Oak Hill Church of Christ 3-23-25 Message: "Meet Jesus At Your Jericho"

Oak Hill Church of Christ Preaching Minister, Randy Sterling, delivers a message on the importance of recognizing God and His nature in order to grow faith and peace.

Nobody would pray to their dog or cat. Nobody would trust their bird with help on a difficult test or tough day at work. In moments of pain and struggle, who would reach out to their aquarium and the goldfish inside it?

We pray to God because in all ways we can comprehend, God is superior to us. He is more wise, more intelligent, more experienced, more powerful, more competent, and more compassionate than we could ever be. He is the ideal and perfect being. If God ordered the universe and everything in it, that makes Him a remarkably powerful being worthy of worship.

However, there are a great many individuals who seem to disregard this when the challenge proves too great. They begin to doubt because they transfer their own personal limitations onto God and imagine that He, too, will fall short. There are other individuals as well, who have nominated themselves the superior being. To them, God is a magical instrument of their own will. God is powerful, but He's also backward, puritanical, stuffy, and old. To them, God needs to be quiet and sit in the corner until His powers are needed. Then He is to do as He is told and then go sit back in the corner again.

God, through Jesus, makes no bones about the nature of the Creator. The Almighty is indeed powerful, and He does indeed have a pattern and plan for your life. But, He is also loving. In addition to His great power, He wants to use it to care for those who love Him and follow him. Both God and Jesus understand that there is little value to be gained from serving a deity who is either too weak to help, or too uncaring.

If you've been struggling with difficulty and feeling alone, if your life of faith has been going through a trial, consider making sure you're placing God in the right place in your life. If He is worth praying to because He can help when you can't help yourself, treat Him like it. Turn to Him and devote yourself to Him, and see if things don't improve.