Sunday, May 15, 2016

God Uses Ordinary People for Extraordinary Things

As I have mentioned before, when my mission statement first became clear to me, I was not happy about it. It made me feel small, less important...ordinary.

God gave me this mission:

"Your mission is to be a missionary in ordinary ways, in ordinary places to ordinary people. In doing this, you will have an extraordinary and eternal impact on the lives of those who would otherwise not be touched."

I was disappointed because I was focusing on the first part, the ordinary, instead of the second part, the extraordinary. And even more specifically, I had completely ignored the part about reaching people that would otherwise not be touched.

Think about that for a second. God' plan for me, little ole Kelly, a housewife and mom in Cartersville, GA, will be able to reach people for Christ that would Otherwise be untouched. 

I don't know about you, but that is actually pretty extraordinary! I have friends who are missionaries in North Africa and that is why they were called to Africa: To reach the unreachable.

So I went from being completely self righteous and disenfranchised about my personal mission statement to being completely intimidated. I found myself praying, "God, I can't do this. I am just an ordinary girl, how can I reach the people who would otherwise be untouched?"

And God answered, "Who better to reach ordinary people than an ordinary girl."

The cool thing is, God uses ordinary people all the time. It's all through the bible! My favorite list of ordinary people that God uses in the bible is in Judges. In Judges, we have everyone from Gideon, a complete fraidy cat, to Samson, a womanizer with anger issues, to my favorite, Deborah.

Deborah was ordinary, maybe even less than ordinary. She was a woman, after all and in this time, women were basically property. She was however, a prophetess. She would basically sit under a tree and she was the 'solver of problems' for Israel at the time. She kept the peace, as God asked her to do. God also asked her to try and get the men of Israel to step up to the plate. She told Barak that God said to go and the He would give Barak the victory, but Barak wouldn't go without Deborah. God said He had already won the victory, but Barak didn't have enough faith without Deborah, so she went with him and, just as God said, they won the battle.

Israel experienced 40 years of peace after that. All because of the faith and obedience of an ordinary girl who obeyed God's mission for her life. It started out pretty normal. Just help people settle their arguments. It ended by bringing an entire nation to peace.

Extraordinary thing for a very ordinary girl.