came on Jahaziel and he said, “Listen all you inhabitants of Judah and you King Jehosaphat, God has something to say to you today. The message that God has for you is don’t be afraid of this great army that’s coming against you, the battle isn’t yours the battle belongs to God. Tomorrow God down against them and the end of the valley, that’s where they will be, this battle isn’t for you to fight, take your positions, stand still and watch the victory that the Lord your God will win on your behalf.” (2 Chronicles 20: 14-17)

What courage must it have taken for Jaza to stand up and say something like that in front of the King, in front of a nation that was petrified? What if he got it wrong? They would stand there tomorrow at the battle and be defeated by a million strong army. And yet when Jaza got up and said this it rang true in the heart of the King. It rang true in the heart of the people who were afraid. And it goes on to say that the King and all the people bowed down and worshiped God and said thank you and praised God. It was an incredible encouragement to the nation of Judah.

You see they were afraid, they were focusing on what they could see, not what they couldn’t, because what they couldn’t see was God. They were focusing on what they knew was marching over the hill, an army of a million men. God knew that.

So God gets Jaza – a nobody, a little person, He raises up one of the very least so that the people would know that it hasn’t come from the man, its come from God. Because what “nobody” would stand up in front of the King and say something as radical as this? And it gave them an instant encouragement. Here was a small person, used by a big God for a huge impact.

There have been a few occasions in my walk with God where somebody has come along and given me a word of encouragement like that. And I’ve known instantly that it was from God. I remember on my last day at Bible College, I was just rearing to go, you know I want to do stuff for God and a man by the name of Mark came and spoke to me and he said, “Berni I just feel that God wants me to tell you, God is not in a hurry. He’s not in a hurry.” And that has just given me so much peace; it gave me the peace to wait until God was ready to use me in the way that He wanted to use me.

We think God would never use me to do anything significant, but He does. Look at Jaza, one face in a crowd of nobodies. One face in the middle of a country that was in despair. And God, for some reason picks Jaza and pours his spirit out on this man. And the man stands up and speaks boldly and prophetically exactly the words of encouragement that God wanted him to speak. And the next day, if you read on in 2 Chronicles Chapter 20 exactly what he said comes to pass. God fights the battle for His people and they defeat this massive army without raising a finger.

God does amazing things; God uses people we would never expect.

What about you? Do you believe that God still speaks today? Do you believe that a small person like you or me could be used by a big God?

Go on! Do you believe, do you have the faith, do you want to live your life serving a massive and wonderful and exciting and tender and loving God?

God uses little people to do amazing things.

You and I are, well, we’re us. But in 100 years’ time, if we’re lucky we’ll be an unknown name on a family tree somewhere. If not, we’ll likely be completely forgotten. There’s nothing, it seems, to make us stand out from the crowd.

Have you ever looked at your family tree? I have. My dad gave me a huge piece of paper with our family tree, going right back to the 1700’s to a Duchess of Romania. Of course, I recognised my generation and my parents and my grand-parents, but to tell you the truth, that’s about it. Just a long dry list of unimpressive names, pretty sad really. All people with lives. Who knows who they were?

Two books in the Old Testament, 1 and 2 Chronicles are books that chronicle the history of Israel. And the first dozen or so chapters of 1 Chronicles is a long list of dry boring names, sound familiar? Now you get to 1 Chronicles, Chapter 4 and verse 9, and so far they’ve been through 425 different names. Then suddenly without explanation there’s a brief biographical sketch given of a man called Jabez. It’s like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room. What’s going on there?

We’ve been looking at what I call “superstar syndrome”, you know, this notion that we all have great people that we admire, sports people media personalities, that’s great. But the media kind of pumps them up and makes them larger than life. And we live in a culture of fame and superstardom. And one of the things that I really love about God is in stark contrast to that, He loves little people and He uses little people.

