Don’t underestimate what God can do through you. When we do this, we’re not underestimating ourselves, but God.
We must remember that of all the people Jesus could have chose to change the world he chose uneducated fisherman. The question is why?
In a very human sense it would have been more sensible for Jesus to choose the educated, the priests, the scribes, the educators and professional for transforming the world. After all, doesn’t it make sense to choose the influential if you wish to influence people? Aren’t these the ones who are the leaders of culture and society?
Time and time again in the Scriptures God chooses the marginalized to do his work. The examples are just endless. When God wanted to propagate a chosen family, he chose the old man who couldn’t have kids (Abraham). When God wanted someone to be the patriarch of a nation of holy priests marked by immpecable ethics and honesty, he choose Jacob the liar and manipulator. When he needed someone to bravely lead a military rebellion, he chose the guy who was hiding in a hole (Gideon in Judges 8). For every Goliath, there is a David.
What about Paul? God needed someone to pen 24% of his inspired New Testament canon, so he chose enemy number one of the early church, Saul of Tarsus.
Jesus, of course, is the best example of this. God needed a powerful king to whom he could hand over all the kingdoms of the world, so he chose a carpenter. After all, what good can come from Nazareth?
So how can we explain this pattern of God choosing the least likely to do his work? It’s simple really, if God chose those who were humanly powerful and influential, then it wouldn’t be God’s work, it would be a work of man. God goal is to build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, not the Tower of Babel. With human might and human wisdom, kingdoms rise and fall.
With the power and wisdom of heaven, the broken world has access to an everlasting kingdom.
So once again, believers who believe themselves to be ineligible to carryout God’s work are not underestimating themselves, but underestimating God himself. Because of Who God Is, we cannot count ourselves out of being eligible for his high and holy calling. In fact, we cannot count out anyone. God chooses who he wishes and he always has his reasons. Even the Spirit-filled believers of the early church didn’t believe that it was possible that God called Saul, the great persecuter of the church, to carryout a ministry to the Gentiles. It took a lot of convincing! This is the kind of situation that God is attracted to, because when the world looks upon his work they will only be able to say, “This must be the work of God, because no man or woman could have done that.”
Rev Tevye was spot on when he said, “For a man slow of speech, he [Moses] sure did say a lot!”
