Week Nine - Useless

The promise of Acts 1:8 is, "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me." If you take this promise at face value, you must admit that though you might not know how or even feel like it could be true, God uses your life as a witness if you are His child.

He chose to use human instruments instead of rocks to tell His story. Person to person; that is God's method. None of us are useless in God's plan. Why? Because God is not dependent upon us to perform His will. He is the craftsman.

Someone wrote, "I am currently in the process of renovating a house. I am no professional carpenter and possess no exceptional skills. What I do have is a lot of borrowed tools. I have drills, a saw, a tenon saw, a jig saw, ladders, work benches, paint brushes that hold paint in a special tank, and many more. You might be impressed if you come to my house, but I need these tools to accomplish this job. I am not a qualified craftsman, and I can't take pride in how much money I spend on this project, either. 

Now, compare that to the way the Amish would construct a house. No power tools. No modern technology. From cutting down the trees and hewing out the timbers, to boring the holes for perfectly fit wooden pegs, the entire job is done with archaic hand tools that would be worse than useless in my hands.

If you visited their work site, you would say, "Wow, what a craftsman, what skill, all that beauty, and look what they used to build it." 

The more backward and broken an instrument, the more glory goes to the builder for being able to use it.

If God ever uses you or me in any way, it will be categorically despite us. The greatest miracle of all is that God can and does take an instrument that is nothing in itself but sinful defilement and produces a new creature that is perfectly holy to be used according to His will. 

1 Corinthians 1:27-29, "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are might; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, that God chose, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence."

Useless is never a word in God's vocabulary. Think through these -

Noah was a drunk
Abraham was too old
Isaac was a daydreamer
Jacob was a liar
Leah was ugly
Joseph was abused
Moses had a stuttering problem
Gideon was afraid
Samson had long hair and was a womanizer
Rahab was a prostitute
Jeremiah and Timothy were too young
David had an affair and was a murderer
Elijah was suicidal
Jonah ran from God
Naomi and Ruth were widows
Job went bankrupt
John the Baptist ate bugs
Peter denied Christ
The Disciples fell asleep while praying
Martha worried about everything
Zacchaeus was too short
Paul was too religious
Timothy had an ulcer

And
Lazarus was dead!

So, no more excuses. God will use you if you are His child. You are not useless in His hands.