God Uses Ordinary People - Life of Christ Part 15

One day I was standing in the waiting room of a gas station here locally and I noticed a poster on the wall. And here's what it said. It said, C. Rinker Paving Company needs some good men. Workers must meet the following qualifications.

And then there was a list. Number one, you must know your address or the make and model of car you are living in. Number two, you must be able to tell time. Number three, you must have hair short enough to see and hear. Number four, your earrings must be light enough that you can look the boss in the face. Number five, you must be able to check the gas and the oil in your vehicle and be able to drive nonstop from Manassas to Centerville. That's not very far in case you didn't know.

And last of all, it said, you must be able to go eight hours without drugs or alcohol and be able to work at least 30 minutes straight without going to the restroom. Now, I wrote these down because I thought these were hilarious. And it's fairly obvious if you'd have been there, you would not have written these down. That's pretty obvious.

But I thought they were funny. Anyway, what's the point? The point is that every job has certain requirements, certain qualifications that you have to meet in order to work that job. And when it comes to the job of serving Jesus Christ and letting your life be used by him, which I believe, frankly, is the highest and the noblest job anywhere in the universe, what are the qualifications that you and I have to have in order to do that? This morning, our passage looks at Jesus calling his 12 apostles. And I want us to look at that passage and to talk a little bit about their qualifications. What was it that they had that qualified them to serve the resurrected king of the universe?

And then from that, I want us to answer the question, so what? When it comes to the qualifications that we need for serving the Lord today in the 20th century. So let's begin. Luke chapter 6, verse 12. One of those days, Jesus went out into the hills to pray and he spent the whole night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and he chose 12 of them whom he also designated apostles. Jesus here was about to make one of the most strategic decisions of his entire earthly ministry. He was about to appoint his apostles. These are men who would form his inner circle. They would be men that Jesus would disclose himself to in a way that he would not disclose himself to anyone else. Once he was gone, these men would be his ambassadors. That's what the Greek word apostolos means.

It means an ambassador. They would be his ambassadors to the world and Jesus would count on them. He would depend on them to write much of the New Testament, to establish the Christian church, to carry the message of salvation through Jesus Christ without compromise to the entire world.

So this was an enormous task that Jesus was appointing these men to and it was essential that he had the right men for the job. And so, before making his choice, Jesus went out and spent the entire night in prayer seeking God's wisdom and God's direction. Which, by the way, was a very common practice for him to go to a lonely place alone and seek God in prayer.

If you look back in chapter 5, verse 16, the Bible says in verse 16, Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. You know, the thought occurred to me as I was studying this passage this week that maybe the reason I seem to make so many bad decisions is that I do it exactly backwards so often from the way Jesus did it here. What I mean is I tend to make my decision quickly, just the way it feels, you know, intuition, a human logic, and then I tend to bathe in prayer the disaster that results.

Right? Can you relate to that? Instead of bathing in prayer the decision before I made it.

Maybe you do that. For those of us who do that, I think, wouldn't it be true that we'd make a lot better decisions if we were to follow the pattern that Jesus gives us here, which is to bathe the decision in prayer before we make it and not afterwards? Well, anyway, in the morning, Jesus was ready to make his decision. And he came down from the mountain and he chose 12 men. And they're listed here, beginning in verse 14. Simon, whom he named Peter, his brother Andrew, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon, who was called the zealot, Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. I want us to take a quick look at these 12 men.

Let's look and see what kind of qualifications they had, huh, for ministry. First there was Simon, whom Jesus named Peter. Now, it's interesting in all four gospel accounts, when they list the apostles, they always list the same person first. You know who it is? Of course, it's Peter. The other interesting thing is that even though they mix up all the other names in different orders, they always list the same person last. Guess who that is?

Judas. Isn't that interesting? Say, what's the point? I don't know, I just thought I'd tell you that. Thought you might find that interesting.

But it really is true. Now, what did Peter do? Peter was a fisherman, right?

And when you think of Peter, certain adjectives fly into your mind. What are some of the adjectives that you would think of if I asked you to give me some adjectives that described Peter? How about uneducated? How about unpolished? How about crass? How about brusque? How about impulsive? How about rude?

How about outspoken? All of these were true of Peter. Peter was one of those guys, you know, who always entered the room mouth first. You know those people?

