Faith Filled Family Magazine September 2016 | Page 76

By Danielle Love

D

o you ever feel like
God can’t use you
because of your past?
I certainly have felt this
many times in my years. Do you
ever feel like you’re inadequate
or too far gone for God to use
you? Many people feel this way,
but the amazing thing about God
is that he tends to use the weak,
the broken and the hurting to
make his glory shine through
to the world. Let’s look at some
of the greatest leaders in the
bible’s past and compare them
to our lives.
Noah drank
Jacob was a liar
Moses was a murderer
Samson had long hair and was a
womanizer

Rahab was a prostitute
David was an adulterer and a
murderer
Elijah was suicidal
Jonah ran from God
Peter denied Christ
Let’s take a look at Moses - if
anyone felt inadequate it was
him. He got called by God but
he didn’t feel worthy enough,
he didn’t trust himself enough
to believe that God could use
him. He murdered someone;
he has some really big issues
holding him back. Moses had
an ugly past.
Everyone has a past, some are
good, some are bad and some
are hard to even think about.
In our earthly way of thinking, how we have behaved
judges how worthy we are of
things. We can be so thankful that we serve a God who is
forgiving and loving, who provides grace and mercy when
we don’t deserve it at all. No
matter what we do if we bring
our sin to the cross and lay it
down, if we repent and change
our ways he welcomes us with
open arms and a clean slate,
and then asks more of us.
Sometimes, like Moses, it’s a
big task like freeing his people,
other times it can be simpler
such as being obedient to his
word.
For many of us, our past mistakes came with suffering, with
mistakes, with bad choices,
with choosing the enemy’s
temptation over the father’s
narrow road, sometimes God

isn’t even in the picture. The
bible says in Romans 5:3-5:
More than that, we rejoice in
our sufferings, knowing that
suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character, and character produces
hope, and hope does not put us
to shame, because God’s love
has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has
been given to us.
You see, suffering is a tool that
God uses to shape us, to mold
us, to chisel away the bad things
stuck to us to make us see how
much we need him and how
much we are failing without him.
Psalm 73: 26 says My flesh and
my heart may fail, but God is
the strength of my heart and my
portion forever. We have failed
in the past, we are failing in the
present and we will certainly fail
in the future, but God is bigger
than that. God can fix that. God
can mend the brokenness. God
can make good out of every bad