“God has a habit of picking people who have been passed over.”

A thought by Steven Furtick, (2016-03-01) from his book, (UN)Qualified: How God Uses Broken People to Do Big Things (p. 4). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

This is a new book by Steven Furtick that speaks about something that each of us have to deal with in ourselves.  So many of us hope that we are qualified to do what we have to deal with in life but we are also afraid that others will find out that we are unqualified.  We just don’t have what it takes to do big things with our life.   

Steven says, “I think we all secretly fight feelings of inadequacy, insufficiency, and incompetence. We wonder whether we really measure up. We fear we are not ‘enough’— whatever that means in our particular situations.”

But then he says, “I have good news. If you look at the great men and women of Scripture, you find one common denominator: they were all unqualified. God has a habit of picking people who have been passed over.” 

But people are different.  Steven says, “We constantly analyze and summarize each other. We compare people to our standards— spoken or unspoken— to see how they measure up. Then we accept them or reject them; we praise them or criticize them; we revere them or ridicule them. We all secretly administer exams in the university of our own opinions.”  We do that don’t we?

He goes on, “As you understand how God sees you, you will find the freedom and self-confidence that he wants for your life. You will never get those things from human qualifications, by the way. That’s a dead-end street. You could never be perfect enough or failproof enough to be at peace with yourself on that basis alone.”

He then says, “Peace and confidence come through one thing: acceptance. In a culture fixated on self-improvement and self-help, that might seem counterintuitive. But it’s true. First, God’s unconditional acceptance of you. God knows your true identity— the real you— and he loves you just as you are. Second, your acceptance of yourself, including your weaknesses. That means confronting the parts of you that you may prefer to ignore. And it means knowing who you are (and who you are not) in and through Jesus. And third, your acceptance of God’s process of change. God’s work in your life isn’t meant to squelch or eradicate the real you but rather to bring out the best possible version of you.”

God has a plan for each of our lives and it doesn’t matter if we are qualified.  It matters that He is in the business of using unqualifed people.  

So are you connected to God's plan for your life?