God Uses Flawed People

“God can’t use me. I’m not smart enough. I’m not strong enough. I’m not bold enough. I’m not _______ enough.”

     Have you ever thought this? I have. Fortunately, God doesn’t think like this. There is a remarkable theme found throughout Scripture of the Lord using the most unlikely individuals to accomplish some of the greatest tasks.

Peter was a rough fisherman with an unfortunate tendency to stick his foot in his mouth. When Jesus plainly told his disciples they would all forsake Him, Peter persistently declared he would never do so. Yet, in the hour of Christ’s greatest trial, Peter not only forsook his Lord, but denied Him as well.

Paul (formerly Saul) was one of the early church’s greatest persecutors. He hunted, captured, and tried hundreds of Christians. By Paul’s own admission, he was the chief of sinners.

Moses spoke directly with God out of a burning bush and was given the ability to perform several miracles. But when God commanded him to speak to Pharaoh, Moses insisted he was incapable and ineloquent.

Jonah was sent to preach to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, but fled in the opposite direction instead. After being spewed back in the right direction, he finally delivered God’s message… but became furious when God actually saved the Ninevites.

In the eyes of many, these men were unqualified and unable of ever achieving success. They were fearful, weak, uneducated, spiteful, ineloquent, disobedient – in a word: flawed. Why would God use flawed people to enact His will? Wouldn’t He want those who are skilled and knowledgeable? The answer is in 1 Corinthians 1:27-29.

When God's Commands are Unpleasant

“I can’t do that.”

“But God told you…”

“Maybe I heard wrong. God would never ask me to do that.”

Perhaps these thought swirled in Jonah’s mind as he hailed a ship headed for Tarshish. The Lord had asked him to do the one thing he abhorred. The one assignment he refused to undertake. The one task he would not do.

Preach to the Ninevites.

Those wicked, violent, rich Gentiles. No. He would not do it. He would go in the complete opposite direction: to Tarshish. But as we all know, Jonah’s plans were abruptly reversed by a mighty storm and a great fish with an appetite for stubborn prophets. After several miserable nights in the fish’s belly, wrestling with God, Jonah eventually did what the Lord commanded him to do: preach to those wicked Gentiles.

How often we read this story and chuckle at Jonah’s foolishness in trying to run from the Lord. “What was he thinking?” we ask pretentiously. But have we ever run from the Lord’s will? Has the Lord ever commanded you to do the very thing you loathed doing? How did you respond? The Lord made such a request of me, and my reaction was not unlike Jonah’s.

// Christian? //

Sitting amongst the cream of my generation

my soul was filled with lamentation.

Here, supposed Christians

flirt with temptations

display carnal affections

consider vain imaginations

lust for worldly commendations

seek ungodly occupations

forget Scriptural meditations

shirk Bible memorizations

reject sound admonitions

ignore godly exhortations

despise Biblical limitations

on the road of continual degradations

are these really Christians?

So to any reading my composition

let it be a call for self-examination.

Do I obey the Lord without indignation? 

Honor my God without fluctuation?

Serve my King without hesitation?

Love my Savior without reservation?

Cry out to Him amidst temptation?

Am I on the road of heavenly sanctification?

Am I truly a Christian?

"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?"

- 2 Corinthians 13:5