Sure, I know several of those people. That was Peter. And then the Bible says there was his brother, Andrew, who was also a fisherman. Now, we don't know much about Andrew, but he seems to be, as brothers often are, the exact opposite of his brother, Peter.

The Bible presents him as saying hardly anything, ever. And I assume that he was probably a very quiet, very restrained individual, kind of the exact antonym of his brother, Peter. The only thing we know about Andrew is that he was the one, John chapter 1, that tells us he was the one who actually led Peter to Christ. Then there were James and John, who were also brothers. They were sons of a man named Zebedee, that's right. And Zebedee, we don't know anything about him, but we know that these were his two sons. Now, these two men were also fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, and Mark chapter 3 tells us something very interesting about them. In Mark chapter 3, it says, to them, Jesus gave the nickname, Boanerges, which means sons of lightning and thunder. Now, I don't know why, but Jesus called these guys lightning and thunder, which gives you some idea what their temperament and their personality must have been like.

These guys must have been a couple of fireballs. We know very little about Philip, Bartholomew, James the son of Alphaeus, or Judas the son of James. We do know a little bit about Thomas. In fact, you know him by his nickname, which is what?

What was it? Doubting Thomas. Right. He was a twin, by the way. The Bible says his name was Didymus, which means a twin.

His twin was not an apostle, but he was. And the Bible says that when Jesus appeared after his resurrection, Thomas, if you remember, wasn't there. And then when all of the apostles said, Hey, Thomas, the Lord appeared to us. Thomas said, unless I can take my finger and put it in the hole in his hand, and unless I can take my hand and stick it in the hole in his side, I will not believe. So a week later, Jesus appeared and said, Thomas, come here a second.

Take your finger and stick it right here in the hole in my hand and take your hand and stick it right here on my side and stop doubting and believe. But it just seems like that was Thomas's personality. He was just that kind of guy.

In John chapter 11, when Jesus was headed to Jerusalem for the very last time to go to the cross, Thomas is quoted as saying, Well, let's us go ahead and go to Jerusalem with him so we may die also. That's just the kind of guy he was. I kind of look at him as the Eeyore of the apostles.

You know what I'm saying? You know Eeyore? He's the one who says, Well, I don't know where my tail went. I had it one time and then all of a sudden it was gone. I looked everywhere and I'll never find my tail.

I guess I'll just have to go through my whole life without my tail. Let's go to Jerusalem so we can die with him. Sounds like the same guy, doesn't it? Any different than Peter?

Like night and day. Then there was Judas Iscariot. Did you ever wonder what Iscariot meant? You say, Yeah, I've always wanted to know that. What does that crazy word mean? Well, it's Hebrew and it means Ish-kariot, which means the man from the little town of Karaite. You say, That's it?

That's what it means? I thought you could tell me something really heavy like the one who stabbed the Lord in the back or something. No, it just means a man who comes from the little city of Karaite in Judah. Say, Gosh, that's kind of a letdown.

Well, just think of it this way. Next time you play Bible trivia, you'll know it and nobody else will. That's all it means. And he was a traitor. You say, Boylan, Jesus' prayer life did him a lot of good choosing this guy. Look at the guy he chose. The guy was a traitor. What kind of prayer life is that? What kind of discernment is that?

Well, wait a minute. Acts chapter two. Peter said in Acts chapter two in his sermon, This man Jesus was delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. That's why you could nail him to a cross and that's why you put him to death. Look, choosing this man was no accident. This man was exactly the choice that God wanted Jesus to make.

It was all part of the plan. Jesus' prayer life was fine, thank you. You say, Well, Lon, these guys are all a lot different.

Yeah, they are. But I suppose when we come to the last two apostles, we find the most striking difference among the whole bunch. And their names were Matthew and Simon the Zealot.

Now, what do we know about these two? Well, several weeks ago, we talked about Matthew here because earlier in Luke's gospel, he appears. Matthew was a tax collector. He was a Jew who worked for the Romans. The Romans controlled Palestine at this time and they decided what each province owed them in taxes and then a Jew, a tax collector like Matthew, would go around and collect the taxes and pay the Romans. And whatever he was able to extort over and above the taxes that were owed, he could keep for himself.

