The littlest thing in your day can set you in a direction you don't
even realize until it is so depressing. You didn't even realize something so little…
That's why I have to be so very careful what the first thing I look on my phone for when I get up
in the morning is, because it doesn't take much. I don't care who you follow on Instagram.
They find a way into your feed. The people you unfollowed find a way back in. The algorithm
will attack you. Somebody said, "The Devil is a roaring lion." So is the Instagram algorithm.
It is looking for someone to devour. That's why they call it a feed. I figured this out. He's
looking to eat you alive. Something so little. It said the word from Elijah's mouth controlled
the weather system. How could something so small…? How could a wet market on the other side of
the world have you shut down and grounded from traveling? There has never been a better time for
me to preach this message I want to preach today, because everybody has to agree in this moment,
if you've never agreed before, that the littlest thing in your life or the littlest thing in
someone else's life can affect you in a way… The littlest things in your life right now, if
you can receive this word from the Lord today, are controlling the things (and maybe we can
help make this connection through studying Elijah a little bit) you have no control over.
I'll do my best to break it down as we move. I've always read Romans 8:28 with
a very specific categorization. Romans 8:28 is my favorite Bible verse because
it gets me through anything. It says, "All things work together for the good of those that love
God and are called according to his purpose." How could I have quoted it for so long
and only seen it through the lens of good things and bad things? I always read Romans
8:28 that all things, whether good or bad, work together for the good for those who
are called according to God's purpose. Now I realize that Romans 8:28 doesn't just apply
to good things and bad things; it applies also to big things and little things. It doesn't just
mean good things and bad things. It means the big things and the little things, and that's why
you cannot despise the day of small beginnings. Everything little leads to something
big. That's how you got here. That's how everything you see got here. It started with somebody's thought, an impulse in
the brain you cannot even see with the human eye. A virus has shut down the world.
Show me a coronavirus. You can't. Show me the effects of it. You can't get
away from it. How can something so little affect something so big? How can something
that happened to you when you were 12 still be haunting you when you're 42? How can
something so little control something so big? That's the lens with which I was looking
at the prophet Elijah's life. I was saying, "He controlled the weather with his word." I
thought about how our words control the weather, how when we speak things, when we say things, when
we say them not even out loud but to ourselves, it affects the weather of our hearts. How can a little thing like a thought lead you
down a track…? I mean, it's such a little thing, but little things lead to big things. So,
the prophet Elijah prophesies a drought. It's a wonderful story, and we
could elaborate on it for days, but we just want to talk about this little
instruction God gave him in verse 2. "Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah: 'Leave
here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan.'" That verse
kind of sounds on the surface like God will tell you everything you need to do
in your life, but I want to show you something very interesting about how God spoke to Elijah. One time someone asked me, "What do you
mean when you say, 'God spoke to me'?" He asked it very innocently. He said, "I
hear you preaching and say, 'God spoke to me.' I'm not sure God ever spoke to me. What
do you mean when you say, 'God spoke to me'?" The challenging thing about it was he was hearing
that as a voice, but I meant it as a thought. I don't experience God through my ears.
I experience him through my thoughts, and then I call it "God spoke to
me," but I didn't hear a voice. Here's what's interesting about how
God was leading Elijah. You have to pay attention to the small things in the text,
because the little things matter. He told him, "Leave here, turn eastward and hide in
the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have directed
the ravens to supply you with food there." Whoa. Can we stop for a minute
and talk about how ridiculous…? How is this going to work? We just
read it. We just skip right past it. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes down there
and the birds bring him…" The birds? Get ready for God to explode your box of
how you think he's going to provide for you. We have all of these limitations on
ways we think God can take care of us. We have all of these limitations on ways
we think God can take care of our family. We have all of these limitations on ways we think
God can use us. We have all of these limitations on ways we think God can order our lives, but
God said, "Get ready for me to take the lid off and start blessing you through birds. And not
just any kind of birds, but I'm going to use ravens…unclean birds, dirty birds." Have you
ever had God bless you through a dirty bird? I need you to put a "dirty bird" blessing in
the chat if you've ever had God use something just ridiculous. It didn't make sense. You
didn't see it coming. You didn't even like it. God has used people I didn't even like to bless me
before. Dirty birds. The ravens were dirty birds. God said, "I'm going to use a dirty
bird to feed you by the Kerith Ravine." He does this for a while. If I could tell you
the whole story, I would. Ahab needs to see God controls the rain, not Baal. He
needs to know that God is in control, that God is not only in control of the big things
in our lives but the small things in our lives. So, he takes Elijah to a place where he feeds
