God Uses Broken People – 4 Reasons God Uses the Weak to Do Amazing Things
Have you ever felt YOU were just too broken, weak and flawed for God to use? I have and many times I still do! If you have been wanting to serve God in ministry or in any capacity, but wonder if you’re just too much of a mess for Him to even want to make use of, then this post is for you! Biblical history has shown that God uses broken people throughout scripture. God uses the weak things of the world and chooses flawed people to achieve great things and I will share why! Read on to learn why you are never too broken for God to use!
Updated and republished from 5/14/2020
God Uses Broken People – But Am I Just Too Broken?
When I first started blogging I, like others, fell into the trap of comparing myself to other people. I think we all do that at one time or another, whether you’re a blogger or not. And I would see all these wonderful posts and see how these bloggers SEEMED to have this deep walk with God and here I was feeling like a mess.
I felt like they must all lead these wonderful, God-filled lives of perfection, with perfect marriages, perfect kids, perfect friends, with cloud floating and harp playing and I was just down here just trying to figure myself out.
It made me wonder how is God ever going to use me in this ministry capacity I felt called to (both in blogging and also in working on my Masters in Seminary) when I have all these issues in my life, not just prior to being saved but well after.
I would ask “Who am I to write and give other people encouragement or advice or teach anyone anything when I have made so many mistakes in my life and been such a mess myself? So many times I felt I disappointed God?”
I felt like I was somehow the only one that was messed up and didn’t have my act together!
Yes I had this ‘head-knowledge’ that God uses the weak and that God uses the broken. I have read the stories. He has done it throughout history, but surely He didn’t mean ME! Anyone but ME, right?
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God Uses Broken People and He Handpicked You!
It was during prayer and Bible study that God showed me something very important. It was as if He spoke right to me and said: “It is BECAUSE of the mistakes that I use you, not in spite of them!”
God uses the weak of this world, God uses the broken of this world and God chose YOU, because it’s that weakness and brokenness and those mistakes that give you a voice to reach those people who maybe feel like THEY don’t measure up.
Those that maybe feel that their mistakes render them unusable or that they are too far gone to have a relationship with Him! It’s because of the mistakes you made that God WILL use you!
I felt like I was somehow the only one that was messed up and didn't have my act together! Click To TweetGod Uses Broken People and, Like Broken Vessels, He Puts Them Together Again
You see, in the Bible, God did not choose people who were perfect! No, not even close!
He didn’t choose the righteous and religious elite of Yeshua’s day to be His disciples. Far from it!
No, all throughout the Bible, God uses broken vessels, God uses weak people, imperfect people, the flawed, the “messed up”.
Let’s face it, most of Yeshua’s disciples could have been residents on the Island of the Misfit Toys! No one is too broken for God. We all have broken pieces and God uses all our broken pieces and puts them together again in ways only He could and He solidifies them in His refining fire and mold us into what HE knows we CAN be.
He makes us the perfect vessel that He can work through and use!
He Chooses the Least Likely
When you are tempted to ask “Lord, am I broken, am I flawed too much for you?” just remember, He chose a brash, big-mouthed fisherman (who reminds me a lot of myself being that opinionated New Yorker I am), He chose a King who committed adultery with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed to cover up his sin, He chose a Hebrew with a supposed speech impediment, He chose a prostitute, He chose a persecutor of believers, He chose a tax collector…and on and on. And why is it God uses flawed people like these?
Why God Uses the Weak, Broken and Flawed People of the World
4 Reasons Why!
1. Relatability
He chooses flawed people because that is who we can most identify with. We relate to those people. We can’t relate to the holy and righteous Pharisees…no, but we relate to Peter though.
2. Our Need
He chooses flawed people because their flaws make them see their need for a Savior.
3. No Cause to Boast
He chooses flawed people because they have no cause to boast. They HAVE to rely on grace. If He chose a skilled orator and leader to lead the children out of Israel, he might have assumed to have done it through his own skill and leadership and not given the glory to God. Had Peter been a righteous and holy man, he may not have seen his need to lean on God and taken the credit for himself. There’s no question, when you are flawed, that it was GOD who did the work THROUGH you and not you on your own!
4. No Special Qualifications
God chooses and uses broken people to show us that He can equip anyone to do His work. We can look at Moses and see that we don’t need to be a great speaker or a skilled leader to do God’s work.
God Uses the Weak and Broken and Yes, He WILL Use You!
If you feel called to be a writer you don’t have to have years of experience. Write!
If you feel called to be a speaker, you don’t need a communications degree and years under your belt at Toastmasters. Speak!
In other words, if God calls you to something you can trust Him to equip you for it. You don’t need to rely on your own talents, skills, abilities. God will equip you for it!
