Through the years, I’ve talked to many people who genuinely long for God to use them in this brief lifespan we have on earth.
But what do people whom God uses look like? Could you pick them out of a crowd? Do they wear religious garments – robes, white shirts and ties, or white collars? Do they have a kind of a holy glow about them or a halo around their heads?
Where do you find people God likes to use? Do you have a person like that in your family? In your church? Do you see one when you look in the mirror each morning?
In one popular paraphrase of the New Testament, the apostle Paul is quoted as saying: “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29, The Message).
That’s hard for some of us to admit, sometimes. It would bother us if someone thought we were “nobodies.” We want to cut a wake through life. We want people to notice us. And we don’t like to think of ourselves as weak, either. We like think ourselves strong.
I had the opportunity to be on “Larry King Live” a few years ago, and the subject turned to human suffering. Larry asked why it even existed in the first place.
I told Larry that God can use suffering in our lives, often to bring us to faith. I mentioned a C.S. Lewis quote, where he pointed out that God “whispers to us in our pleasures, but shouts to us in our pain.”
I then related a story about a lady who had breast cancer, who had come to our church office the previous Sunday morning after the first service. She told me how this tragedy had gotten her attention, and so she was turning to God.
Larry interrupted me and said, “How do you know it’s not a crutch? I mean, I’ve got breast cancer – I’ve got to pray to something! You know, there’s a believer in every foxhole.”
I responded, “Thank God for that crutch! Larry, He’s not a crutch to me, He’s a whole hospital!”
Larry smiled, pointed at me, and said, “Good line!” Then he turned to his director and said, “Write that down!”
As we went to commercial break, off camera Larry said to me, “You must use that line a lot!” I told him I did occasionally, but it was true. And it is! I wasn’t trying to be witty, just truthful. I am not ashamed to admit that I’m weak and I need God. And the person who is afraid to admit that is really a fool.
But we forget about that sometimes. We get caught up in the idea that fame and fashion and style and charisma are the most important things in life. We get it into our heads that God could never use someone as commonplace and ordinary as we are.
The truth is God responds to people who call upon Him in faith. But in many cases, those who do call are just regular, everyday sorts of people who realize their need. These are men and women and boys and girls who may not be the most talented or brilliant people to walk the planet. They may not be bodybuilders or cover girls. They may not be the type to survive six months on “Jeopardy.” They’re just people who come to God in their weakness, and say, “God, I need you. I can’t pull this off alone. And if there is any way You can use me, here I am. I’m available.”
Refusing to rely on human resources, they allow God to work with them and through them in a spectacular, supernatural way.
That’s good news for us ordinary people.
We live in a media-driven culture enamored with celebrity. There are people out there who know all the magazines, all the TV shows, all the Tinseltown gossip.
We think, “This person is so charismatic and cool!” Then you see him or her interviewed on TV and you realize, “This person has no mind.” If they didn’t have lines written for them in a script, they wouldn’t be able to put two coherent sentences together. Still, so many admire and adulate many of these shallow, empty-headed celebrities today. We breathlessly follow their every move, secretly wishing we were living their lives.
But I can assure you, God is not impressed.
The Lord sometimes picks men and women for prominent tasks that you and I would never pick! He draws people from the back of the line. He plucks people out of obscurity.
Before he entered into ministry, D. L. Moody once had a man say to him, “Moody, the world has yet to see what God can do in and through a man who is wholly dedicated to Him.” Moody thought about it for a moment and replied, “I want to be that man.” And God took a shoe salesman and made him into the most powerful evangelist of his era. He went from selling soles to saving souls!
Billy Graham was a dairy farmer, known to the local populace as Billy Frank. And God raised him up to be the greatest evangelist the world has ever seen.
The most “spiritual” people I have ever met – and I’ve had the opportunity to meet some wonderful, God-loving people all over the world – have always been down-to-earth, normal, real people. You can spot phony, tacked-on “spirituality” a mile away, and the truth is, it’s not spirituality at all. It’s just an act. And God isn’t impressed with that one bit.
God delights to rescue, help, meet with and transform commonplace people. He also loves to do extraordinary works through their lives. It makes sense, doesn’t it? When a non-spectacular person ends up doing amazingly spectacular things … guess Who gets the credit?
