Thought for Thursday
Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, Who raised Him from the dead). Galatians 1:1
In the 1800s, hundreds of millions of people in many countries heard the great American evangelist Dwight L. Moody preach the Gospel, and untold numbers of them are in Heaven because of his faithful preaching. He held thousands of meetings throughout his preaching career, including some before many thousands of people. Despite his popularity, some people mocked him for his rough, uncultured ways. And well they might, because his grammar was atrocious, and he butchered the king’s English savagely, and he used homespun expressions of the common people. Because his father died when Moody was a small boy, he never received any more than the equivalent of a grade five education. Moody himself never claimed to be a great preacher, saying at one time, ‘I know perfectly well that, wherever I go and preach, there are many better preachers… than I am; all that I can say about it is that the Lord uses me’. And God did use him. One of his critics wrote of him that Moody was never ordained by any church. Being ordained was very important to that critic, but it didn’t seem important to God. According to our text, not even the apostle Paul was ordained, at least not by men. And we can’t dispute that God used him.
Some of the unscriptural nonsense that we have heard from Rome’s popes should remind us that being ordained does not make anyone godly. And we all know men and women whose deep devotion to their Lord has produced a godly influence that has been a blessing to many. Consider some of the great preachers we have heard in the past, and wonder just how being ordained could have improved upon what God did with the likes of Oliver Smith, Norman Crawford, and Peter Orasuk, to name just a few. They took their appointments from God and not from men, and they served God so well that they were a blessing to men. That should be said of all of us.
If it was God Who saved us, it is God Who can use us. When He saved us, He brought us out of uselessness, because we were of no value to Him in our unconverted state. Even now, we may not consider ourselves to be much, but when God saved us, He transformed us. ‘For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them’ (Ephesians 2:10).
A wise person once said that salvation is God’s gift to me; a life of service and devotion is my gift to God. -Jim MacIntosh