Highly Unlikely
Grab your coffee, and I’ll grab my Diet Coke, and let’s sit together for just a few minutes. Part of living in community is sharing what’s on our hearts, which is a joy of mine that, as long as given the privilege, will love so much. I care about you and want to use God’s truth, not my interpretation of it, to gain God’s perspective on you and on me. David , who was a young shepherd boy, defeated a literal giant named Goliath. He found favor in the eyes of God and became a great king with many problems, lust being one. Nevertheless, He was chosen by God although he still suffered consequences from his actions. If you would have known him, you might’ve thought he had too many issues to lead a country in mighty ways. He was a great leader only because of God’s mercy in his life and by the power of the Holy Spirit. David was a man who was “highly unlikely” in the eyes of man to be used by God, but he was used in incredible ways because of the Lord.
Peter, Judas, Matthew, and Thomas were just a few of Jesus’ disciples. Man, they were “different!” It’s easy to think of them as being so holy because they were Jesus’ chosen understudies. Peter talked too much and just couldn’t seem to keep his foot out of his mouth. Thomas doubted Jesus even after seeing His power demonstrated time after time through miracles - miracles we choose to believe in faith since we weren’t there to actually see. Then there was Judas. You know him. He voted for Jesus to be crucified, yet he knew Him personally. Furthermore, Peter, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, denied Him exactly three different times, just as Jesus foreshadowed. Devastating, yet I can identify with each of these men and so many others including women of the Bible. Can you allow yourself to identify with any of these people? It’s humbling to do so yet necessary to learn and grow. Levi, who was later renamed by Jesus, was a businessman, chosen by Jesus, to follow Him. We call him Matthew. He didn’t bear the title “minister,” but that just didn’t matter. Random people who were put together to fit together and follow. “Highly unlikely” men who were not likely to be chosen, yet they were.
God is in the business of using those who others may overlook, or judge, or cast aside. I am the wife of a former minister who has extreme difficulties with putting food into my mouth in order to nourish the body God gave me. It’s a sickness, a mental illness. I didn’t plan it or merely want to be skinny, and so stopped eating. That’s simply not how it worked for me. I wake up in the morning praying and never say, “Amen” until I lie down at night, yet the chemical in-balance in my mind creates depression so I can be “down” when I have the best life I could ever ask for. Some side effects of my medication have hurt my body, and I have hurt my body by choice because I have felt I deserve the pain. Wrong. And yet Jesus looks on me and lives in me and has mercy on me and lets me speak into your life because I love Him and want to follow Him and obey Him and show you Him so that you can experience His love and forgiveness. I am trying. “I am strong, but I am tired” is a quote a friend recently sent me. God knows you and I get tired of who we are and what we do and the hurts our issues cause. I am “highly unlikely’ to be used by Him perhaps by man’s standards, but He uses you to give me hope because you read and share your hearts with me and others, and I thank you. The praise and credit is God’s. Our Father uses our weaknesses to show His strength when we let Him.
You may feel so insignificant you can barely breathe. I understand, my friend. So does our Lord.
God makes beauty from ashes. You know this because I’ve told you before, and it’s Scripture. It’s okay to acknowledge where you are. You must in order to realize how precious God is. Today, read this familiar word from God aloud with me… ”For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know this full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139.13-16).
No one who makes a difference in the eyes of God does so because of who they are.
He knew this of David…of Peter…of Thomas… …of you and of me, and in His eyes, you and I are actually… ‘highly likely’ because of Him alone. You and I? We are the righteousness of Christ.
Jesus himself is the best example of not being a likely candidate to hold any power or attention here on earth yet it makes me cry to think of how He came, He lived, he died, and He rose. To those here on earth, He fit no stereotype of The King, yet He was. “Highly unlikely?” Most definitely. That is, to everyone but His Father, but He is the only one who matters.
No matter what you have done or had planned to do, let God treat you as you were created to be treated in spite of you, and because of Him. It’s okay! Lean in on Him my chosen friend, and walk in the truth of you being “likely” to speak into another’s life.” Likely” to have integrity in the life God has given you.” Likely” to thrive because of Him. Don’t wait to feel worthy. Come to Him now…just as you are.
Love to You,
Stacee