The fact that there are big people, implies that we’re little people, we’re not as big, we’re not as important, we’re not as well-known, we’re not as wealthy as some of those other people. And God delights in these so-called little people.

Last week we talked about little people used by a big God, and I introduced you to some of the people in my life. People who in the world’s eyes might be little people, average people like you and me. But for me, in my life, they were superstars and they still are and they always will be.

Yesterday, we looked at a man called Jahaziel. And it’s a real encouragement to see historically how God used this nobody, this little person this face in a sea of faces to bring enormous encouragement and guidance to the King, when they were about to be attacked by the Ethiopian army, which was a million strong.

Today, we are going to look at Jabez because you go through all this whole family tree and the first dozen or so chapters of this book of 1 Chronicles. I got to tell you it’s really dry reading. But all of a sudden name number 426 in Chapter 4 and verse 9 is a guy called Jabez. This is what it says:

Now Jabez was honoured more than his brothers and his mum called him Jabez because it means I bore him in pain.” (It’s a good start to life, isn’t it?) Jabez called on God saying, ‘Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my borders, and that your mighty hand would be with me and that you would keep me from sin and I would cause no pain’. (1 Chronicles 4:9-10)

Isn’t it an interesting little biographical sketch that comes out in the middle of all these names? You know so and so begat so and so who begat so and so. And all of a sudden we hear about Jabez, and Jabez’s name is Jabez because his Mum says, “I bore him in pain”.

Could you imagine if your mother or mine called us “You are a pain”? If I was given a name in the culture where the meaning of names is important and my name was “You are a pain” and my mother gave it to me, now there is a stunning start in life isn’t it. And yet it says Jabez was honoured more than his brothers.

There are so many people who think that their start in life has ruined their lives. Maybe you had a lousy upbringing, maybe your parents weren’t the best, maybe you look at yourself in the mirror and you think I just don’t look anything or maybe there’s a health issue or a disability or something.

We all have something in our lives, don’t we? And we think, well you know I’m kind of handicapped, well you know I kind of can’t do as well as the next person because I’ve got this in my background or I’ve go this in my past and you know what I’m talking about. God would have none of that. Here’s this little person Jabez, it says that he was honoured more than his brothers. Why? Jabez prayed:

God bless me, bless me indeed, God enlarge my borders, God I want your mighty hand to be with me and God stop me from doing stupid things so that I may cause no pain.

Very specific prayer by Jabez. His name means, “I caused my mum pain” and he says, “But Lord I don’t want to cause anyone else pain.”

Here’s this man Jabez whoever he is, whoever he was, this is the only thing we know about him. And he humbled himself under God. He bowed down, he said, “God bless me.”

Question: What is Christianity all about? Is it doing good? Is it playing by the rules? Is it telling other people when they’re not playing by the rules? Is it being superior? Is it being a superstar? Well, those things are sure what used to be high on my list of what I thought Christianity was about.

But the more you look at it, it’s not about being mighty, it’s not about being superior, it’s not about telling people what they’re doing wrong. It’s about doing what Jabez did – humbling ourselves.

God I want you to be my God and me, I’ll be your me. Lord I want your way, whatever you say goes. Change the things that are rotten in me Lord, let me be a blessing. Let me do good, God bless me, be with me.

It’s so normal, it’s so ordinary, there’s nothing super spiritual or super academic about any of this stuff. We’ve this tendency of separating the spiritual dimension from our life and this huge separate gap but yet here Jabez is saying God I want you to be in my life. It wasn’t separate for Jabez. Lord, I had a lousy start, will you bless me, anyway? And it says the Lord honoured him more than his brothers.

God will you enlarge my borders? Yes! Will you give me influence? Yes! God, will you come with me? Yes! God stop me from doing the stuff that will hurt others. Yes! And right after the passage I read to you it says this:

And the Lord granted his requests.

