Not Many

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

His resume’ was unimpressive.  The only education he could claim was having attended grade school for a while.  He had no degrees and never attended seminary.  Working as a shoe repairman only provided a survival level sustenance.  He had no political influence or power since his best friends were a small group of rural Baptist preachers.  His wife was mentally unstable and eventually became one of his harshest critics. 

              So, when William Carey gathered with 13 other men in the parlor of a widow’s home in Nottingham, England to pray nobody would have suspected he would become known as the “Father of Modern Missions.”  Even one of their own, Andrew Fuller, later said, “there was little or no respectability among us.” 

              William Carey is one example among thousands that demonstrates God’s intention to call the most unlikely people through whom He makes Himself known. When God needs a spokesman he calls a stammering Moses.  When He needs a giant killer He calls a little boy like David.  When He needs a group of men to turn the world upside-down He finds them on fishing boats and in tax offices.  When he needs a hymn writer He calls the perpetually insane William Cowper, or the blind Fanny Crosby.  “God has chosen the foolish things of the world,” so that all the glory goes to Him.

              Your ordinariness, unpretentiousness, weakness, and frailty are no hindrance to God.  All that is necessary for usefulness is emptiness.  When we are empty of self, this world, and our ambitions we can be filled with Him.  And the man or woman who is full of God is the most powerful force on earth.