When it comes to my inner life, I have more handicaps than a PGA championship golf course. It seems in many of the exact areas God wants to use me, I’m ironically flawed, insufficient, under-qualified. It’s really hard not to focus on my limitations.
For Pete’s sake, I wonder. How is God ever going to accomplish anything glorious or God-sized through someone like me? It’s humanly impossible. Precisely!
At the speed akin to grass growing on the tundra, or squeezing out a glass of raisin juice (I saw it done once on Sesame Street), here’s what I’m still learning. God operates best through my weaknesses. How else would He get the glory? If I could do it on my own, why would I need Him? But that is why He asks me to do such impossible things. A good friend once told me that scaredy cats don’t make His-Story. Only risk takers make His-Story.
I think my favorite risk taker in the whole Bible is Gideon. We read the report that Gideon was the least in his family, which was the least in his clan, which was the least in Israel. Yet God chose scrawny, bashful, timid Gideon for the minor little task of leading 300 men to destroy a valley swarming with bloodthirsty Midianites. To say that Gideon was a little freaked out about the risk involved would probably be a brilliant observation. But God patiently assured him many times that he was not in this battle without heavenly help.
In the end, Gideon decided to risk because he was in on a big secret. A Super Hero lived inside him, just waiting for the right moment to break out in full costume (no phone booth required). Who was his Super Hero?
“…for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure… I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 2:13; 4:13).
God is the One who assigns the impossible and then makes it possible. God appoints, and then He anoints.
I have had a lot of amazing Gideon moments in the past few years—moments where I took a risk to follow a prompting and then let my Super Hero burst forth to make it happen. It’s amazing the faith and history you get with God in such moments, but there are really no shortcuts to facing your fears to make this happen.
No guts. No glory.
No pain. No story.
No risk, no Super Hero moments.
No Super Hero, no make-a His-Story for you.
So what about you? What impossible things do you feel God calling you out to do for His glory? What ways do you need to stretch out of your comfort zone to experience His power through you? You don’t have to be a Super Hero to accomplish God-sized feats, but you do have to let One work through you.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10