That's how he made his living. He was backed up by the Roman army. Nobody could argue with him. Nobody could resist him. He took whatever he wanted from whomever he wanted and the Jews hated these people. They considered them collaborators with the Romans. They considered them traitors and they considered them extortioners of their own people. And then there was Simon the Zealot. And if you notice, the word Zealot in the Bible is with a capital Z because this was an actual political party in the land of Israel at this time. These people got their name, the Zealots, because of their zeal to rid Israel of everything Roman and all Romans.

Therefore, they were called the Zealots or the Zealots. They hated the Romans. They carried on guerrilla warfare against the Romans, killing any Roman anytime they could find him alone or in a small group.

They worked out of their headquarters up near the Sea of Galilee, which is where Jesus was from. And not only were they out to kill every Roman they could get their hands on, but they also lynched, without trial, any Jew that they felt collaborated with the Romans. They were the Islamic fundamentalists of Israel. And they had declared a jihad against the Romans, and not just against the Romans, but against every Jew that collaborated with them. These people were fanatics. They were the ones who prompted the nation of Israel to revolt against the Romans in 66 AD that led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple.

They were the ones who fled down to Masada, if you remember that story, where for three years they held the Romans off and finally all committed suicide rather than let any Roman take them captive. They were nuts! But it doesn't take a rocket scientist, does it, to figure out how Simon the Zealot and Matthew probably felt about each other, huh? Think they were bosom buddies?

I don't think so. And yet the Lord Jesus Christ took Matthew and Simon the Zealot and people of all kinds of different stripes and personalities in between and put them all together on the same team. And not only did he put them together on the same team, but he made them work as a team and they became a team.

You say, well, Lon, how in the world did he accomplish that? I mean, people in our world today, nobody can get along in our world today. Why, in Yugoslavia we have the Bosnians and they can't get along with the Serbs, and I mean in India we got the Hindus and they can't get along with the Muslims and in the Middle East we got the Arabs and they can't get along with the Israelis and here in Washington we got the Democrats and they can't get along with the Republicans and the Democrats can't even get along with each other. And neither can the Republicans.

Don't want to be partisan here. Nobody can get along. So how in the world can Jesus put together Simon and Matthew and everybody else in between and make it work? Good question. The answer is this, that these 12 men had a unifying force that held them together that was greater than all of the forces that pushed them apart and that force was their love for Jesus Christ and their devotion to him. A few years ago I met a guy out in the foyer here who was from Egypt. He was an Arab. And we began talking and he told me that he had given his life to Jesus Christ and he was a Christian now and that was great. We talked for a while and he knew my background, that I was a Jew and after we got through talking we shook hands and then he reached out and he hugged me and I hugged him back and after we let go I said to him, isn't this neat, isn't this exciting that only in Jesus Christ can a Jew and an Arab embrace and be brothers but in Jesus Christ we can because it's bigger than the differences between us. And friends, we hear all this talk today about world peace and all this talk about the new world order. It's all a barrage.

It's crazy. None of this is ever going to happen. Not until Jesus Christ comes back again and is enthroned as the ruler of all mankind because he is the only force anywhere in the universe that's stronger than our sinful hatreds and our sinful biases and our sinful prejudices. He's the only force stronger than that but he is stronger than that and that's the good news, strong enough that he took these 12 men who were as different as different could be and he melded them together into a team that loved one another, the 12 apostles. That's our passage but it leads us to ask the question, so what? That's right. You know, as I looked at these 12 men and how different they were, one thing that impressed me is that they were all alike in one way.

Did you pick that up? They had one thing in common and that is they were all very ordinary people. They're very ordinary people. There wasn't a PhD among them. There wasn't a movie star among them. There wasn't a professional athlete among them. There wasn't a professional theologian among them.

They were just everyday people. But you know, the Bible says that God loves to use everyday people because the reason is that when God uses the big shots to get his work done, when God uses people that the world reveres and the world considers to be something eminent, then those people get the credit. The world gives the credit to them but when God uses everyday people like you and me to do things beyond anything that we ought to be able to do, then he gets the credit. And that's the way he wants it. I want you to see that here in the Bible. I want you to turn back with me to the first letter that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. It's called 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And I want you to see God comment to this idea that he loves to use ordinary people. Look with me in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 20.

