Just a regular guy day3

Elijah was just a guy. He wasn’t Superman. He wasn’t even Samson. He was just a regular guy like the rest of us (see James 5:17).

When it comes time for us to select a leader, whether a new CEO, a new pastor or a new prime minister, we tend to look for someone special. Backgrounds are checked and records are scrutinised. Anything that hints of impropriety or scandal is enough to disqualify even the most highly qualified person for the job, because we look for that one extraordinarily special person who we believe can and will help to change the world.

God, on the other hand, does not seem particularly drawn to the extraordinary. When God wants to change the world, He usually looks for a regular person, someone, say, a lot like you.

Our society values money and education and connections. We want someone with a certain bearing that sets him or her apart from everyone else. We want a leader who will make the rest of us look good and feel good about our standing as a company, church or nation.

But God sometimes goes the other way. It’s not that God has anything against wealthy, well-educated people with good networking skills. It’s just that God doesn’t require any of those things in order to use a person to make an indelible mark on human history.

He certainly didn’t require them of Elijah.

Elijah was a regular person who didn’t have all the answers. In fact, there were times in his life when it appeared as if he had more questions than answers. He struggled with his confidence. He wrestled with fear and anxiety and depression. And yet more miracles occurred during his lifetime than during the lives of King Saul, King David and King Solomon combined.

God accomplishes extraordinary things through ordinary people.

More often than not, the people God uses are unremarkable until they allow Him to use them. Afterward, we tend to think of them as these incredible pillars of strength, courage and faith. But on the front end, there’s often very little to commend them to our attention.

Rosa Parks. Mother Teresa. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Abraham Lincoln. You would have been hard-pressed to pick these people out of a line-up before God got His hands on them.

So many people feel trapped and helpless, as if the world just happens to them. They’re unaware of how much power they actually can have and how much change they actually can effect.

God has a plan, and that plan involves not only the redemption of the world but its restoration as well. He is looking for people who will actively partner with Him in setting everything that is currently upside-down, right side up again, people who will reach out to the widows and the orphans and the poor, people who will tear down corrupt systems and erect righteous systems in their place.

God is at work. He wants people who are willing to work with Him, who will allow Him to work through them. He’s not looking for a few good men, He’s looking for one willing person.

Maybe today He wants to do something out of the ordinary through a regular man or woman like you.

 

Father God, I frequently find myself slipping into the trap of using the wrong criteria to evaluate success and failure. I want to take my eyes off the things that impress people in this world and fix them on the things that you declare to be important. Trust and obedience and the humility of other-centred service are the marks of true greatness, and I desire to grow in them. May I learn the spirituality of small things, since he who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much, and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. I know that from a Kingdom perspective, I don’t need to make a big splash in this world to be pleasing to You. Grant me the grace of splendour in the ordinary and of fidelity in the little things, because these are the things that accumulate into true greatness.

In Jesus’s name, Amen