My girl Carla hooked me up on Sunday. She didn’t know that I’d missed church to nurse the two little ones who had colds. She didn’t know that I had tried to go to her church’s live webcast but the connection wasn’t working. She didn’t know that I had missed hearing a sermon and tried to hear her pastor’s sermon, but she knows and listens to the Holy Ghost. She called me on her way home from church so she could drop off Sunday morning’s message to me. She said she thought of got me as Bishop Ben Gibert of Detroit World Outreach in “The Necessity of Hope” told his congregation not to despise small beginnings because greatness usually starts out as a baby, just like our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn (Luke 2:7).
This is the major prophecy we see in Micah that announces to the world 700 years before Jesus comes to earth that He would come and where he would be born.
But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days (Micah 5:2).
Bishop Gibert reminded people that Jesus wasn’t born doing miracles and prophesying but lay in a manger; no place greater was available to Him. And this is the same with us and is what Carla wanted me to remember: That just because my ministry now occurs in my home through telephone and couch conversations and writing on my laptop on the dining room table, I must remember the prophecy given of greater things. Whatever God has given you may start in Bethlehem, the smallest town of the tribe of Judah, but, like Jesus, is destined for greater things, if that’s what God has told you. We must have hope.
“You got to have your hope in God and you got to have some hope,” Bishop Gibert said. “You got to have a picture of better, not just because it sustains you when things are bad, but when something good is coming you have an expectation that will allow you to notice even a small manifestation when it comes.” And I will remember this word, every time my opportunities don’t seem to happen when I think they should. And I want you to remember this word, every time opportunities don’t happen the way you think they should. We cannot despise small beginnings, especially when our destiny has always been wrapped up in something great (Ephesians 2:10).
Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith