We Shouldn't Be Afraid of Being Used By The Lord!

C. S. Lewis once said: "it is easier to be enthusiastic about humanity with a capital "H" than it is to love individual men and women, especially those who are uninteresting, … exasperating, depraved, or otherwise unattractive. Loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular."

Imagine for just a moment that you are God. You are the Creator of the Universe and you possess all power within yourself. All right, your people are being held as slaves and the time has come to deliver them. Who would you choose to do this great work? Perhaps you would send a great military leader? What about sending a skilled politician? Maybe you would send some great orator; a man who could give heart-stirring speeches that would grip the hearts of men.

If you had the population of the world at your disposal, would you have sent Moses? Probably not! After all, he was 80 years old. He was a fugitive from justice, wanted for murder in Egypt, the very place you wanted to send him! Yes, he was well educated, but that was over 40 years ago. Yes, he had been well connected in the political circles of the day, but that too had been a long time ago. Yet, when it came time for God to send a deliverer to Israel, this is exactly the person He chose for the job. To us humans, it doesn't make much sense, but to God it was all part of a great plan.

While you think about all of this, consider this as well. We are living in the midst of a world that is literally going to Hell. We are surrounded by people who are perishing daily, and need desperately to be reached with the message of Jesus Christ. If you were God, whom would you send to reach them? Wouldn't you raise up some kind of super saints?

Maybe you would ordain a few angels to get the job done right. But, surely you wouldn't send a bunch of old sinners, saved by grace to tell other old sinners about that grace. If we were God, we would want the brightest minds and the most skilled individuals we could get our hands o, right? Yet, when God chose to reach this world for himself, He looked around and decided that saved sinners made the best candidates for His work.

He hasn't changed His mind! He has saved every one of us to be workers for His glory (Ephesians. 2:10, James 2:18). But, when that realization dawns on us, we begin to drag out the excuses. We try and find every reason under the sun why we can’t be the one He wants for the job. This was Moses' problem. And, that's what I'd like to examine in today's message. As we look into how the Lord handled Moses’ excuses, we find that He pretty skillfully handled ours as well. In Exodus, chapters 3 and 4, there's a wealth of encouragement for the Christian who wants to serve God but doesn't feel that he, or she is capable. Let's take a look...

A good place to begin our discussion on "excuses" is with the excuse of inability. In  Exodus 3:11, Moses’ first concern is that he is a "nobody and is therefore unqualified to go to Pharaoh and demand the release of the Lord’s people. Many of us feel this same way! We feel that we aren’t as qualified as someone else, or that we just don’t have the ability to get the job done properly. Yet, in a hurry to give up before we ever start, we forget one important truth – God chose us! To say we aren’t able to do the job says that God doesn't know what He is doing! After all, who knows best, you or God?

We see, in Exodus 3:12, God’s response to Moses, and to us, is to give a pair of precious promises. First, He tells Moses, "I will go with you." This is the promise of His presence. Secondly, He says, "After you accomplish what I have sent you to do, I will meet you here." This is the promise of a glorious reunion someday. With these truths in mind, there is application that can be made to our lives today:

1) If God has called us, He has done so with full knowledge of our weaknesses and inabilities (Psalm 103:14).
2) If God has called us, He knows that we can accomplish the task through His power (Philippians 4:13).
3) When He sends us out into His work, He never sends us alone (Matthew 28:20; Hebrews 13:5; John 14:16-18; John 16:13).
4) After the work has ended, He will gather us unto Himself where we will experience His great presence for eternity (John 14:3; Revelation 22:3).

So, if your excuse is one of inability, then just send that thought right back to wherever it came from! In and of yourself, you're incapable of anything godly and good, but through the power of God, you can do anything!

Next up, is the excuse of inadequacy (Exodus 3:13-22). After telling God of his inabilities, Moses moves on to talk of his inadequacies. In these verses, Moses is saying to the Lord, "I just don’t know enough about who you are!" Honestly, many of us are in the same shape as Moses right now. Not only do we feel that we are incapable of serving the Lord as we should, we also feel that we are just inadequate, that somehow, we just don’t know enough about God, His Word, etc, to get the job done.

God’s response to Moses is to remind him that He is the "I AM!" While Moses may be inadequate, the God who calls him and equips him certainly is not! God is in essence saying to Moses, "Just do as I say, and I will show you who I AM as you need me to."

This is how the Lord works in our lives. He leads us out to follow Him by faith and we know very little about Him or His ways, but as the needs arise, God proves Himself adequate and faithful to every challenge. His great Name, I AM, becomes and open ended statement of fact. In those 2 words, God tells us that He is what we need to Him to be at every moment of our lives. There isn't a situation you will ever find yourself in that God doesn't hold the solution to. He is able and He enables us as we go through life!