What do people expect out of life? Superstars? Well … 00001% of us might become superstars. Wealth? Well you get wealth and how happy does it make you? Me, I like this prayer by Jabez. In fact I pray this prayer from my heart to God almost every morning:

Lord just give me a simple life, just bless me. And the borders, the borders I pray for that I want God to extend are the borders of this program and this message into different countries. Are the borders of these radio programs into tens and hundreds of thousands of people’s hearts. People just like you! A quiet, simple, spiritual desire to have God in my life, not separate, not in a cupboard, not in a box, not in a Sunday morning church box, but here with me every day.

Lord, bless me indeed today. Lord I just want to see you extend my boarders so I can touch more people for you. Lord I just want you to keep me from evil. Lord that I won’t hurt anyone. Lord I want you to go with me; Your mighty hand to be with me all the time. 

What a great prayer, and it’s that prayer that distinguishes Jabez from the 425 names that came ahead of him, and from all the names that came after him in that long, long list.

You and I, in thirty, forty or fifty years we will be forgotten. What will they write on your epitaph, what will they write on my epitaph? God honoured him, God honoured her more than their brothers or sisters?

Well, that depends, you and I, we’re just little people. But will be humble ourselves before a mighty God and let Him do great things through us?

Being a mother would have to be one of the toughest jobs going around. Absolutely!! And mums often feel that they go unnoticed, that nobody values their enormous sacrifice.

Of all the jobs someone could have in life, have you ever wondered what would be the toughest one? I’ve had a chance to think about it and I reckon being a mother would be the hardest of all. Of course that’s not an option to at least 50% of us. Being a Dad’s hard sometimes too, of course. But I don’t know, to me there’s something so incredibly special and sacrificial about mums – carrying the child, the pain of childbirth, the night feeds and mostly these days, it’s still the mum who stays at home with the teething and the dirty nappies, you know! Rewarding, but tough.

And so often the mum has to put her career on hold, it must be really tough. So often mum just wants to be her own person for a while, have some adult conversation for a while. My hunch is that some days mums feel undervalued, ignored and forgotten by everyone.

And yet you know the two sides of the motherhood coin, the sacrifice on the one hand and the reward on the other, they’re so special. I think the sacrifice is so much a part of the reward, seeing the kids grow up, seeing them develop, seeing them become independent. And you mix mum’s sacrifice in all of that, what must go on in a mothers heart who has borne this child?

You get a sense of that as a Dad. But I think you’d agree being a mum is so very special. Through all those different stages, through bearing the child for nine months, through the pain of childbirth, and then the feeding, and the toddler, and the school, and the teenage years and the young adult.

They all have different stages and different joys and different challenges. But they all along involve sacrifice. They all involve giving, making a long-term investment. And you know when I was a kid I never appreciated what my parents did for me, not even as a young adult. It’s not until you kind of have to start making you own way in the world and bring your own children into the world that you realise the enormity of the sacrifices that your mum and dad made for you.

And so much of being a mum is mundane, it’s routine, it’s a grind. Women often say no one notices, no one appreciates me. I do this stuff day after day, takes me all day sometimes half the night and no one appreciates me, no one even notices.

Let me ask you a question, does God notice? I mean does God show up to that place?

This week and last week on A Different Perspective, we’ve been going through a little group of programs called Little People Used by a Big God, because you know something? I think we need to know that God does show up. I think we need to know, and I think mums need to know in those difficult times God’s in that place with you. He hasn’t left, he hasn’t departed, he knows exactly what’s going on. God is in that place with you.

I’d like to introduce you to two mums today. One’s called Lois, and one is called Eunice. The Apostle Paul was responsible for telling much of the known world in the first century about Jesus. And he wrote almost half of the books in the New Testament of the Bible. You’d have to say Paul is right up there on the Bible “A” list. You name Abraham and Moses and David and the Apostle Peter and Paul, he’s one of them. He’s one important high profile dude.

