Is this an excuse that you have used? Does it sound familiar? Maybe you have felt God calling you to a specific task but you feel unworthy because of mistakes in your past. You feel that you are beyond the point of God using somebody like you! The point, however, is not how good, worthy, or equipped we are but of how good, worthy, and equipped God is!

God specializes in taking what’s broken and making it beautiful! He has also been known to do amazing things through inadequate and sinful people. What’s cool about the Bible is how it is full of ordinary sinful people who are messed up and nothing without Christ working through their lives. All throughout Scripture God used people who made some huge mistakes!

• David committed adultery and arranged murder.
• Moses was a murderer, insecure, and was very hesitant to do what God told him to do.
• Jonah was outright defiant and ran from God yet God still used him.
• Paul hated Christians and persecuted them until He met Christ.
• Peter denied Jesus three times yet went on to preach a message where 3,000 people came to Christ.

Many have simply told me that they will start following Jesus once they get their life straightened out. The problem is many think they have to clean themselves up before coming to Jesus. The point is that we can’t clean ourselves up; only Jesus can do that! Jesus wants all of us including our mess. God is not waiting with a big stick ready to beat us. Jesus wants us to come to Him in our sin, filth, and brokenness so He can wrap us in His loving arms and fill us with His hope, life, and love. He then is the one who cleans us up. He does in and through us what we are incapable of doing in ourselves.

The good news is that God does know your past, but because of His work on the cross He also sees your future in Him. If you have a rough past, God wants to rock your world and when others see what all He is doing through you they will know it is God. When God uses people that nobody would expect then He gets all the glory for what only He can do. So are you feeling unworthy and inadequate? I encourage you to repent, surrender it all to Christ, then prepare for the ride of a lifetime!