I was reading Romans and just started thinking about Paul and his life. I began to wonder why God used a man who persecuted Christians to speak to Christians through his writings with letters that make up almost half of the New Testament.
And I had a realization…
God often uses what we used to run away from him to in turn glorify Him once we accept Christ. Wanna know what your ministry is? What is it that you were drawn to when you walked apart from God? Remember, the devil always presents a perverted knock off of God’s gifts and talents placed in us.
Although Jesus knew no sin, I think in some aspects the same can be said of him. Before Jesus began his ministry, he was a carpenter. Jesus’s past skill glorified his Father in his present ministry.
Look at what a carpenter does with wood (in the basic sense). He shapes it into something beautiful, he uses it as a tool to make something that is–something even better. He reforms the dead wood into something new, beautiful, and of great value. And better still, a carpenter creates beauty from what was there in that piece of wood all along–it just became even more grand by the miraculous touch of the master.
And didn’t Jesus do that in his ministry?
I now believe God wanted Paul to know both sides of the coin of faith. God used a man who persecuted Christians and even looked approvingly upon the murder of a Christian, so when he came to know Christ he would know what it was to disbelieve as well as what it was to believe in order to reach the masses at a level they all understood.
God may be wanting to refashion in your life that which once grieved Him to that which now glorifies Him. Pray he use you to strengthen and encourage those who have not yet flipped to the other side of the coin of spiritual maturity. Can you think of any areas God may be purposing you to lead others?
Pray for awareness and to be a worker. The harvest is plentiful.
