When You’re Down To Nothing, God Is Up To Something

WHEN YOU’RE DOWN TO NOTHING, GOD IS UP TO SOMETHING

INTRODUCTION

A. HUMOR

1. The Pastor's wife walked into the kitchen to find her husband stalking around with a fly swatter. "What are you doing?" She asked. "Hunting flies" He responded. "Oh. Killing any?" She asked.

2. "Yep, 3 males, 2 females," he replied. Intrigued, she asked. "How can you tell them apart?" He responded, "3 were on a Monster drink cans, and 2 were on the phone."

B. GOD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

1. On Sept. 25, 1999, 47-year old Joan Murray went on a skydiving trip. She had done this 30 times before. She jumped from 14,500 feet, hurtling down at 80 miles per hour.

2. When she found that her main parachute would not open, she was able to open her reserve chute at about 700 feet above the ground. However, in her panic she spun out of control, causing her second chute to deflate and she began falling again.

3. When she hit the ground it broke a number of bones in her right side, including her right hip. To make matters worse, she landed on a large fire ant mound, where, unable to move, she was stung by over 200 fire ants.

4. Paramedics quickly transported her to a hospital. For 2 weeks she stayed in a coma. As the doctors monitored her condition they found that the fire ants probably saved her life. Their poison actually acted as a shock to kept her heart beating, and stimulated her nerves so her organs wouldn’t shut down.

5. Joan Murray’s story is proof that things really do happen for a reason, no matter how painful or devastating the experience might be. 2 years after her full recover, she was back skydiving again & landed safely, feet first, and with no sign of fire ant mounds around! [Source: People.com]

C. THESIS

1. How horrible to be helpless and fire ants covering your body! Now we can’t blame God; it was this lady’s own fault for jumping out of a perfectly good plane.

2. But even in the middle of our troubles, when it looks like God is nowhere around – God is at work. His hand will soon materialize. Have faith in God!

3. My subject this morning is about God’s Care for you, and the title is, “When You’re Down to Nothing, God is Up to Something!”

I. WHEN YOU’RE DOWN TO NOTHING

A. YOUR SITUATION

1. You may be down to nothing – no options, no finances, no help, no medicine. But how many times were people in the Bible down to nothing, but God still worked it out.

2. You see – it’s never really been about you, what you do and what you have. God’s always been the One in charge of your life, the One who worked everything out for you. We give ourselves too much credit.

B. WHO’S MADE ALL THE BIG DECISIONS?

1. You didn’t decide where you’d be born or in what century you’d be born in – God did that! You didn’t decide who your parents would be or what level of intelligence you’d have – GOD did that! You didn’t decide whether you’d be a boy or a girl, or what color your eyes were going to be – GOD did that!

2. Since you’re NOT responsible for all the other big things that happened in your life, what makes you think you’re so all-fired important to run everything else? It’s GOD who’s in charge of your life.

3. It’s He who makes the Sun to shine and the wind to blow. It’s He who makes the flowers open and the stars to twinkle at night. So when you’re down to nothing – don’t despair – God doesn’t need anything you’ve got, to work His will.

4. God needs no flour to make bread. He needs no nets to catch fish. He needs no spark or fuel to start a fire. He needs no surgical suite to fix a broken body. God is Jehovah-Jireh, our Provider. So when you’re down to nothing – start to rejoice! Because it’s time for God to work a miracle.

II. EXAMPLES OF PEOPLE WHO GOT DOWN TO NOTHING

A. JOSEPH

1. JOSEPH was down to nothing - He was sold into slavery - wrongfully accused of rape and thrown into jail. Those he helped forgot him. He was at the bottom of the barrel - innocent, yet jailed in a foreign country. If that had happened to us, we would be so mad that we would bubble up like a bad paint job.

2. But God was up to something in Joseph’s life. In a short time Joseph was Prime Minister of Egypt!

B. GIDEON

1. GIDEON was down to nothing. The Midianite horde had ravished the land like locusts. Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress - hiding from the Midianites. He had reached the bottom of the barrel - he was down to nothing.