brokenness

What is on the list of things you wish you hadn’t done… stuff your parents warned you about but you did anyway?  What are your perceived negatives…  Looks?  Pedigree?  Lack of wealth? What are the things who make you who you are and you think they make you unworthy?

Noah was a drinker… Abraham a liar… Sarah a manipulator… Lot a compromiser… and Jacob a deceiver.  Job was arrogant… Moses hot tempered… Joshua unwise… Gideon idolatrous… and Samson lustful.  Eli was passive… Saul insecure… David violent… Solomon hedonistic… and Elijah self-centered. Jonah was a racist… Isaiah couldn’t hold his tongue… and Jeremiah was a complainer.

Mary was a stage mother pushing her child to be front and center when it wasn’t His time… Matthew was the unethical IRS agent exploiting his own people for financial profit… Simon was a calculating Zealot waiting for an opportunity to put a knife in the back of a Roman… Martha was a compulsive home-maker driven by busyness with no time for devotion.

Thomas was a doubter refusing to yield to a positive expression of faith… Philip was tight fisted who couldn’t envision anything past his own ledger sheet… James and John were the neighborhood bullies named “The Sons Of Thunder…”  Peter was consistently inconsistent and emotionally erratic who cared more about what people thought of him than anything else… then there was Paul, the Big Gun of Christianity who was a driven Type-A personality who was intolerant of another’s failure (John Mark), cutting him off without any mercy.

And check this… Jesus was average in appearance.  He was not particularly handsome.  There was nothing physically that made him stand out in a crowd, yet He is the Savior.  As it is written in Isaiah 53:2-3

   For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

If you think you have to be perfect in order for God to use you, then you  have forgotten the kind of people God chooses to use (The only kind that will ever be possible for God to use).

   1 Corinthians 1:20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

   1 Corinthians 1:27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

There is One that IS worthy, as found in Revelation 5:12, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”  He is the same one described in Is 53:2-3.  It is as we are in Christ that His blood and righteousness makes us worthy to be accepted and used by God.