I realize that following the Lord by faith can be scary to some. When we look at the size of the task and compare our abilities to it, we often see ourselves lacking what is needed for true success. However, in figuring these things out, we always leave God out of the equation! When God is factored in, 2 + 2 doesn't necessarily equal 4!

Never allow a lack of an education, a lack of money, a lack of skill or any other thing stop you from being everything God wants you to be. Even if you can’t see within yourself the resources needed, just be faithful to obey Him who has called you and placed you in His work. Above all, when you are measuring yourself against the task always remember to measure him who is above all others and obstacles (Ephesians. 3:20).

Truth be told, Noah probably didn't feel adequate beside that Ark. David must have felt pretty small next to Goliath. The Three Hebrews probably felt inadequate against that furnace. Daniel must have looked pretty pathetic beside that Lion’s Den. All through the Bible, God’s people have been placed alongside obstacles against which they looked and felt incapabpe, but with the power of God working through them, they were able to overcome them all. If God will do it for them, He will do it for you too (Romans 2:11).

Now comes the excuse of inferiority (Exodus 4:1-9). After the Lord handles all of Moses’ other excuses, Moses decides that if he tells people that he has had a personal meeting with God Himself, they will decide that Moses is lying. In other words, no one will believe what he tells them.

Many believers feel this exact way when it comes to serving the Lord without fear. Many seem to have the impression that others will think they are crazy when they begin to talk of a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, or of they say they talk to God and that He talks back. The truth is, we often feel that we are inferior to the world around us. We have had this wonderful, life-changing event and we are sure that they will never believe us, when we tell them about it.

God’s response to Moses is to let him know that when the Lord gets through working in and through him, there will be no doubt in the minds of others as to the truth of Moses’ story! In fact, God makes it plain in verse 9 that no matter what they skeptics say, He will keep working in Moses until they are sure that his story is genuine!

This is true in the lives of God’s children as well. When the Lord comes in saving power, He also comes in life changing power. No life can be touched by the salvation that is in Jesus Christ and remain like it was! He will recreate the new believer in His image (2 Corinthians 5:17). That's not to say that there won’t be lapses from time to time. However, the child of God will be unmistakably changed.

Let's allow the Lord the right of way in our lives. Let's give Him the room to work in us so that others may see that there is power in the Blood, that Jesus still does save souls, and that there is hope for their souls too.

Lastly, let's look at the excuse of infirmity (Exodus 4:10-17). In a last ditch effort to escape the yoke God intends for him, Moses appeals to some sort of a speech impediment. It may be that Moses just thought and therefore responded slow, or it may be that he stuttered. Whatever the infirmity, Moses tries to use it as an excuse for not doing the will of God.

Many Christians are just like Moses. They look at their lack of education, a physical handicap, their age, their income, you name it, in an effort to stay out of the Lord’s field. In truth, these aren't legitimate excuses for not serving the Lord. There are none! Whatever your hold up may be, God was well aware of it before He chose you for His work. Therefore, our duty is to yield to His hand and allow Him His free reign in our lives.

God’s response to Moses is that He made man’s mouth and He made man’s mind, and He was able to give man what he needed when he needed it! (Notice Moses’ attempt to put God off (Exodus 4:13), at this God gets angry and promises Moses a helper. He will send Aaron his brother along as a spokesman. But, it's worthy to note that Aaron was always leading the people into sin (Remember the Golden Calf, and speaking against Moses because of his wife?)

Dear reader, You and I have no need to fear being used of the Lord. He is still God, and He can still take those whom He has saved and fill their minds and their mouths for His glory (Luke 2:11). We too, have been given a helper in the Person of the Holy Spirit! He is ever with us and will teach us what we need to know along the way (John 16:15). However, unlike Aaron, He will never cause or lead us into trouble. His plan is to help us along the way so that we might be the best Christians we can be for the glory of the Lord.

If your excuse today is infirmity, then toss that thought aside. God used a jackass to speak to Balaam, He used a rooster to speak to Peter, He used an old sheep hide to speak to Gideon, and He can use you. All He asks is that you be available, and that you be usable.

In closing today, it appears to me that regardless of the excuses that we might come up with for not doing the will of God, God always has an answer. Here is the bottom line. If you have missed everything else, then get this: God wants to use YOU. He has saved you by His grace and He has made something out of your life.

The best thing you and I can do is throw out our excuses and realize that God is able where we are not. Our heart’s desire should be, and must be, to serve Him at all costs, regardless of what He asks from our lives. After all, He gave His all, and He asks no less from us!

Scripture: Genesis 3:12-13; 1 Samuel 13:11-12; Judges 6:15; Proverbs 22:13; Jeremiah 1:6; Matthew 22:2-3; Romans 1:20

Prayer: Forgiving Father, please forgive me today for my lack of passion to love and forgive others in the way you have so graciously forgiven me. Create in me a heart like your own: faithful, forgiving, and gracious. In the precious name of Jesus I pray. Amen.

Have a blessed day!

Joyce