Daddy, How Big Is Your God?

Genesis 32: 7-12

A businessman suffered some financial losses at the same time when his wife was seriously ill.
He came home one day, discouraged and respondent.
His five-year-old daughter, sensing her father's mood, gave him a hug and said,
"Yesterday in Sunday school, my teacher said that God raised Jesus back to life
after He had been dead for three days.
It takes a great big God to do something like that, just how big is God, Daddy?"

That five-year olds' question lifted her father out of his depression because he realized
that the God who had raised His Son was more than big enough to help his family through this time of crisis.

There is a connection between that incident and the prayer of Jacob in the Old Testament.
Like the businessman, Jacob was a frightened and despondent man.
Jacob had deceived his father, Isaac, and had cheated his brother, Esau, out of his inheritance.
Jacob went on to make a new life for himself, which culminated in cheating his father-in-law, Laban,
out of just about everything he owned.

Jacob was the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham, two of the most godly men of the Old Testament,
but he was also one of the sneakiest, most manipulative characters of the entire Bible.
Jacob was returning home when he received word that his brother, Esau, was coming with 400 men to meet him.

Suddenly, he was panic-stricken!
The Bible says, "Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed." (Genesis 32: 7)
In desperation, Jacob did something that he hadn't done for a long time -- he prayed.
Jacob's prayer reveals that he wondered if the God of his forefathers was big enough to help him in his time of distress.

God has promised, "to do Jacob good," despite the fact that he was a thief and a liar.
But in spite of all of God's promises, Jacob wasn't really sure that his father's God was big enough
to save him from his brother, Esau.

As we think about Jacob's plight, I wonder how many of our sons and daughters are wondering
the same thing about us.
I wonder how many of our children are asking, "Just how big is your God, Daddy?"

The kind of God, in which our children believe, is to some extent mirrored in the kind of parents we are.
They may not ask us directly, but we can be sure they wonder, and we ought to be willing to answer their questions.

Big Enough to Deliver from Danger

"Daddy, is your God big enough to deliver us from the dangers which confront us daily?"
That is a question our children could be asking daily, and it is also implied in Jacob's prayer:
"Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him,
lest he comes and slay us all, the mothers with the children." (Genesis 32: 11)
Jacob knew he was in danger and wondered if his father's God was big enough to deliver him.

Our children face many dangers in today's world: kidnapping, child abuse, prostitution, pornography,
drugs, and war and the threat of wars.
The world in which our children live is such a fearsome place that one child psychologist estimates
that more than 70 percent of all American children are permanently neurotic.
All of us live in a fearsome age -- riots, rapes, robberies, and murders.

Elmer Davis once wrote a book entitled, Two Minutes until Midnight.
The title came from a cover of "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,"
which showed a clock with its hands at various intervals of time.
At one time, the hands were at eight minutes until midnight.

When the Russians got the atomic bomb, the hands moved to three minutes until midnight.
When the Russians developed the hydrogen bomb, the hands moved to two minutes until midnight.

No wonder our children are frightened and neurotic.
They have every reason to be so!
Unless!
Unless we, as parents, believe our God is big enough to deliver us from the dangers of the world we live in,
and unless we pass that belief on to our children.

The Bible is perfectly clear -- God is big enough to do anything He wants to do.

Abraham and Sarah laughed at God when He told them they would have a child.
Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90, but they had Isaac because God was big enough
to make them fertile again.

Jesus was able to heal the sick, raise the dead, and conquer His own grave
because His Father God was big enough.
Paul told the Ephesians that God was "able to do far more abundantly than all
that we ask or think." (Ephesians 3: 20)

As Christian parents, we believe in a God who is big enough to protect us from anything the world may bring,
and we are under obligation to teach our children to believe in that same all-powerful God.

One of the most quotable parents of our age is Yogi Berra, the baseball player, who often murders
both language and logic, but somehow always makes sense.
On one occasion he said,
"Ninety percent of baseball is mental. The other half is physical."

Yogi can't add, but his observation is correct.
Most of life is mental.
If you are convinced that you are a failure, then in all likelihood, you will fail.
If, on the other hand, you believe that God is big enough to save you, and that you are His child
by grace through faith, then your life will be good and happy, no matter what happens.
I believe our children ought to believe in a big God like that.

Big Enough to Forgive

"Daddy, is your God big enough to forgive us of our s