Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Trust”
Our Bible verse for today: “Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.” Leviticus 26:8 (NIV)
Our thought for today: “God can do a lot with a little.”
In Leviticus 26:8 Moses was teaching a great truth about God to a skittish and doubtful nation of Israel. Repeatedly the people had shown themselves to be fearful and unfaithful in the face of adversity and big challenges. So Moses was explaining that even though they were a relatively small and weak group, especially when compared to their enemies, as long as God was working on their behalf they would be victorious despite the odds.
There’s an old saying that goes, “God plus one is a majority.” That was true in their case and it’s true in yours too. With God working in them, through them, and with them, five of them would chase away a hundred enemies; ten thousand of the bad guys would flee in fear before only one hundred faithful people of God. The point being that God can do a lot with a little.
I see this truth lived-out on a weekly basis in the life of Oak Hill Baptist Church. We’re a small church, currently running 70-80 on a Sunday morning. But we’re an Acts 1:8 church. We are committed to being on-mission with Jesus outside the walls of our church buildings in our Jerusalem (Cumberland County), in our Judea (Tennessee), in our Samaria (Eastern Kentucky), and to the ends of the earth (foreign missions).
We have ongoing ministry projects in our town with the Bread of Life Rescue Mission; in our state with the Tennessee Baptist Children’s Home; in Kentucky with our partners at New Beginnings Church; and we also send people on international mission trips. And those are just the regularly scheduled large scale ministry projects. There is much more that our folks are involved in as well all throughout every week.
One of the most common observations visitors make about our church is that “You folks do so much!” and that is absolutely true. So it could lead a person to think that the members of our church must be exhausted by all that work. Surely the people must be stretched thin and running on fumes as we frantically try to squeeze it all in and make it all work.
But the exact opposite is actually true. Visit with us and you will find a group of happy, joy-filled, relaxed people who love each other, who take care of each other, and who genuinely enjoy being together. There is no striving and straining; no anxiety over ministry projects’ no stressing over results.
How can that be? How can so few do so much with so little and be peaceful and serene about it? It’s only by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. What you see at Oak Hill Baptist Church is a group of people who have surrendered their will for God’s will; people who are willing to simply be used by God to accomplish whatever it is that He wants done; and people who realize the truth of Zechariah 4:6, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.”
The truth is that God can do a lot with a little. If you faithfully give Him the little that you have to offer, you can trust Him do a lot with it.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 