The persons man overlooks are the ones God notices and plucks from obscurity. That's you and me! "God is NO respecter of persons." Acts 10:34. With God there are NO barriers to whom He calls and wants to use. He can use anybody. Regardless of denomination, IQ, or social status. Will we let Him?
Throughout history, God has always used the least qualified and the most unqualified to provoke change. God even uses quitters, as the Bible demonstrates through the life and ministry of Peter. God can use people who fail, curse and betray Him. At one point, Peter even gave up ministry and returned to his old profession. In our analysis Peter would not only have been unqualified but would have disqualified himself by his desertion and denial, but NOT so with God.
God sought Peter out on the lake saying, "Feed My sheep." Is He calling you? Are you listening? Are you resisting? Does it make you uncomfortable because you see yourself as unqualified? That is exactly what qualifies you. Perhaps all God is waiting for you to say is, "Lord, here am I. Send me." Fit me by your Indwelling. This is the attitude that God is searching the earth for today.
Lord through the unction of your Holy Spirit may I be the one who responds to your call to revitalize my marriage. Lord may I listen to your whispers to my conscience that I may be used to restore my family. Lord by the empowering of your Holy Spirit may I be the one who becomes the ambassador to my own local church, who becomes the instrument to reach out to my neighbor, my fellow workers or my relatives. Yes Lord I am unqualified but You will qualify me if I am willing.
Can you imagine what God could do if enough of us would leave off our plateaued experience, our doubting ways, put aside our spiritual complacency and our alarming indifference to the needs of those around us and like Isaiah say, "Here am I. Send me."
Yes God can use anybody. It can be just an ordinary person - like you and me. But if you're not careful, the inner cry from God to use you can fade to a faint whisper. Instead, you must respond to that cry and rise up and realize that even as the unqualified, you are uniquely qualified to help bring life to a lost world.
Do you know what made Peter and John so feared by the religious and powerful of their day? They never relied on themselves to do anything. In fact the religious opposition recognized that, "These guys have been with Jesus!" These men understood that without God's intervention in their lives, they were simply unqualified fools. What made these unqualified servants of Jesus stand out as they went about preaching the gospel was not who they were, but Who they knew.
So let's let Him work in us--to show how mighty He is and to bring honor and glory to His name!
May our mantra be, "Awaken the Unqualified."
Lord send us,