Here's what it says. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? And Paul goes on to say that all these philosophers and all of these wise men and all these college professors back then were running all through the world looking to find all the answers to life and the answers on the other side of the grave and how to get eternal life through all of their philosophy and all of their scholarship. And instead, God uses the simple message of the cross to solve all those problems. He's made foolish all of this wisdom of the world.

Look down at verse 26. Brothers, he says, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many of you were influential by human standards.

Not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world. That's us, by the way. To confound, to shame the wise, God chose the weak things of the world. That's us, by the way. To shame the strong, he chose the lowly things of the world, the despised things, the things that are not in the world's estimation.

Guess who that is? That's us, right. And he did it to nullify the things that are something in the world's estimation so that no one may boast before God. Verse 31, if you're going to boast in anything as it's written, let him who boast, boast in the Lord.

If you're going to give anybody the credit, God says, I'm the one you're going to give it to. Queen Victoria of England, who, by the way, was a very fine Christian, was one time asked what she was most thankful for in all the world. Now you're asking the Queen of England this.

Back when England really was a big schmaltz country, you know, it's not today, but it owned the whole empire back then. What do you think she'd say? She said to this person, I thank God most for the letter M. And the person asking her went, what? What are you talking about? She said, I am so grateful that the verse in the Bible reads, not many noble instead of not any noble.

That's good, huh? But, you know, in spite of the fact of Queen Victoria and her faith, if you look down through history, you'll find that seldom, if ever, has God used people who were revered in the world's eyes as his greatest servants. See, so often we have the attitude, oh man, if God would only get a hold of that one, or God would only get a hold of this big shot, I mean, if God would only grab them and they'd give their life to Christ, just think what they could do for the work of God. Just think what would happen if Madonna became a Christian. Or just think what would happen if Kevin Costner, ooh, I like him, oh, he's handsome. Yeah, just think what would happen if he became a Christian and stood up in the Emmys or stood up at the Oscars and told everybody now that he was a Christian. Just think what would happen if Nolan Ryan in his retirement announced to everybody about Jesus Christ.

Just think what if some big shot politician did this. Oh, just think how they could shake the world for Christ. You know what, folks, history shows it is not the big shots who've made the big impacts for Jesus Christ.

In fact, often they just get in the way. It's ordinary people, ordinary people like these 12 apostles, ordinary people like you and me. And if you want your life to make a difference for Jesus Christ, and I hope you do, you don't have to be rich, you don't have to be handsome, you don't have to be beautiful or brilliant, you don't have to be a jock or a cheerleader at school, you don't have to be a big shot at all.

If you're an everyday ordinary person, you are a perfect candidate to make a difference in this world for Christ. But there are two qualifications you've got to meet, and here they are. Number one, you've got to be related, and number two, you've got to be committed. Related and committed. You say, related to what? No, not to what.

To whom? You have to be related to Jesus Christ. You see, God only lets family serve him.

That's all. He doesn't let people outside the family serve him. And the Bible refers to those people who are part of God's special family as sheep, or as his own children. I told you last week, if you were here, everybody in this world may be one of God's creatures, but not everybody in this world is one of God's sheep. He said to the religious leaders of Israel in John 10, he said, you do not believe what I'm telling you because you're not one of my sheep.

And the converse is true. The way to become one of his sheep is to believe in him as your personal Lord and Savior. Then the Bible says God adopts you into his family as his special child in a way that the rest of the world isn't, as one of his sheep. And then and only then is God prepared to let you serve him.

In John chapter 6, the apostles had done that. Jesus said to them, are you going to go away too? The crowds are all going away because they don't like what I'm saying. Are you going to go away too?

Here's what, who else? Peter said. He said, Lord, where would we go? We believe that you are the Holy One of God and that you alone have the words of eternal life.

Hey, is he related? You bet. Is that faith in Christ?

You bet. And you know, there are people sitting in churches all over America this morning who got it exactly backwards, who got the cart before the horse. They're trying to serve God and serve God and serve God and serve God in the hope. If they serve God enough, they'll get to be one of his sheep.

But see, that's backwards. They're serving in the Sunday school. They're singing in the choir. They're working outside on the buildings and grounds. They're giving their money.

