Worked through despite ourselves

I have been noticing recently how easy it is to find myself being filled with pride. Obviously, we as humans can so often find ourselves thinking that we are more important than we truly are. In reality, we are complete sinful jokes that deserve nothing good and constantly cry for justice and blessing, putting out of our own minds the fact that sitting in the searing flames of hell is exactly what we deserve, when we complain about the weather or wonder why some bad things happen amidst the common grace we encounter everyday within all of God’s beautiful creation. We never even think that it is complete grace that we even exist on this world and still we look at ourselves and say, “Look how good I am doing.”

I have a couple of stories that show how God works through us despite our idiocy.

Last summer I found myself needing to speak for a Jr. High Adventure Camp having no prep time and a few ideas from the speaker of the High School Adventure Camp. The first talk I tried to do by my own prideful self and found it to be quite awkward and unproductive. Thankfully, by God’s grace and His working, the next four chapels I found myself in the back of the group praying for words before I spoke. I told God that I had nothing to say and only by His working would I be able to share anything worth listening to or following.

During last chapel of the camp, I stood on the stage and told all of the campers that I was terrified to stand on stage and tell them something so important. I think telling the people you are talking to that you are terrified of speaking such an important message really gets people to listen with anticipation. God used me to share the Gospel with all of the campers and I was able to see multiple campers saved by Jesus that night. One camper even said, “God found me tonight.”

I think the point of this story, at least for me, is that our immense skill or talent is of no benefit to God. He doesn’t look at our resume and say, “Wow, this looks great. I can really use you.” He sees us all as we are, useless. God is so much more powerful than we ever give Him credit for and He uses incompetent people, like me, to bring glory to His name and more people to His glory that will in turn bring glory to His name.

I continued to work at camp past the summer and just recently directed a winter camp for high school students. Again, though with more preparation, I found myself completely unskilled to do such a task and begged God to glorify Himself despite me and that He would work through our efforts. Things started a little rough, but picked up and turned out to work really well. To my discredit, on a few occasions during chapel I found myself thinking, “This is going well. I am directing this pretty good.” Once this thought came I would realize how prideful I was being. I wish someone could have walked up and just said, “Who the hell do you think you are?” God reminded me that all of the camp was only working because He is graceful and the people that were being impacted were being impacted by the Holy Spirit, not the band, not the speaker, not me.

I tell you these stories not because I think I am a great example of humility in any respect, but because I have seen God work despite my stupidity and I see it as an awesome reminder of how great and gracious God is and I would hope that you would give yourself to God in such a way that He can use you and your efforts and not use you despite yourself and your efforts.

When we bring ourselves to think of the cross and not ourselves we have no other option but to be humble. If you realize why Jesus died on the cross, it was because we are wretched people irredeemable by our own works and could only be brought back to relationship with God if God did the redeeming, it becomes ludicrous to look at ourselves as more important than we really are.

If you are not doing it for Jesus you’re doing it wrong.

 

For the curious, I was listening to Jackson Browne, Solo Acoustic vol. 1 and also Trace Bundy, Solomon’s Splendor.