if it matters to you, it matters to God

I was browsing my Facebook feed yesterday and this hits me, "if it matters to you, it matters to God." And I feel like God reminds me that every little thing that I thought He ignores, He always remembers. He knows our hearts and minds, He sees us and He remembers us. He understands every tiny bits of us because He created us.

As I ready 1 Kings 17 today, it makes me wonder how great our God is in the past and until today. I always ask Him if He can still perform miracles like in the past and I realized He is doing great things even until today. Perhaps it is not so visible in our eyes because we have lil' faith unlike the people during that time. In this time that we all have the answers, with the help of Technology, Science and Psychology. We can really rely much now with our human capabilities and strengths. There's nothing wrong with those, it makes our life lighter. Yet during those times, they don't have all the things we have right now and they can clearly see how God works, provides, and performs miracles in their lives and their faith is so firm, just one word from Him, they trust Him fully.

Imagine God told you that there will be a great drought and He asked you to venture into a new place and promised you that a raven will bring meat and bread and you will drink in a brook while staying in that place.

Imagine you are a widow, searching for food in the midst of draught and someone asked you to give him a bread but you just have a handful of flour. You don't have anything to offer, you are alone with your child, no support is coming around then suddenly someone is asking for food and promised you that if you make a bread for him, all the jars will not run dry and will be full again.

Will you believe?

As I read that passage, I realized those little things like our basic needs, He still remembers them. The widow is not forgotten, she taught that was their last food and she was almost prepared to die with her son, but God noticed her, with her firm faith she experienced fullness, emptiness leads to fullness when we offer it to God.

And in this season, there are many unanswered prayers and I keep asking God if He forgets them, thinking that perhaps those are little things in His eyes and it doesn't matter, perhaps I should not think about those things. But I am reminded again that if it matters to me, it matters to Him because He is all knowing God and I don't need to remind Him all the time because He knows me in the "inside" and He embraces my inmost being. I am fully known. fully loved, and fully seen by Him just like Elijah and the widow.

He knows our needs, our longings, our aspirations, our prayers, hopes, and dreams that we don't utter to anyone. He sees us and He cares for us. He loves us so deeply that even giving His only Son to die for our sins, to be rejected on the cross, to suffer so we can experience His fullness, He did it all. So we won't suffer in hell and experience His wrath. He hate our sins, God is loving and He is also Holy and just. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, no one can come to the Father except through Jesus.

If you feel like meaningless and worthless. If you feel like there's no one to turn to just like the widow, you are experiencing draught, emptiness, and brokenness in this world, I want to remind you that you are not here just for that, you are here to experience also the fullness of life in Jesus. Ask the forgiveness of your sins, tell all your brokenness to Him, and have faith like a mustard seed that Jesus can save you in your situation. Accept him as your Savior and turn away from the sins of this world.

²³ All of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. ²⁴ But God treats us much better than we deserve, and because of Christ Jesus, he freely accepts us and sets us free from our sins. ^25-26  God sent Christ to be our sacrifice. Christ offered his life's blood, so by faith in him we could come to God. And God did this to show that in the past he was right to be patient and forgive sinners. This also shows that God is right when he accepts people who have faith in Jesus. Romans 3:23-26

Beloved, we may not have all the answers but God remembers us and even those little things that don't matter to others but matters to you, matters to God as well. He sees you and He loves you. Keep the faith! Take heart! By His grace, we'll finish the race so when we face Him, He will call us "my faithful servant."

Elijah Announces a Great Drought

17 Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe^[a] in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.”

Elijah Fed by Ravens

² Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah: ³ “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. ⁴ You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.”

⁵ So he did what the Lord had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. ⁶ The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.

1 Kings 17: 1- 6 , Bible Gateway

Elijah and the Widow at Zarephath

⁷ Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. ⁸ Then the word of the Lord came to him: ⁹ “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” ¹⁰ So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” ¹¹ As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”

¹² “As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”

¹³ Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. ¹⁴ For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’”

¹⁵ She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. ¹⁶ For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.

1 Kings 17: 7- 15 , Bible Gateway