God uses ordinary people.
Occasionally, there are superstars like Moses or the apostle Paul, but mostly, God uses people just like us. Maybe “special” people are too full of themselves and there isn’t room for God to share the same space. With the appointments of both Moses and Paul, God had to completely empty them before he could fully fill them and use them.
Since Jesus is our perfect, physical revelation of the spiritual God, we should consider the twelve he mentored for over three years, and chose to take over after he left… but let’s start with Jesus himself.
Jesus was born to nobody parents. Remember people’s reactions when Jesus got to Nazareth in his early ministry? “Who does this guy think he is? We know is parents. He’s nobody special.”
Jesus was born in Bethlehem, “the least of the towns of Judea.”
Jesus grew up in a nowhere village. It was Nathanael who remarked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Now, we know that Jesus was not just an ordinary guy, but also God incarnate! So, who did the King of kings select to lead?
Simon Peter – he seemed to have leadership potential and certainly had passion, but couldn’t control his tongue and bailed on Jesus when his life was on the line (although most of us would have done the same thing.)
John and his brother James came from a wealthy family and had connections. Their father owned the fishing business where they, Peter, and Andrew worked. It was John who followed after Jesus when he was arrested and got Peter close by because he had family connections. But James and John were proud and entitled. It was their mother who tried to work a deal with Jesus to seat them on his left and right in glory.
Matthew was a tax collector. These guys sold out to the Romans and were generally hated by their own people. Nothing like picking a traitor to be one of your close friends.
The other Simon was a zealot, a political radical, who hoped to overthrow Rome at some point. Can you imagine trying to keep Simon and Matthew from turning every conversation into an argument?
That’s probably enough to see that Jesus just picked regular guys to pass the baton to, but those regular guys, empowered by the Holy Spirit, changed the world.
So, who are you? What is your story?
Most of us are just ordinary people living out ordinary lives, but with hopes and dreams God may use you for his glory. We are really no different than those twelve disciples of Jesus. Yes, they had Jesus with them physically, but we have the Spirit of the living God inside of us. Our potential to know God is even greater than theirs, and we have their story to encourage us.
If ordinary people will trust God for extraordinary things, the world will change.