And when it is God that equips you, you don’t feel boastful or haughty in your own abilities. A flawed person is open to God’s work in them.
God uses the weak, broken people, not because they are capable. He uses them when they make themselves available!
God doesn’t need us to be capable, He just needs us to be available! Click To Tweet
God Uses the Broken So That No One May Boast
“You were not delivered by your own actions; therefore no one should boast.”
Ephesians 2:9 CJB
It is not our own works! God is working through us and that leaves us no room to boast. It leaves us (or should leave us) praising God for the wonderful works He has performed THROUGH us.
God chooses broken vessels and puts them back together and makes them usable. Click To TweetSo if you feel flawed, that’s ok. You’re in great company!
Remember it is not about you and what YOU can do. It is about Him and what He can and will accomplish THROUGH you.
All you have to do is make yourself available, not capable. He will take care of that part! We should all be thankful that God uses the broken things of this world because we all are in one way or another!
And it is in our weakness that, through Him, we are made strong!
2 Corinthians 12:10
“For Messiah’s sake, then, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in distresses, in persecutions, in calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
TLV
God Chooses Who the World Would Least Expect – Examples From the Bible
Gideon
In the Book of Judges Chapter 6, we meet Gideon.
Gideon was ANYTHING but a warrior. In fact, he was quite the opposite.
The Israelites were under constant torment by the Medianites and the Amalekites. The Bible tells us they “ravaged the land” and left them nothing! They had no sustenance! Their sheep and cattle were taken.
They cried out to the Lord but God sent them a prophet. They wanted a savior but God sent them a sermon.
They needed to get right in their relationship with God. Israel had gone through yet another cycle of Obedience-Rebellion-Judgment-Redemption.
But God had a plan, as He always does.
He sent His angel (it is believed by many to be Yeshua since it mentions it is THE Angel of the Lord) and He calls to Gideon and says in Judges 6:12
“Then the angel of Adonai appeared to him and said to him, “Adonai is with you, O mighty man of valor..”
TLV
Mighty man of valor! He is calling him a warrior? Oh Gideon was anything but! But the Bible says in Romans 4:17:
“…who gives life to the dead and calls into existence that which does not exist.”
TLV
God didn’t see the Gideon in front of Him. He saw the potential of what Gideon COULD be with God in him.
And Gideon went on to obey the Lord in spite of all his fear, he defeated Israel’s enemies by obeying God (God actually defeated them THROUGH Gideon) and became the mighty warrior God called him to be.
And because people KNEW Gideon was no warrior and WAS in fact a frightened, weak man, there was no doubt it was God at work!
And in your life, God is calling you, not by who or what you are now in your weakness, but in who He sees you CAN be if you just make yourself available to Him.
Jael
I so love the story of Jael.
In Judges Chapter 4 we learn of Sisera.
Sisera was the commander of the Canaanite army. He was a VERY cruel man who oppressed the Israelites for twenty years.
Jael was the wife of Heber the Kenite. We don’t get to learn too much about her but that she was a Bedouin, a nomadic people who dwelled in tents.
Sisera, despite coming against Deborah and Barak with extreme might, was losing and chose to flee on foot. He ran right to Jael’s tent.
Jael (Yael in Hebrew) sees Sisera coming and tells him not to worry. She brings him into the tent and covers him up to warm him (and to appear to hide him). Well, I will let Judges tell the rest.
Judges 4:19-21:
He said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a skin of milk and made him drink some, and covered him. Then he said to her, “Stand at the entrance of the tent, and if anyone comes and asks you saying, ‘Is there a man here?’ then you will say, ‘There’s no one.’”
Then Yael, Heber’s wife, took a tent pin and got a hammer in her hand, approached him stealthily and drove the pin into his temple until it pierced through into the ground—for he was exhausted and in a deep sleep. So he died.
tlv
This ruler, this mighty man, fell to a woman with a common household item for the Boudoins; a tent peg. This was like getting killed with a frying pan today!
To the world, this was a woman with a common household tool. But God uses the weak to accomplish great things. God uses the weak and God uses broken people to achieve HIS purposes!
What is God calling YOU to? Have you felt God’s call on you but felt too unqualified or weak to heed that call? Share in the comments!
CJB – Taken from the Complete Jewish Bible by David H. Stern. Copyright © 1998. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Messianic Jewish Publishers, 6120 Day Long Lane, Clarksville, MD 21029. www.messianicjewish.net.
Tree of Life (TLV) – Scripture taken from the Holy Scriptures, Tree of Life Version*. Copyright © 2014,2016 by the Tree of Life Bible Society. Used by permission of the Tree of Life Bible Society.