him what he needs in that season. Have you been in a season lately where God hasn't been feeding
you the same way he used to feed you? The word is so relevant right now, because up until now, you
had a certain way of how you thought it had to be. I had a certain way I thought
church was supposed to be. I thought in order to have church you
had to let people in the building, but God took the lid off of that. God is trying
to take the lid off of that just to show me that church is not just going to be
contained to a physical location. Now I'm setting you up. God is trying to show
you the same thing in your life. You've had some people leave you because God wanted to
show you that you don't need them to make it. Watch what the Bible says. It says that
every day the birds brought him bread in the morning and bread and meat in the evening
and he drank from the brook, but in verse 7, it says, "Some time later the brook dried up
because there had been no rain in the land." Let's talk about cause and effect. The brook dried
up because there had been no rain in the land. Why had there been no rain in the land? Because
Elijah spoke, "There will be no rain in the land." Now he is the victim of the consequence of
his own obedience. It's cause and effect. Every day he goes out to get some water
from the brook, there's a little bit less and a little bit less and a little bit less. You have to be wondering right about now,
"When is God going to stop it from going down?" Have you been wondering that lately? Like, "When
is God going to stop it from decreasing?" This is not a message for everybody. If
you're living in a time of overflow, it's wonderful. I'll see you next week. I'll
preach next week on living in the overflow, but this message is about the little bit. Every time he came to the brook… This didn't
happen all at once. It's just a little bit less, a little bit less, a little bit less, a
little bit less, until the point where one day he comes to the brook and there's nothing
there and he has to move to the next miracle. So, how does God move you to your next miracle? Let me ask you a question. It's a
conversation now. Do you want God to lead you? How did God lead Elijah from
the brook to the widow's house? How does God get us from where we are to
where he's taking us? How does he get us from the good work he began to the good work
he wants to finish? It may not be the way you think. The Bible says God led Elijah to
his next assignment through a limitation. We often say things like, "Where God
guides, he provides." And he does. He'll put a dirty bird to feed you by a brook.
He'll show you a secret stash that nobody else in the neighborhood even knows about. How many
know I'm right about it? God will encourage you in ways that are specific to you, but just
as sure as that is true, this is also true: sometimes God will lead you through what you lose. This is the more painful thing to talk about, but I think it's very important. Is
God trying to lead you by limitations, and is God trying to lead you just as much
by the doors he closes as the doors he opens? If the brook had kept flowing miraculously,
Elijah never would have left that spot. If Elijah never would have left that
spot, he never would have met that widow. If he never would have met that widow, that widow
and her family would have died of starvation. If he never would have gone to Zarephath,
which was right in the heart of Baal territory, he never would have gotten to Mount Carmel where
he called down fire and the whole nation repented. Isn't it crazy how a little thing can lead to a
big thing? Isn't it weird how something can go all over the world but start with one little
connection? Isn't it crazy how God can use something in your life that you thought was bad,
but later you look back and say, "No, it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a thing that led to a
thing"? It's just a thing that leads to a thing. All things work together for the good. If the
brook doesn't dry up, Elijah doesn't move on. If they didn't break your heart, you
wouldn't have learned the lesson you learned. If you didn't go through Goliath, you
wouldn't have been ready to be a king. If you hadn't been thrown in a pit, you
wouldn't have been positioned in Egypt to feed generations. "You meant it
for evil, but God used it for good." We have all of these lids or, I could call it,
all of these limitations on the ways we think God can move. If it feels good we think it's God,
and if it feels bad we think it's the Devil, but God is calling us to recategorize in this
season of our lives. I'll prove it to you. David came to Goliath and
saw him as a meal ticket. The rest of the nation saw him as an enemy. The king said, "If you kill Goliath, you'll
never pay taxes again and you can marry my hot daughter. The hot one." David said,
"What now? Let me do the math on this. Okay. How big is he? It doesn't matter.
Watch this." Because a little thing… You look like you know the power of a
little thing. Saul said, "You're only a boy. You can't fight him. He's nine feet tall. You
think somebody as little as you can kill somebody as big as him?" David said, "No, no, no. I
only look little. See, the reason I look little is because I have to be hidden. I'm a secret
weapon. A secret weapon can't be really big. God had to sneak me to the battle line." And how did he get there? Through bringing a
lunch to his brothers. That's a little thing. What did he see when he got there? A
nine-foot-tall giant. That's a big thing. Isn't it crazy how a little
thing can lead to a big thing, how you coming through Moncks
Corner, South Carolina, could lead me to Christ? Isn't that crazy
that I went to North Greenville and met my wife because you came through Moncks Corner
because you signed up for the ministry? Obedience in a little thing.
Take the lid off a little, because I found out what you call
little might be the thing God leads you to what is exceedingly abundantly above
or beyond what you could ask or imagine.