They're doing everything they can think of. Saying, God, when do I become one of your sheep? When have I served you enough?

And God says, you don't understand. You don't become one of my sheep by serving. You become one of my sheep by believing, accepting Christ personally as your Lord and Savior. And then your service flows out of how much you love me for what I did for you. In terms of giving you eternal life and making you one of my children, you're not serving to earn anything. You're serving because you love me. Maybe some of us here have it inside out.

If you've had it inside out for years, I hope we can straighten it out this morning. You have to become one of God's sheep before the service you do for God makes any difference to him anyway. God only lets family serve him. And God wants to make you a member of his family this morning. And it's easy.

You don't have to do anything. These same people in John 6 said, what must we do to do the works that God requires? How many hoops do we have to jump through, Jesus? How many Sunday school classes do we have to teach?

How many times do we have to sing in the choir? Here's what Jesus said. Jesus said, the work of God is this, that you believe in the one God has sent. That you believe in me. So if you're here this morning and you've been trying to serve your way into being a sheep, then it'll never happen. You need to believe your way into being a sheep.

And once you do that, then you're ready to serve. And that leads me to my second word. Not only do we need to be related, but we need to be committed. You say, committed how? Well, committed in the same way these 12 men were.

How were they committed? They had left everything to follow Jesus. They'd left their employment. They'd left their homes. They'd left their families.

They left it all. They had decided to put Jesus Christ as the number one priority in their life. They were committed to obeying him whatever he asked of them. They were committed to being outspoken for him.

You remember in Acts chapter 5, the Sadducees and the religious leaders called him in and they said, all right, you guys, we got a deal for you. We're not going to put you in jail. We're not going to beat you up. We're not going to kill you. You can go free. All we're going to ask you is don't go out there and talk about this Jesus stuff anymore. Good deal?

Sound okay? Let's shake on it. And the apostles said, you're crazy. You can put us in jail. You can put us under the jail.

You can kill us if you want to. By the way, they all were killed for their faith. But we're going to keep talking about Jesus Christ to anybody that will listen. These people were committed to being outspoken witnesses and to being faithful to whatever God asked them to do, regardless of the cost. You see, my dear friends, God is looking for Christians who may be ordinary in every other way, but they are not ordinary when it comes to their commitment to Jesus Christ. Dwight L. Moody may have been the greatest evangelist America's ever produced.

In spite of the fact that I know Billy Graham is a great man and I have very high affection for him, I still think Dwight L. Moody is the greatest evangelist this country ever produced. But you know, if you'd have looked at Dwight L. Moody at the age of 18 when he became a Christian, you would never have bet one penny on him ever amounting to much of anything. He was more ordinary than the most ordinary person you can ordinarily think of, if you know what I mean. His dad died when he was age four, when Moody was. He was raised in poverty. He was overweight. He was awkward.

He was clumsy. He never finished elementary school. He could hardly read or write. He wrote letters the way his mom taught him to, without any capitalization or any punctuation.

Try to read that letter sometime. Never used periods, never used commas, and never used capitals. He never finished any kind of formal education. He had no formal skills of any kind. And at age 18, when he gave his life to Christ in the back of his uncle's shoe store in Boston, he barely even knew how to sell shoes. They wouldn't even let him teach Sunday school in the church that he went to in Boston because they said he slaughtered the English language so badly that he was an embarrassment to the church. So they wouldn't let him teach. And he spent the first few years of his Christian life, much as maybe many of us have, feeling inadequate, feeling limited in his service for Christ, saying, What can God do with somebody like me?

I've got nothing to offer God. He was in England a few years later. And he had stayed up all night as part of a prayer meeting. And early in the morning as the sun was coming up, he was sitting with one of the other men out of the prayer meeting, a man named Varley.

They were sitting on a bench down in Hyde Park in London. And Varley turned to him and said, Moody, he said, The world has yet to see what God will do with one man who is fully consecrated to him. Listen to it again. The world has yet to see what God will do through one man who is fully consecrated to him. Moody went on to write, Varley said, Varley didn't say he had to be an educated man or a brilliant man or anything else, just a man. Well, by the Holy Spirit in me, Moody said, I aim to be that man. And he went on to become the greatest evangelist I believe in the church since the days of the Apostle Paul himself. What an unlikely candidate.