Did God notice Paul? Of course, He did. Paul was a superstar and yet along his journeys Paul meets a young man who effectively becomes his apprentice, a young minister. His name was Timothy. Now Timothy is not as well-known as Paul, he’s not one of the “A” list names. You’d probably have to say Tim would be on the “B” list.

Paul writes two letters to Timothy in the New Testament. They’re letters of guidance from an old hand in ministry to this young fresh but really talent and gifted minister. And they’re beautiful, warm and loving letters. In the second of those letters in Chapter 1:5, the Apostle Paul writes this verse. He said;

I really, really want to see you again Tim, I’m reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois, and then your mum Eunice, and now lives in you. For this reason, let me remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you. (2 Timothy 1:4-5)

So Paul writes to Tim and he remembers Tim’s mother, Eunice. And he remembers Tim’s Grandmother, Lois. This one verse is the only place in the whole of the Bible that Lois and Eunice appear. But what a beautiful reminder of the impact that a mum can have from one generation to the next.

If Paul is on the “A” list and Tim is on the “B” list, well Lois and Eunice are really just extras. You know their names gets mentioned once. Yet Paul speaks of a beautiful faith that’s in Timothy and he says, “Look you know where that faith came from Timothy? It came from your grandmother Lois then she passed it on to your mother Eunice, and your mum Eunice she passed that faith Tim, on to you.”

And young Timothy ends up impacting hundreds even thousands of people’s lives with God’s love. Being a mum is one heck of a sacrifice. It’s an investment that lives on.

I imagine that when Lois was bringing up her young daughter Eunice, I imagine there were some tough days. There were no disposable nappies in those days. I imagine that when Eunice was a teenager, Lois had problems with her and yet somehow through all of that time Lois talked to her about God. Lois passed her faith on to Eunice and then Eunice gave birth to Timothy. He was a boy, he did all the stuff that boys did. He probably did all the stuff that teenage boys did, all the stuff that maybe your teenage boys have done, and yet Eunice talked to him about God and passed her faith on.

They experienced all the things that mums do today and then some. And yet Timothy went on to touch hundreds and even thousands of people with the love of Christ because of what Lois passed on to Eunice and what Eunice passed on to Timothy.

Some days we wonder whether these kids that we’ve loved and sacrificed for, whether they will ever turn out okay. God’s message to each mum today is that you have such an incredibly important job to do, from Lois to Eunice to Timothy to thousands of people.

And on those days that days that you look at your teenagers and you just want to scream, on those days when you as a mother feel as though no one notices and no one cares and no one understands what you’re going though. On those days, Jesus Christ is with you in that place, on those days He notices, on those days he wants you to taste and experience His love and encouragement for you.

As you grow in your relationship with Him, as you develop a faith and a joy of knowing Jesus, you have the most incredible opportunity to put that seed in to your children, like Lois did for Eunice, like Eunice did for Timothy. And Lois and Eunice must have looked at that boy Timothy as he grew up into a young man and started doing things in the name of Jesus Christ. They must have said, ‘What an amazing harvest, what an investment that was so worthwhile’.

God uses little people, like Eunice, like Lois, to plant seeds, to serve children, to make them ready to go and do things that God wants them to do.

He’s a big God. He uses little people like you and me.

It’s easy to look at some people and even at ourselves and think, if God were going to use anyone for good it wouldn’t be that one. We’re all too quick to judge, I think, who God could and would use, and who He wouldn’t. 

Most of us would agree that war is a horrible, ugly thing. So, what motivates people to join the armed forces? I spent ten years as an officer in the Australian regular army. For me, well I was young, it was an adventure, it was about excitement. But what about a Roman Centurion in the first century AD? What motivated him? Would have been a tough gig, an officer in an army occupying a foreign land.

The Roman Empire of course ruled the known world at that time. In fact if God was God and sent his son Jesus as a Jew, the last person you would ever expect God to use would be a Roman Officer, don’t you think? Well think again, because God has this habit of doing things through people that you and I probably wouldn’t have a bar of.

