"And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good, 10 I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps." Genesis 32:9-10
Sometimes I get so discouraged by my own lack of faithfulness to things I know that I need to be faithful to, like prayer, that I doubt whether I should be a Pastor. I compare myself with others who I view as faithful men, heroes of the faith, and conclude that I'm totally inadequate to do anything for God of any significance. But then I'm reminded, as I was today, that everyone falls short of the glory of God. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. I was reminded of this as I meditated on the life of Jacob. His very name points out the flaws in his character (i.e. schemer) that is really rooted in a lack of faith in God. Rather then trusting in the promises of God, like his Father's before him, he would at times take matters into his own hands. There were consequences to some of their bad decisions, but God didn't forsake them. Instead, God continued to use them and bless them.
Jacob, after receiving many blessings from God in the years he spent with Laban, was returning home. And at the time he was fearful that Esau, whom he deceived years before, and at one time wanted revenge, was still angry with him. So before meeting his brother, he prayed. In his prayer, he acknowledges that he was unworthy of the faithfulness and steadfast love of God shown to him in all the blessings from God that he had obtained (Gen. 32:9-10).
God uses crackpots. He fills them with his glory through faith in the finished work of Jesus. But the problems is that we leak. In other words, we are forgetful, we are weak and we still have a sinful nature, the old man that must be daily kept in check or it will raise it's ugly head. In addition, we have and enemy called the devil, who is a liar and we live in a corrupt world that seeks to I shape us into it's mold. Therefore we must be renewed in God day by day. We must immediately confess to God when we think wrong and act wrong and not allow our sinful flesh to get momentum in our lives. We must seek to be cleansed from the filth of this world through prayer and the word.
God uses crackpots that acknowledge that we our such and continually seek his glory in the face of Jesus Christ where we our humbled, renewed, strengthen and changed to be more like Jesus (2 Cor. 3:18; 4:6-7). I'm glad God uses crackpots—broken and flawed people, because I know that I'm one of them.
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