Thursday, January 18, 2024
Called from Obscurity
Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. (1 Corinthians 1:26 NLT)
As Christians, we can get excited when a celebrity says they’ve become a follower of Jesus Christ. That is because we think we have someone cool on our side. That’s fine. Time will tell whether their conversion is genuine.
But it’s important for us to remember that God goes out of His way to use ordinary people. And the people God has used to touch the world often have been those you never would have expected to do great things with their lives.
It came as a surprise when God chose David, a shepherd boy, to become the next king of Israel. Yet David took it all in stride and wisely waited on the Lord for further direction.
In many ways, David was the very opposite of Saul, the first king of Israel. Saul came from a family who loved him, while David came from a family that neglected and even disliked him.
While Saul was the most handsome man in all of Israel, David was an ordinary man. While Saul was attractive on the outside, he was vain, shallow, and devoid of true integrity on the inside. In contrast, David had a deep commitment to God, even though he was very young.
This reminds us of the truth of Paul’s words: “Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful” (1 Corinthians 1:26-27 NLT).
God uses ordinary people. For example, Dwight L. Moody, one of the greatest evangelists of his day, was a shoe salesman. When he heard the gospel and gave his life to Christ, he went from selling soles to saving souls.
One day he was having a conversation with another Christian, who said, “The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to Him.”
Moody determined to be that man.
And Billy Graham, before he began his ministry, was a dairy farmer in North Carolina. Everyone knew him as Billy Frank. And he would have been about the last person whom people expected to become the most effective evangelist in world history.
The Bible says, “The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NLT).
Notice this doesn’t say that God is looking for strong people. Rather, it says that God is looking “to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”
The Bible is replete with stories like that of David, an obscure shepherd boy who was taken out of the fields and raised up to be the greatest king in the history of Israel.
Would you like God to use you to touch the lives of others? Would you like God to lead you and speak through you?
God goes out of His way to use ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
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