An Unlikely Series

This post contains my thoughts about the upcoming series for Loft youth group:

Recently I was in a young adult Bible Study at Lakeside Christian Church while we were completing our study on the book of Amos when I began to think of this series. I was struck by Amos’ explanation of how he got to be where he was as a prophet in chapter 7. As I thought about his words, which we will deal with in lesson 1, it was laughable. His basic argument was “I am the most unlikely candidate for this job and yet God told me to do this!” So that was my inspiration for this series.

However, Amos is not alone in this characterization. I began to think about the characters in the Bible and realized that most of the people God used were, by human standard, the most unlikely people. Amos the farmer, David the shepherd boy, Rahab the harlot, Moses the stutterer, and the list goes on. As a matter of fact, it is unlikely that you will come up with a long list of likely candidates. Sure, there is the curve buster in Daniel and Solomon, but they are really few and far between.

These stories fascinate me because of how human they really are. If we strip away the cutesy Sunday School version of the stories, then we begin to see the raw humanity rise to the surface. We see that these “saints of old” were not as “saintly” as we once supposed. In fact, many of these characters would find a hard time being accepted in to membership of our churches, let alone leadership.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9 (ESV)

That is why I am so thankful that God sees things differently then we do! That He has different plans and goals for our lives then we could ever imagine. As I study these characters, their flaws, their bad decisions, their circumstances I begin to have such hope that God can, in fact, use me if He so chooses. That God doesn’t care what family I am born into, or what grades I got in school, or how much money I have, or what car I drive, or what brand of shoes I wear, or what sins I committed in the past, or what fears I have, or what struggles I have. What He cares about is my heart! He cares so much that He sent His Son Jesus to redeem you and me! So that we can truly say that we love Him because He first loved us!

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 (ESV)

When I consider the teens in our church, I see amazing young men and women whom God wants to do great things through. I see young men and women who struggle to understand how much God loves them and how much more of God they can have if they so desire. I see fears and worries prevent them from fully allowing God to take over their lives. I see some who think they are unworthy, unwanted and unlikely. Yet that is exactly where God calls us from.

As Sam Preston and I were talking, she shared a great quote, “God does not call the equipped, He equips the called!” It’s not about who we are, what we’ve done or what we have, it is about Jesus Christ in us! As we look at this Unlikely Series, I hope that we find great freedom and joy in the realization that we are unlikely candidates, and yet that God loves us the way we are. However, He loves us too much to leave us where we are. Just like the Bible characters we look at, God will call us from our humble beginnings and do great things in and through us as we learn to trust Christ with all of our life!