God Chooses People Like You

The heroes of the Bible weren’t any more gifted or powerful than you are. They were flawed, ordinary people, living ordinary lives, doing ordinary things. But they allowed their ordinary lives to be interrupted by God, who is anything but ordinary. They made decisions based on who they knew God to be, rather than on what they knew of their own personal weaknesses. They chose to trust the power of God, rather than the power of their enemy. They chose to obey God when they did not necessarily see a happy ending. And when they did, God’s glory shone in them. Only then do they begin to look like super heroes. We see them as amazing people, but what we are looking at is God’s reflection in them.

Being extraordinary is not determined by exceptional capability; it is determined by what we choose to do with our ordinary capabilities. Ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things when they seek progress rather than safety, when they refuse to give up even though life is difficult, and when they focus their vision on what can be achieved, rather than what might be disheartening.

The chapters of this book will explore some of the reasons we refuse to trust God, for the first time, or ever again. We will examine the stories of people in the Bible who had good reasons to make bad choices. Their stories were preserved for us because God knew we would need to learn the same things. But their stories are no more important or precious to the heart of God than yours.

When Christians focus on God, rather than their failure, their weakness or the power of their enemy, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. People in the Bible who chose obedience and trust were able to see the power and glory and presence of God from a front row seat. So can we. But we have to stop pretending to be in charge of things we can’t control. We’ve got to stop making excuses and start being obedient, even (and especially!) when we can’t see the big picture. We spend so much of our time protecting our ordinariness. We don’t want to be interrupted or disobeyed. We want to control our circumstances and have all the details of our lives work out smoothly. We manipulate to implement our own plans and attempt nothing that may cost us security or that requires more than we’re capable of accomplishing in our own strength. We don’t want to be challenged because we might fail. We don’t want to face the truth because the image we have worked so hard to build might shatter. We don’t want confrontation because we might be wrong.

I used to excuse my inconsistency and lack of faith because I am not as smart or gifted or strong as the people in the Bible. They got to see and do awesome miracles. They had great adventures where they saw the power of God interrupt history and circumvent natural law. Some of them were allowed to see the physical manifestation of God’s presence and actually hear his voice. They had visions and saw angels and witnessed amazing things.

But when I look carefully at the great adventures of the Bible, I realize that all of the awesome revelations and miracles were predicated on situations I would have desperately tried to avoid. Noah’s rescue from the flood followed a hundred years of construction that would most certainly have branded him the town kook. David, the teenage shepherd, accepted the challenge of a giant that the best warriors in the army of Israel had already refused to fight. Daniel’s miraculous rescue required that he spend the night with lions. Mary Magdalen suffered with seven demons before she could know God’s deliverance. All the people Jesus healed struggled with physical ailments and hopelessness.

I don’t want to be afraid or ridiculed. I don’t want to be thrown into a fiery furnace or sold into slavery. I don’t want to be falsely accused or put in jail. I don’t want to pick up a snake or be swallowed by a fish. I don’t want to challenge the authority of someone who has the power to kill me. I don’t want to have to defy my government to obey my God. I don’t want to mourn or be in pain or suffer or know shame. But it is in situations like those that the obedience of ordinary people shows the extraordinary power of God.

The more I learn about God, the deeper my understanding of his character and his plan, the more I don’t want to be separated from him. I am an ordinary woman with real fears and weaknesses who worships a God that has all power and has promised to redeem me, and I want my life to display evidence of the extraordinary God I serve.

The stories of the Bible can warn us, bless us, challenge us, and inspire us. But we must study them. And when we do, we will see that it wasn’t the power or giftedness of those people that made them special; it was their relationship with God that made them extraordinary.

We may be separated from the people in the Bible by thousands of years and distinct cultural differences, but our sin, our temptations, our fears, and our enemies are no bigger or stronger than those faced by those ordinary people who trusted God enough to obey him. The Bible is full of stories about people just like me….and you. Their stories show that they were tempted by the same excuses we use to leave God out of our stories, to refuse the story he wants to give us, or to settle for more of our ordinary sameness. May we learn from their mistakes and follow their faithful examples to become the extraordinary people God created us to be.