It was a rod in Moses’ hand that God told the prophet to cast onto the ground, and an ordinary rod became a serpent. That same rod was lifted up in Moses’ hand over the Red Sea to call the waters to stand at attention while two million Israelites marched through the sea on dry ground.
God used an ordinary beast to do the extraordinary when the ass opened its mouth to confront a backslidden prophet, Balaam.
God used the ordinary lunch of an ordinary lad to feed an extraordinary crowd of thousands of people; it was an ordinary lunch of five loaves and a few fishes.
When God chose twelve men to become the building blocks of the greatest organism that has ever breathed life, it was ordinary men from common walks of life, men who would become His apostles and do the extraordinary.
Gideon was an ordinary person that God used in an uncommon way. No one was more surprised when, as he was threshing wheat by the winepress to hide from the Midianites, the angel of the Lord appeared to him and called him a “mighty man of valor.” Extraordinary! And, God would do some amazing things through this ordinary young man.
Paul put it into the written Word of God this way: “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and the base things, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and the things which are not to bring to pass things which are. That no flesh should glory in His presence.” (I Cor. 1:26-29)
So, there’s a place in the purposes of God for you! Most who read these lines are ordinary people. I’m sure you have some extraordinary characteristics. Each of us is unique in our own particular, God-given, way; but in the over-all scheme of things, each of us is, no doubt, pretty ordinary.
But, it’s the ordinary folk, like Moses (who had a speech impediment) and Gideon and Samson and Elijah and so many, many others that our Heavenly Father deigns to use. Jesus, who favored the designation of Himself as “the Son of Man,” was considered by those who did not understand His incarnation, pretty ordinary: “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” A young man was He who lived and worked a fairly common life for thirty years in a less than ordinary town, Nazareth. But, Jesus, employing twelve quite ordinary men, turned the then known world upside down and left a legacy that will out-live time.
And, so could you and a few other ordinary folks who are willing to live consecrated lives for Him. Are you ready to allow God to do something extraordinary through you today?
“Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me….” (Jer. 9:23,24)
YOU and GOD 