Cool is a very, very important quality and commodity these days. It’s about acceptance, it’s about funkiness, it’s about aspiration. Cool, is well … it’s cool. And if you’re not … you just aren’t. Ask any teenage kid and they’ll tell you, cool is an incredibly important thing. It’s everything.

Adults, we’re into cool as well. Things, people, we judge them, if they’re cool and acceptable we like them if they’re not, they’re not. We do that, don’t we? So if we were expecting God to use someone, if God is God and God is doing something good in the world and God is touching people’s lives, we would expect that He would use one of the cool people.

Would He use a Roman Centurion, a soldier and officer? Well not if you’re a first century Jew, I mean God is the God of the Jews. God was the God who chose Israel to be His chosen people. And Roman Centurions, Roman soldiers were a brutal occupying force. If I were a Jew in the first century I would definitely not be happy with God using a Roman Centurion to do something. But the scary thing is God did exactly that.

He was a man called Cornelius, and he lived in Caesarea, a port city on the Mediterranean. And it says that an angel appeared to him and this is what happened.

The angel says Cornelius! And Cornelius stares at the angel in absolute terror. This is what the angel says:

Your prayers and your giving to the poor have ascended as a memorial before God.

Isn’t that an interesting thing for an angel to say to a Roman Centurion? Your prayers and your giving to the poor have risen up and ascended and they’re like a memorial before God. And then the angel gives him some instructions. He says:

Look send some people over to a place called Joppa, to where this man Peter the Apostle is, and get him to come over here and tell you about this Jesus.

Recognise up until now the Jews thought that God was only for the Jews and Jesus had only come for them. I mean He was one of them. Jesus was a Jew and they figured well, if Jesus was the Messiah, not all of them believed it, but they said if Jesus is the Messiah surely He came for the chosen people for the Jews. God had a different plan.

God came for you and me as well as the Jews. Because God loves us all. Now you have to understand this is a radical, radical notion. And God picks Cornelius and sends an angel to this Roman Centurion and his family. God picks Cornelius to be the first of the Gentiles, to receive the good news about Jesus.

Now Peter is a Jew and it was a radical idea to him as well. But just at the same time as this angel was appearing in Caesarea to Cornelius, Peter was having a radical dream. You can read about it in the book of Acts Chapter 9. A dream that was opening him to the possibility of sending the good new to the Gentiles.

And so the men came to Joppa and they knocked on Peter’s door and Peter was ready to go and he went back to Caesarea with them. And he sat everyone in Cornelius’s household down and he told them all about Jesus. And it says in the book of Acts, while Peter was still speaking the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word – Cornelius, his family, his servants, his whole household.

The Jews who were there were astounded, that God had poured his spirit out on the Gentiles as well. And subsequently the Apostle Peter goes back to the other Apostles and says, “Look this is what happened guys … what do you reckon, is this legit?”

They had to talk about it; they had to think through their theology and say do you think we should let God go to the Gentiles as well?

And yet God had this plan. God had this plan to pour his love out to you and me as well as to all of the Jews. And you know what? You and I are a bit like those Jews that were there in Cornelius’ house, they were surprised that God would use Cornelius in such a powerful way.

You and I have preconceived ideas about what God should do and how He should do it and whom He should use, don’t we? We look at some people and think, “Well God could never possibly use that person for any good.” If you had asked Peter and the other Jewish followers of Jesus a few weeks before, would God do this, would God go to the Gentiles, would he use a Roman Centurion to do it? I bet you their answer would have been a resounding, “No, surely God could never use one of these brutal, Romans, to pour his love out.”

If someone asked you, “would God do something powerful through you?” What would you say? God is a big God, God uses little people, God makes some surprising choices.

