All Things to All People

A Christian worker must learn how to be God’s noble man or woman amid a crowd of ignoble things. Never make this plea: “If only I were somewhere else, then I would be noble.” You can be noble now, no matter the setting, no matter the limits of your natural abilities. All God’s workers are ordinary people, made extraordinary by what he has put into them.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you” (John 15:16). If you ever begin to doubt that you’re up to the task God has set for you, remember that it isn’t your own choice that has made you his worker. It isn’t that you’ve got hold of God, but that he has got hold of you. Keep this note of greatness in your creed. God is at work in you even now, bending, breaking, molding, doing just as he chooses. Why? For one purpose: that he will be able to say, “This is my man; this is my woman.”

We have to be in God’s hand so that he can plant others on the rock as he has planted us. Many people do deliberately choose to be God’s workers, but they have nothing in them of God’s mighty grace, nothing of his mighty word. Unless we have the right things in our minds intellectually and the right things in our hearts affectionately, we will be useless to God. Paul had the right things in his heart and mind and soul; he was entirely taken up with what Jesus Christ came to do. We, too, must focus on this one central fact: “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

Never choose to be God’s worker, but never turn away when God’s call comes. He will do with you what he never did with you before. He will do something unique, something he isn’t doing with other people. Let him have his way.