Experiencing God- Ordinary Doing Extraordinary 27

"Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness."
Gospel of Matthew

If anything we can learn from scripture is the fact that God calls and uses very ordinary people to do extraordinary things.  Stories in both the Old and New Testament illustrate that if we remain faithful to God, then God can turn even tragic circumstances into opportunities for growth, and into opportunities to serve Him in ways beyond our understanding at the time. 

In the Old Testament, we have the story of Joseph who was sold into slavery to the Egyptians by his brothers who were jealous of their father's love for him.  By remaining faithful to God, Joseph not only recovered his status as a family member, but also was instrumental in saving them all from starvation as God created the circumstances for these actions to be carried out.

"To remain faithful, and to continue to place our complete trust in God" is the one quality that separates those who have been called by God to be disciples of Christ from those who are not.

In the Gospel from Matthew above, Jesus is calling forth his twelve disciples, and giving them authority over unclean spirits, the ability to cast them out and cure all kinds of diseases.  What are the qualities of the ones He called?  It's not what we would consider today to be qualities of leadership.  In the choice of the twelve apostles, we see a characteristic feature of God's work.  Jesus chooses very ordinary people, but people with faith.  They were all non-professional, no wealth or position.  They were chosen from the common people who did ordinary things, who had no special education or social advantage.  Jesus wanted people who could take an ordinary assignment and do it in an extraordinary way.  He chose those people, not for what they were, but for what they would be capable of becoming, through faith, under the grace and direction of God.

When the Lord calls us to serve, or when we look for those we feel will best serve in God's plan, we must not think that we have nothing or little to offer.  Neither must we think that of others.  The Lord takes ordinary people, but extraordinary in faith, to work at building His Kingdom among us.  The Lord looks at faith, not credentials.  God looks for those who will be faithful, like Joseph, even through adverse and uncertain times.  If you look at the one apostle who failed Jesus in his Christian mission, he was the one who was unable to see the mysterious unfolding of God's plan, and decided to follow his own way of doing things.  He was the one who failed to trust God's wisdom, but trusted only in himself. 

Do you trust God's plan for His church today? 

We do this by remaining faithful to building God's Kingdom, not by our design, but by His.