Berni Dymet was an IT Consultant; information technology is what I did. I was a tough, hard-nosed, materialistic, businessman. Berni becomes a Christian and today, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people are listening to this program in over sixty counties. Go figure!! God does some bizarre things that you and I would never, never, in a million years think that he would do.

That is an exciting message. God doesn’t care about our external packaging. God cares about our hearts, and he got the angel to say to Cornelius, your prayers and your giving to the poor, the things that you do in secret they have ascended as a memorial before God.

What’s a memorial?

You know when you see a memorial to fallen soldiers for instance, it has all their names on it. And it stands above other things and separate from other things and it stands for a long time and it’s something you notice, it commemorates them and you notice it. So what the angel said was to Cornelius, Gods noticed the way you pray in secret. Gods noticed the way you give money to the poor in secret, that’s like a memorial in front of his eyes.

When God was looking around for someone that He could use to be the first Gentile, this memorial with Cornelius’s name was in front of God. It was there because Cornelius had a relationship with God. A Roman Centurion, for crying out loud, was doing this stuff.

And when God was looking around for some little people like you and me to do something amazing to pour out his Holy Spirit on the Gentiles, absolutely radical, this memorial was in front of God’s eyes. And God said, ‘I know who I’ll pick, I’ll pick Cornelius, because Cornelius has a heart for me, Cornelius has a relationship for me, even though he’s in an impossible job as a Centurion, Cornelius has bowed down before me’.

And so when we take that step and say, “God, I want a relationship with you like what Cornelius had.” And just quietly follow God, pray, adore Him, worship Him, do the things He asks us to do. That is like a memorial before God’s eyes.

And one day when God needs a little person just like you, to do something amazing that God has planned in His heart all along, that memorial will be in front of his eyes.

We live in a crazy, chaotic, calamitous and confusing world. I mean, if you were God, how would you keep a track of it all? Would you even bother?

I’m so excited to be with you again today. Here we are at the end of another week. I don’t know about your week but mine’s been pretty busy. In fact you look around at all of the things that are going on in our own lives, the kind of wider community and globally; six and a half billion people, and it just seems like utter chaos.

I was in India just one year ago (where a billion of those people live) and the crowds and the poverty and the chaos, they were kind of sad and exciting and mind-blowing all at the same time. I mean if you were God how would you cope with all of that?

You and I can’t because we’re not God. We’re flat out coping with our little corner of the world, right? We see the high-profile prominent people in the world, and somehow we get this idea, well, God would notice them but not me, not in all this chaos and noise. God would notice Billy Graham or the Pope, or George Bush or Bono, but not me. What do you think?

When you ask people a question like that you discover that there are two ways of knowing the answer. One is in our head. One means that we can recite the answer; one means that we can even argue it. Maybe I can quote the scripture verse that say no, no, that’s not true, God notices all of us. I can know that in my head. The other way of knowing it, is in our hearts. If you know it in your heart you live by it. If you know it in your heart it makes a difference to the way you see the world.

Well what about you? If I asked you, does God notice and care about and help little people like you and me, what would you answer? Would you know it in your head or would you know it in your heart? There’s plenty of people who know the answer in their heads but far fewer who know it in their hearts.

Well if God is God, of course He notices each individual, of course He cares, that’s one way of knowing it. But do you know in your heart that it’s true of God and you? When fear comes your way, when adversity comes your way, when uncertainty comes your way, when disappointment comes your way, does something in your heart go, “It’s okay because God is in this place with me?” Is there a quiet, beautiful voice breathing into your spirit saying, “I love you, don’t be afraid, I love you, don’t be afraid?” If so, you know it in your heart, if not, you don’t.

Jesus knew but we need to know in our hearts that God knows what’s going on in our lives, that God cares about what’s going on in our lives, that God can cope with what’s going on in our lives, that God is not surprised with what is going on in our lives. Jesus knew we needed to know that stuff. He was talking to some of his followers and He was saying, “Listen don’t be afraid. When I go, things are going to get tough. People are going to try and kill you and they might harm you. Don’t be afraid of those people”.

