God Uses Ordinary People

My social media algorithm knows I like food and cooking. It has started showing me videos of a content creator who goes to McDonald’s to buy ordinary meals, then takes them to Michelin chefs to see what they will create with the ingredients. I saw one chef take Quarter Pounder with Cheese and turn it into Beef Wellington. Another time a chef took a Filet-o-fish and create a French dish called Fish Quenelles. In every instance I found myself looking at the transformation wanting what they made. The power wasn’t in the ingredients. It was what could become of them in the hands of a master chef.

All throughout the Bible God chose to use ordinary people to do extraordinary things with. These people were simply willing to surrender the ingredients of their ordinary life for God to do something extraordinary with. Take the little boy with the five loaves and two fish. We don’t even know his name, but we know what Jesus did with what he handed Him. Also, think about David. One day he’s a shepherd boy keeping an eye on his flock. His dad doesn’t even think to call him when the prophet comes over looking for a king. There’s even Gideon who was hiding from his enemy’s when God called him to defeat his country’s oppressors. The power wasn’t in those people, but in the God who does the impossible with the ordinary.

2 Corinthians 4:7 says, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves” (NLT). Each of us are just ordinary jars of clay. We’re fragile, common and ordinary. On our own, we may not feel or seem like much, but when we place our life in God’s hands He can do incredible things through us. The power and outcome are from God and for His glory. All we have to do is submit ourselves to Him, allow Him to fill our hearts and to pour out what He wants on whomever He wants. God still uses ordinary people to accomplish great things when we’re willing to submit to surrender our jar of clay to Him.

Photo by Xihao Liu on Unsplash