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“You’re my favorite kind of person to work with.”

A thought by Steven Furtick, (2016-03-01) from his book, (UN)Qualified: How God Uses Broken People to Do Big Things (p. 102). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Would you like someone to say that about you?

Steven tells the story behind those words. He said, “Recently I tried to learn tennis as a hobby. I was pretty nervous when I went for my first lesson, and the first thing the instructor said didn’t help. ‘All right, let’s see what I’ve got to work with. What do you know?’ I told him I had no idea what I was doing. He said that was just the way he liked it, which confused me. He explained how people come all the time knowing just enough tennis to make them impossible to coach. They don’t want to trust a new way because they are used to their way. And they try to show the coach how much they know instead of learning what he has to teach them. ‘You’re my favorite kind of person to work with,’ he said.”

Steven then said, “I wonder if God’s favorite kind of person to work with is the one who says, ‘God, I have no idea what I’m doing here. But if you’ll show me what you know about me, about life, about relationships, about my career, about my decisions, I’ll do it.’”

He goes on, “Pride is the barrier that keeps us from receiving strength in our weakness. Sometimes you may find yourself embarrassed to ask others, or even God, for help. You may feel that you should be more mature by now, more capable. You know that God has called you to accomplish certain things, but the fact that your weaknesses keep getting in the way is humiliating. Maybe God is running out of patience with me, you think. After all, I’m certainly out of patience with myself.”

But then he says, “God is not out of patience. And he probably has a significantly different assessment of yourself than you do.”

And here is the key, “But in order to receive his help, we have to admit we need it. We have to take our weaknesses to God in faith, without self-condemnation or despair or shame.”


So why don’t you do that today?

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