His biographer, a man named Gamaliel Bradford, who was not a Christian, he was an agnostic, wrote in 1820, and I quote, Dwight L. Moody was personally responsible for reducing the population of hell by over a million souls, end of quote. Can you fathom that? A million people led to Christ by one man? One ordinary man? An ordinary man with an extraordinary commitment. And you know, you and I may be ordinary people in every way, but if we'll give Jesus Christ the same kind of personal commitment in our lives that the apostles did, loving him above all else, obeying him no matter what he asked, committed to being outspoken witnesses and faithful to whatever he asks us to do regardless of the cost, friend, you will be staggered at what God will do through you. You say, well, Lon, that's easy for you to say. I mean, there you are, you're standing up there. You're gifted, you're articulate, you're educated theologically, you've got all kinds of training.

Yeah, but you know what? When God found me 22 years ago when this whole thing started, I didn't have any of this stuff. And the man who led me to Christ didn't have any of this stuff. He was a man named Bob Eckhart. Bob Eckhart had never been to college. He wasn't theologically trained, he had no higher degrees, he had no high paying job, he worked in a factory. He had no fancy clothes, he wasn't flashy, he wasn't articulate.

He didn't own a red Miata. He drove an old white van. I was a chemistry major at the University of North Carolina, and I don't think that this man knew the chemical formula of water.

That's H2O, by the way, in case you didn't. But you know, he was committed to serving Jesus Christ. He would drive into Chapel Hill, North Carolina every Saturday in this old white van and park it right on the downtown street and stand there and give out tracks to all these college students walking by who knew 50 times more about Kant and Descartes than he did.

I don't know if you've ever heard of Kant and Descartes. He was spit on, he was cussed out, he was abused, he was ridiculed, he was threatened, he was made fun of, but he kept on coming, week after week. A very ordinary man with a very extraordinary level of commitment. And friends, the reason I'm a Christian today on the human level is because this man, this man had a commitment to Christ that would not quit.

Just an ordinary guy. You know, the world system would love to convince you, the enemy would love to convince you, just like he tried to convince Moody that God's not interested in using you, that God needs somebody with more talent than you have, that God wants somebody with more ability than you have, that God wants somebody with more looks than you've got, that God wants somebody with more education than you've got, that God wants somebody with more polish than you've got. Don't you dare believe that.

That's a lie. Don't you dare trash yourself. Don't you dare trash your potential for being used by Jesus Christ. Look, if God could take and shake the entire ancient world with 12 ragamuffin guys like this, can't God take ordinary people like us and shake the world today just the same? The answer is you bet he can.

You bet he can. The only thing we've got to be is related and committed. And God will use us beyond our wildest imaginations. I hope that you'll commit yourself to serving Jesus Christ. There is no other reason for living. And when it's all over and you're on your way to heaven, the only thing you will have done in this world that at that point will make any difference is what you did for serving Jesus Christ.

The rest of it will not matter. Trust me. Trust me. I've sat at many a bedside of people who died, and that's the only thing that matters.

So let it be your life that God uses. You say, but, Lon, I don't think I've got what it takes. Sure you do.

You're ordinary, aren't you? You got what it takes. All you need is make sure you're related and make sure you're committed. And God will do the rest.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're so grateful that you don't need rich people to serve you. You don't need flashy people. You don't need highly educated people. You don't need powerful people or noteworthy people.

You just need ordinary people. But ordinary people who are willing to put Jesus Christ first in their lives, make obedience to Him the central issue in their lives, and are willing to be outspoken and faithful to Him as long as you give them breath, regardless of the cost. And I pray, Heavenly Father, that you would make us those kind of people. Thank you that you're using this church full of ordinary people to shake this community for Christ, to shake our families, to shake our neighborhoods, to shake our workplaces, that we're seeing the fruit of your using us. And I pray, Lord Jesus, that you wouldn't allow any guy or gal here to believe that they don't have enough of whatever it takes to serve Christ. Lord Jesus, encourage each one of us today that even though we may be ordinary in every way, if we'll give you an extraordinary level of commitment, you will shock us with how you'll use us. Send us out this week, I pray, Lord, in that confidence to be used by you. And we're going to thank you in advance for what you'll do through our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen.