God Can't Use You (Plot Twist: Yes He Can!)
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The water slapped against the sides of the small fishing boat as Peter struggled with the nets. His hands were rough, calloused from years of pulling rope and mending tears in the mesh. The smell of fish clung to his clothes, to his hair, to everything about him. It had been a long night, one of those nights where the fish seemed to know exactly where the nets were and swam in the opposite direction. Empty nets meant empty stomachs. Empty nets meant disappointed customers. Empty nets meant another day of wondering how he'd provide for his family.
Peter wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of lake water and fish scales across his skin. He wasn't a scholar who spent his day studying the Torah in the synagogue. He wasn't a priest with clean robes and soft hands. He wasn't a merchant with high connections in high places. He was just a fisherman trying to make a living on the Sea of Galilee, worrying about the same things you and I worry about. Paying the bills, feeding his family, making it through another day. The morning sun was starting to peek over the hills when he saw the crowd gathering on the shore.
In the middle of it all was that teacher everyone had been talking about, Jesus, the carpenter son from Nazareth. Peter had heard the stories. Some said he could heal the sick. Others whispered that he taught with an authority unlike the religious leaders. But Peter had work to do. Empty nets don't clean themselves. And then Jesus walked right up to his boat, looked him in the eye, and said, "Follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men."
If you've ever felt like God couldn't possibly use you because you're too ordinary, too flawed, too insignificant, then you need to hear this. The heroes of the Bible weren't a special breed of super spiritual giants. They were just people. People with fears and failures, doubts and disappointments. People who struggled with their tempers, their past, their inadequacies. People exactly like you and me. Let's start with Moses.
When God appeared to him in that burning bush, Moses wasn't in a temple. He wasn't deep in prayer. He was out in the middle of nowhere watching sheep. For 40 years, he'd been a fugitive, hiding in the desert because he'd killed a man in Egypt. He'd gone from being a prince to being a nobody, married to a shepherd's daughter, living with his father-in-law, doing the most mundane job imaginable, following sheep around all day. And when God said, "I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt," what did Moses say? He didn't say, "Finally, I've been waiting for this moment."
No, he said, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?" Exodus 3:1 tells us that he's basically saying, "God, you got the wrong guy. I'm nobody special." Then he kept making excuses. They won't believe me. I'm not a good speaker. Please send somebody else.
Does that sound familiar? Have you ever felt God nudging you to do something and your first response was to list off all the reasons why you're not qualified? Or take Gideon. When the angel of the Lord found him, he was hiding in a wine press, threshing wheat because he was terrified of the Midionites. The angel said, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior." In Judges 6:12, mighty warrior, Gideon was literally hiding. He wasn't mighty.
He wasn't a warrior. He was scared out of his mind. His response, "But Lord, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family. The translation, I'm from the wrong side of the tracks. And even in my no-name family, I'm the biggest nobody of all. What about David?
Yeah, he killed Goliath, but before that moment, he was the kid brother nobody took seriously. When Samuel came to see Jesse's house to anoint the next king of Israel, Jesse didn't even bother calling David in from the fields. He presented seven other sons first. David was such an afterthought that his own father forgot about him. 1st Samuel chapter 16 tells us he was out with the sheep again with the sheep while his brothers were being considered for greatness. And when David volunteered to fight Goliath, everyone tried to talk him out of it. King Saul said, "You're just a boy."
His oldest brother accused him of being conceited and wicked. Nobody believed in him. He was too young, too small, too inexperienced. But God doesn't see what people see. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. According to 1st Samuel 16:7, let's talk about the women, too. Sarah laughed when God says she'd have a baby in her old age.
She literally laughed at God's promise because it seems so impossible. Rahab was a prostitute. Ruth was a foreigner, a widow with no prospects. Esther was an orphan. Mary was a teenage girl from a nothing town called Nazareth, engaged to a carpenter. When the angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to the Messiah, her first response was, "How can this be?" Luke 1:34.
She didn't understand. She was confused. She was probably terrified. This wasn't in her plans. She was just trying to live a normal life. And suddenly God was asking her to do something that would make her the subject of gossip and scandal. Even the Apostle Paul, the great Apostle Paul who wrote most of the New Testament said this about himself.
I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. Before his conversion, he was hunting down Christians, throwing them in prison, approving of their deaths. If God could use a man with that kind of past, don't you think he could use you? Now, here's what I want you to understand. God has always chosen ordinary people to do extraordinary things. It's kind of a signature move. He chose a stuttering shepherd to confront Pharaoh.
He chose a frightened farmer to lead an army. He chose a teenage shepherd to be king. He chose uneducated fishermen to change the world. You know why? Because when ordinary people do extraordinary things, everybody knows it's God doing the work. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." God's power shows up best in our weakness, not our strength.
Now, you might be thinking, "Okay, but that was in Bible times. Things were different then. Were they really?" Let me tell you about some ordinary people from more recent history who let God use them in extraordinary ways. Take Corey Tanboom. She was just a Dutch watch maker, a single woman who lived with her father and sister above their watch shop. She wasn't a theologian.
She wasn't a missionary. She was 50 years old when World War II started, living a quiet life, fixing watches and teaching Bible studies. But when the Nazis began rounding up Jews, the Tinboom family applied their Christian faith by taking in Jews and members of the Dutch resistance. And after hiding them within the house, pass them on to the underground network. They built a secret room in their house, a chamber that could hold six people, installed behind a false wall in Cory's bedroom. Cory, the youngest of the four 10b children, wasn't particularly outstanding. She didn't have any unusual skill set.
She wasn't exceptionally intelligent. No plans to change the world at all. But she said yes to God's call to love her neighbors, even when it meant risking everything. When they were eventually caught, Hy watched her father die in prison. After the three-day nightmare train ride to the dreaded Ravensbrook concentration camp in Germany on September 8th, 1944, she and her sister Betsy ended up in the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. Ravensbrook, home to shameful naked examinations, beatings and floggings, lice and fleas, sickness and overflowing toilets, starvation and hard labor, freezing temperatures and threadbear blankets. But even there in that place of death and despair, Corey and Betsy were called by God to be ministers of the gospel.
They held secret Bible studies. They shared their meager rations. They showed love to their fellow prisoners and even prayed for their guards. After the war, when Corey was speaking at a church in Germany, she bumps into one of the guards from the prison camp. That was one of the most cruel guards. He came up to her after the service, extended his hand and asked for her forgiveness. Everything in her wanted to turn away, but she prayed for strength, reached out her hand and forgave him.
All the years of ordinary, consistent, faithfilled obedience had prepared in them a ready and willing yes to God. Or consider George Mueller, who wasn't always a person of such great faith and good character. As a young boy growing up in Germany in the early 1800s, he often stole money from his dad. He was a thief, a liar, a bounder, a cad, a womanizer, and a committed playboy who used and abused his friends. When his mother lay dying, he was found roaming in the streets in a drunken state. But at the age of 20, he attended a Bible study and was converted. This ordinary man with an extraordinarily bad past became one of the greatest examples of faith and action the world has ever seen.
He felt God calling him to open an orphanage. Though Mueller only had two shillings, 50 cents in his pocket, he was sure that God would provide for each specific need. He cared for over 10,000 orphans during his lifetime. And he did it all without ever asking anyone for money. He simply prayed and trusted God to provide. One morning, Mueller awoke to the news that the orphanage, which housed 300 children, had no food. Mueller instructed the housemother to seat all the children in the dining room.
He thanked God for food, and they waited for God to provide. Within minutes, a baker knocked on the door. "Mr. Mueller," he confessed, "last somehow, I knew that you would need bread this morning. I got up and baked three batches for you." Then a milkman whose cart had broken down in front of the orphanage gave them all his milk because it would spoil before he could fix his cart. This wasn't a one-time miracle.
Many times he received unsolicited food donations only hours before they were needed to feed the children. An ordinary man with a troubled past, transformed by God's grace, caring for thousands of orphans through simple faith and prayer. You see, what made these people extraordinary wasn't their ability. It was their availability. They said yes to God even when they were scared. Even when it didn't make sense, even when they felt completely inadequate for the task. And that's the beautiful truth about how God works.
He doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the call. He doesn't wait for us to get our act together before he uses us. He meets us where we are in all our ordinariness, in all our brokenness, and he says, "I can work with that." Think about your own life for a moment. What's holding you back from letting God use you? Is it your past?
Paul had a past. Is it your personality? Moses thought he couldn't speak well. Is it your position in life? Gideon was from the weakest clan. Is it your age? Timothy was young.
Abraham was old. Is it your failures? Peter denied Jesus three times, but Jesus still used him to build his church. God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. That's not just a nice saying. It's the story of the Bible. It's the story of church history.
