For the week of: Monday, March 17th 2008

"The Ordinary Made Extraordinary"

Think hard now. If God had included a story from your life in Scripture, what story would He have chosen?

You’re probably snickering, rolling your eyes or scrolling to the bottom of the page to get the punch line, opting to ignore the question. I sure would. Who among us, save the heroes of our day perhaps, would have anything extraordinary enough about our lives to be considered the stuff that Scripture is made of?

Too ordinary, that’s what I say, definitely too ordinary.

Let this pass through your eyeballs and into your thinker…God used ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things while they were doing the ordinariness of life.

Consider the young man David. The shepherd boy had been pulled off task, loaded down with goody bags and sent off to deliver them to his battle-worn brothers while checking on their condition for a report to poppa back home. Regardless of how exciting it may have been for a young lad to be near enough to the front lines of battle to hear the war cries, it was a pretty low profile assignment – an ordinary shepherd boy sent with ordinary supplies to his ordinary brothers.

Sure didn’t end up being an ordinary day though did it? The story that follows in I Samuel is one of the most often told Bible stories – David and Goliath. This ordinary boy had extraordinary faith in an extraordinary God. And that combination made an ordinary stone in an ordinary sling bring down an army and elevate a shepherd boy toward the throne of King.

Now for a girl story – I Samuel 25. Abigail was an ordinary gal married to a…well, he was a…how do I say this…he was a jerk. Scripture says Nabal was “surly and mean in his dealings”. Not exactly the stuff dreams are made of.

And not only was he mean, the guy just didn’t have a lot going for him in the brains category. He insulted the soon-to-be-King David by killing some of David’s men for no justifiable reason. David didn’t blink an eyelash before deciding to seek revenge on Nabal (which would include Nabal’s family) with plans to hunt him down and run him through with a sword.

Scripture says Abigail was beautiful and intelligent (I know what you’re thinking but that doesn’t disqualify her from being ordinary) and unfortunately, her father had arranged for her to be married to Nabal. But look what she does. She takes ordinary food out of her pantry, so to speak, and heads on up the road to intercept David on his way to behead her husband and household. David is impressed with her, God strikes Nabal with a heart attack and David comes back to sweep Abigail off her feet as his bride. I mean does that not just ooze with ordinariness turned extraordinary?

You know what I think? I think both of these folks were going about their ordinary lives but both were prepared in mind and heart to be used by God for the extraordinary. Neither were remotely expecting the extraordinary happenings that came about, couldn’t have even daydreamed what was about to occur. But they were ready, they were so ready. Both showed incredible faith in God, faith that had been nurtured and grown in them by God Himself.

Dear one, God is growing some faith in you too. It doesn’t look like faith sometimes to our human eyes. It looks like grief. It looks like broken promises and fallen dreams. It looks like pain, agony and gut-wrenching disappointment. But in spiritual language…the harvest is faith. And faith moves ordinary people to do extraordinary things through the power of an extraordinary God.

Let’s you and I get on our knees and ask almighty God to prepare us for extraordinary things for Him. In the meantime, go back and read some of your old favorite Bible stories and ask yourself (1) who is the ordinary person in the story, (2) what ordinary things/objects/situations were used, (3) what extraordinary thing did God accomplish, (4) was faith involved?

Don’t let these stories get shuffled into the “kids stories” category. These stories are the real deal, my friends. Read them, dissect them, learn from them and most of all, be inspired from them to be prepared in mind and heart to be used by God in the ordinariness of your life for the extraordinary.

From His Ordinary Girl,
Kay

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