How do you know when something is right? I remember learning basic math. We were taught to check
our subtraction by adding and our division by multiplying. Spiritual things don’t have mathematical proofs.
So, how do we know?
Spiritual things are inspired. They come as promptings or callings. Sometimes they come as visitations.
Such things are not common to all people, but with a little experience and practice we can identify them.
When knowledge or information is imparted or downloaded to us from God, we are aware that the
truth of it is superior to the way we receive knowledge and information in the natural world.
I was recently working on a sermon about how the Bible often shows God taking small amounts of
resources and turning it into something great. I happened to walk to my front door and saw a young girl,
probably between 8 and 10, walking to the bus stop. As I turned to go back to work, I received a
prompting to pray for her. I stood at the door and prayed for God to make her great and more than
sufficient to meet her day at school, with the other children, and with her teacher. As I returned to
sermon work, I realized that we are God’s greatest resource and when we feel small, He can make us
great. This was an important message about how God turns the small into more than enough.
The season of Advent is about waiting, hoping, and longing for a new experience of the gift of Jesus in
our lives. There is no mathematical proof to detect when it comes. It may even resist cooperating with
the calendar but when it comes, we will know because something more will be revealed to us about the
one who is, the one who was, and the one who is to come.
Pastor Gary
