After Hurricane Katrina I was privileged to be a part of a church that sent several cleanup and rebuild crews to New Orleans over several years. On one of those trips we broke from our normal routine and went to visit a nursing home in order to sing, hold a service, preach the gospel, and talk with the residents. Most of the residents were in their eighties and nineties, but one man stood out, he was half the age of everyone else.
During the time of mingling myself and a few
others were able to strike up a conversation with this young man. It was readily
apparent that he had a serious disorder which had brought him to the nursing
home: he was in a wheel chair, his hands and arms were locked in grotesque and
unnatural positions, and-most glaringly-he could only communicate through grunts
and head movements. Patience, and his experience communicating despite his
debilitation, allowed us to slowly discover that he had not always been wheel
chair bound, but that through drug abuse he had destroyed parts of his brain
and had addled his thinking.
We transitioned into speaking about spiritual things, and
asked him if he knew who Jesus was. His response was extraordinary, he perked
up, gave us a crooked grin, and nodded his head profusely. A few probing
questions led us to believe that since being stricken, someone had shared the
gospel with him, he had believed it, and had been born again.
But then I asked a question that nearly crushed him, “Are
you serving Jesus now?” His head and countenance fell. It was obvious that despite
his desire to serve his Saviour, he felt as fettered in his ability to do
anything for Jesus as his body was bound to the wheelchair. I thought about how he could answer the question: he couldn’t preach, he couldn’t serve, he couldn’t go, he couldn’t
even take care of himself, let alone someone else.
Then we gave him his commission, “Your job here is to pray
for all of these people,” gesturing to dozens of residents who had little to no
comprehension of the gospel that had saved this man’s soul, “and to not stop
praying.” His joy returned and his grin came back. He was not a useless saint
being punished with the consequences of his past sins, he was a useful saint whose
past sins were being redeemed in a dark place to pray for heretofore un-prayed for people who were in their final strides of a lifelong race they had spent running headlong towards Hell!
Many of us feel as though we are unfit for service, though
it is rarely so pronounced as this man. Perhaps it’s the retiree who no longer has
an audience, or the military veteran who is missing an appendage, or the former
pastor whose ex-wife’s sins disqualified him from the pastorate in his
denomination, or the thrice divorced repentant adulterer who is known through
the town for his past womanizing, or the missionary who had to return home because his health failed on the mission field, or the wife who finally realizes the beauty
of, “the unmarried woman is anxious about the things of the Lord,
how to be holy in body and spirit,” and now thinks she’s wasted her usefulness
by becoming anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband (1 Cor
7:34).
But God is in the business of laying out works before us to
walk in (Ephesians 2:10). What was meant for evil, he is turning for good
(Genesis 50:20). What should have destroyed us is making us stronger (1
Corinthians 1:8-9). We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed,
but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not
destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of
Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). We are afflicted-even when our affliction is our own fault-so
that the works of God may be displayed in us (John 9:3).
We have this promise from God that he is both willing and
working for his good pleasure, both redeeming us from our past sins, but also
using our past to proclaim his purposes to others, so much so that the church
is conquering the accuser with the blood of the Lamb AND the word of their
testimony. Despite these great promises often we think that our sin is bigger
than the grace of the Lord Christ. Or, and I’m not sure anyone would ever admit
to this, we use our sin and affliction as an excuse to stop working, since we feel we can
blame God for either not preventing our sin and/or affliction, or for not redeeming it in the way
we’d like.
When we make excuses for why we are not working, we are
denying the power of God. Paul works through this mightily in Second
Corinthians 12, and he comes to this conclusion, “For the sake of Christ, then,
I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.
For when I am weak, then I am strong."
Christian, are you hindered in your ministry by some
physical, spiritual, external, cultural or unmitigable impediment? GOOD! God can and
does use the strong, but he more often uses the broken, destitute, impossible people
to accomplish some of his most amazing outcomes. Do not whine to the living God that
there is no-one able to heal or redeem your afflictions (cf John 5:2-9), for he
will tell you to work while it is still day, to walk in the works he has
prepared for you, not the works you’d do if you could choose, but the works he has
chosen so that his power may be displayed in you. Are you looking at your circumstances and wasting your life by thinking they are wasting your life? Repent, and bear fruit keeping with repentance!
