I am Small, Yet God is Big!

Every day brings reminders of how much I must depend on Christ for everything and look to him for grace. But some days have particularly strong reminders of my need for Christ and the realization that I am nothing apart from him. Tonight was one of those days.

I attend a rather large church that is very theologically and Biblically sound, nevertheless, today was a fresh reminder that not everyone who goes to this church has theologically sound doctrine, such as the lady that I spoke to before the service. She said that true joy comes from being kind and not being mean. She told me that she didn’t need Jesus to make her good or to be kind, but that she is kind on her own free will. The more she talked the more heart broken I was for this woman. It would be easy in that situation to just agree with everything she said just to avoid controversy, yet I knew consciously that I could not be silent. I had to speak, yet how could I? How was I to explain to her the gospel of Jesus Christ. I tried my best to explain to her what God’s word says about our sinful nature and that we are not capable of doing any good on our own and that we need God’s grace and help to be nice or kind to others because we can’t do it ourselves. Yet nothing that I said seemed to get across to her. I left the conversation feeling like all my words had been empty. I thought I had said all the wrong things. I felt like a failure and that I had not been able to witness to her. My heart was heavy for this woman who was trying to do everything on her own and who thought God was too busy to take time to help her.

I wondered in my heart why God had brought this woman to me? Why was it me who had to share the gospel with her rather than someone else who could have done it so much better than I? I felt so small and so inadequate.

How ironic it was when I discovered the sermon was entitled “Global Outreach”. It was the very kind of message I needed to hear after that conversation. Something that the pastor pointed out was that God does all the growing. I was feeling like a failure because I didn’t think I had shared the gospel well enough and had not convinced her that what she believed was wrong. Yet God doesn’t use perfect people to share the gospel. We are all imperfect humans. We all need the power of Christ in us to give us the words to speak the gospel of Christ to others. God calls all of us to spread a passion for his name and he can use our weaknesses for his glory. He calls us to plant the seed in people’s hearts and he will do the growing. He will cause the seeds to grow I am only called to plant. I could not make that woman change her beliefs by what I said, yet God can. I was called to share some of the truths of the Bible with this lady and that is what I did. It was not said perfectly, yet God can still use my words to change her.

My heart is still hurting for this woman. I still feel sad inside, because I want her to know the truth. Yet I know that I obeyed God by sharing the gospel in the best way that I could and now I can leave the rest in God’s hands. I have peace in knowing that it is not up to me about what happens. God uses small inadequate people to spread the gospel to the nations. He can use people like me to share the truth of his name. I no longer feel like a failure in that conversation, because I know that God was in that conversation and he did not cause it to happen by accident. He is sovereign over it all and can use what I said to make a difference in this woman’s life and for that I am truly thankful.