And I’m sure the people He was talking to said to themselves, “Well Jesus that’s easy for you to say, you seem to be able to do all these amazing miracles. It’s really easy for you to say but what about us?” I wonder what those same people thought when they saw Jesus hanging on the cross? And He said:

Look think of it this way, look at these two sparrows, what are they worth? What do you reckon, a penny, that’s what they sell in the market for, right? Yet not even one, not one of them will fall to the ground without God knowing about it, and without God being in control, not a one.

‘So’, said Jesus, ‘in God’s eyes what are you worth? More than these two sparrows you think?’ Well, people answered, of course we’re worth more than that. Jesus said, ‘Absolutely you are. He even knows how many hairs you have on your head. Even the hairs you have on your head are counted by God, so stop worrying.’ (Matthew 10: 26-31)

Now this is more than a metaphor. Do you know how many hairs you have on your head? I got to tell you, I don’t. Maybe you’re lucky and you’re bald and you can tell exactly how many hairs you’ve got on you head. But I’m not and I wouldn’t have a clue. God does though.

God knows every detail of your life and mine – how many hairs we have on our head, the things were good at, the things were not, the things were scared of, the things inside of us that need healing, the challenges, the fears, the hopes, the dreams, the adversity. God knows each one and He knows it better than we do. Isn’t that exciting? Doesn’t that make your heart go, nothing in my life is hidden from God. God doesn’t miss a thing. God has an eye for detail that we cannot begin to imagine.

I love how Jesus talks in pictures. I love it when He talks about these two sparrows, and you look at two sparrows and you know if God is God, I have to be worth to God than two sparrows. And then He says:

If these two sparrows drop from the sky, if just one of them dropped, God would be in control, God would notice, God wouldn’t miss a thing. How much more are you worth to God?

Don’t be afraid. God just doesn’t hang around with superstars, God hangs around with you.

Whenever it’s tough, whenever it’s scary, whenever people come against you, whenever there’s a battle, God sees that. God is in that place, in the middle of that. God knows who we are and what we need better than we do.

Jesus said of Himself, “If you want to know what God’s like look at me because I’m Him.” So when you read in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and those four gospel accounts, the historical records of Jesus, and you see Him touching the leper, you see Him standing up for the prostitute, you see Him protecting the woman caught in adultery, you see Him healing the sick.

You know what He’s saying when He’s loving those little people? “This is what I’m like; this is how I care for little people.” He didn’t hang around with the religious leaders. He didn’t hang around with the political leaders, He hung around with the little people.

Have you ever read one of those gospels beginning to end? Matthew or Mark or Luke or John? I dare you. It’s about a two to three-hour read to read one of them from beginning to end, and I dare you to read about Him. And when you see Him doing that stuff He’s saying to you and me, here and now two thousand years on, on the other side of the world:

This is what God’s like. This is what I’m like. Come to me because you are worth so much more than the sparrows, than the mountains, than the oceans, than the seas and the whole plant and the whole galaxy. You’re worth more than all of the stars in the universe to me. I know what’s going on in your life, I care, I want to be a part of that with you.

I believe God wants us to know that in our hearts today. You, today, here and now, do you know, have you heard? Have you heard him whisper in your life, “I love you so much?”

No matter who you are, what you’ve done, what life has done to you, how good, how bad, how happy, how sad, how wonderful, how horrible you are and your life is, today – here and now, God wants you to know something in your heart. Not only does He love you, not only did He send Jesus to die for you, He knows everything happening in your life and mine.

He wants to be a player. He wants to help. He wants to love. He wants to heal. He wants us to have peace when we have no right to have peace. He wants us to have hope when we have no right to have hope. He wants us to have joy when we have no right to have joy.

He wants you and me to know that in our heart. And my prayer for you is that right now God’s Holy Spirit will drop that truth into your heart for ever and ever and ever.