Perhaps I shouldn’t judge or rate the sermon’s given in my church, but there are definitely some that speak to me a quite a bit more than others. During Phil’s sermon on Sunday he gave a sermon that spoke to me. During the sermon he gave a list of people from The Bible that God used to make a powerful impact in the world. The list consisted of the person’s name and their shortcoming. Perhaps not even shortcomings, but in the ways that some people in the world might have seen them as broken. Some might have seen these as weaknesses or faults.

After the service I asked Phil for the list. He told me that it was in his folder and to go grab the list and we would make copies. I got to his pulpit and opened his folder, but I didn’t see the list, so I grabbed his folder and brought it to him.

I handed it over to him and told him that I didn’t want to go rifling through his stuff.

He said, “You don’t have to worry about that. When I let my hair down it doesn’t go that far down.”

So we went into the church office and he made me a copy of the list. The list was from an article by Dr. Robert A. Schuller. Below is the paragraph from that article with that list:

The Bible is filled with people God used who, by today’s standards of ability and nobility wouldn’t have qualified for much at all.

Noah was a drunk,
Abraham was too old,
Isaac was a daydreamer,
Jacob was a liar,
Joseph was abused,
Moses stuttered,
Gideon was afraid,
Samson was a womanizer,
Rahab was a prostitute,
Jeremiah was too young,
David was an adulterer,
Elisha was suicidal,
Isaiah preached naked,
Jonah ran from God,
Naomi was a widow,
John the Baptist ate bugs,
Peter denied Christ,
all of the disciples fell asleep while praying,
Martha worried about everything,
the Samaritan woman had several failed marriages,
Zacchaeus was too small,
Paul was too religious,
Timothy was too young and had ulcers,
and Lazarus was dead.

I think that it is a powerful list to meditate upon when we want to sit in judgment upon other people. It is a powerful list to meditate upon when we want to sit in judgment on ourselves. Who are we to do God’s work? We are who God made us to be, even with all of our faults, shortcomings and mistakes.