And it can be your story, too. Now, maybe you're thinking, "But I don't have any special talents." But neither did most of the people we've talked about. Maybe you're thinking, "But I've made too many mistakes." So are they. Maybe you're thinking, "But I'm nobody important." In God's economy, that's exactly the kind of person he loves to use.
The Apostle Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 26-29. Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were influential. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
God chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before him. God deliberately chooses ordinary people so that when extraordinary things happen, everybody knows it's God's power at work and not human ability. When ordinary people know just how ordinary and weak and inconsequential they are, Christ's power dwells in you and you are strong. So what does this mean for you today? It means that whatever God is calling you to do, whether it's forgiving someone who hurt you, reaching out to a neighbor in need, starting a ministry, sharing your faith, standing up for what's right, or simply being faithful in the small things. You don't have to wait until you feel qualified. You don't have to wait till you have it all figured out.
You don't have to wait until your past is less messy or your faith is stronger. God is looking for willing hearts, not perfect people. He's looking for people who say like Isaiah, "Here am I, send me." Isaiah 6:8. Not here am I and I'm incredibly talented or here am I and I've got my life all together. Just here am I. The heroes of faith weren't different from you.
They had the same fears, the same doubts, the same weaknesses. What made them heroes, was that they took God at his word. When he said, "I will be with you," they believed him. When he said, "My grace is sufficient," they trusted him. When he said, "Go," they went. Ordinary people who do extraordinary things fail a lot over and over again. Following God doesn't mean everything we do will go perfectly the first time.
Moses struck the rock when he should have spoken to it. David committed adultery and murder. Peter denied Jesus. But they got back up. They repented. They kept going. They let God's grace cover their failures and his strength carry them forward.
You know what's amazing right now in this moment? God sees you. He knows your name, your story, your struggles, your dreams. He knows what you think disqualifies you and he's saying, "I can use you just as you are, right where you are with what you have." Maybe he's calling you to love that difficult person in your life. Maybe he's calling you to use your home to show hospitality. Maybe he's calling you to teach children or visit the elderly or give generously or speak up for justice or simply be a light in your workplace.
Whatever it is, remember, he doesn't need your ability. He just needs your availability. The same God who spoke through a donkey can speak through you. The same God who used the boy's lunch to feed 5,000 can use what little you have to offer. The same God who chose fishermen to be apostles can use you to catch people for the kingdom. You don't have to be extraordinary. You just have to be willing.
You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be present. You don't have to have all the answers. You just have to know the one who does. The heroes of the Bible were ordinary people who served an extraordinary God. And guess what? So are you.
The same Holy Spirit who empowered them lives in you. The same promises they clung to are yours. The same God who is faithful to them will be faithful to you. So stop disqualifying yourself. Stop waiting for someday when you'll be good enough or know enough or have enough. Today is the day. You are the person.
This is the moment. God is calling ordinary people to do extraordinary things for his glory. The question is, will you answer? Remember, it's not about you. It's never been about you. It's about him, his power, his glory, his kingdom. When you make yourself available, he makes you capable.
When you offer your weaknesses, he provides his strength. When you take one small step of faith, he opens doors you would never have imagined. The world is waiting for ordinary people who will dare to believe that God can use them. Your family needs you to be that person. Your community needs you to be that person. The kingdom of God advances through ordinary people saying yes to an extraordinary God. You are not too ordinary.
You are not too broken. You're not too anything. You are chosen, called, equipped by the spirit of the living God. The same God who used Moses and Gideon and David and Mary and Peter and Paul. That same God wants to use you. The heroes of the Bible weren't different from you. They were just ordinary people who discovered that with God, ordinary is more than enough.
And so are you. Let this be our prayer. Aba Father, we thank you that you don't wait for us to be perfect before you use us. Thank you for choosing ordinary people throughout history to accomplish your extraordinary purposes. Lord, we confess that we often feel inadequate, unqualified, and overwhelmed by what you're calling us to do. But today, we choose to trust your strength instead of our own. We choose to believe your promises instead of our fears.
Use us, Lord, just as we are, right where we are. Give us the courage to say yes to you, even when we're scared. Give us the faith to take the next step even when we can't see the whole staircase. Make us available to you and then make us able through your spirit. We offer you our ordinary lives, trusting you to do extraordinary things through us for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. [Music]
