God can use the nobodies

"I think we are tempted generally as Christians, and it's an understandable thing, to become discouraged and to become disheartened when our spiritual life and witness suffer because of our sins and our failures and we think that we're nobodies and we're nothing. You know, we crawl up a few steps and it's kind of three steps forward, two steps back and we battle temptation and we go through all of this and we wonder how it is that God could ever use us. And I am just here to remind you ... that that's just standard fare, we're all the same and those are the kind of people God uses because that's all He has to work with.Satan may even attempt to convince us that our shortcomings render us useless to God and His church, but His use of the Apostles testifies to the fact that God can use the unworthy and the unqualified. He can use the nobodies. They turned the world upside-down, these Twelve, but they did not turn the world upside-down because they were extraordinarily talented, or because they were naturally gifted, or because they were supremely educated or uniquely influential, or because they had achieved heights of social status. They did not turn the world upside-down because they were massive intellects. It was rather in spite of all their human limitations, in spite of everything that they were not that God used them because it was when they recognized they were nothing, they surrendered themselves to God whose power is always perfected in weakness. There are many people who are too confident to be any use to God, too proud to be of any use to God.So God picks the humble, the lowly, the meek and the weak so that there's never any question about the source of power when their lives change the world. It's not the man, it's the truth of God and the power of God in the man. We sure need to remind preachers today of this. It's not their cleverness, it's not their personality. Power is in the Word...power is in the truth that we preach, not in us. And apart from one person, one human, God's Son the Lord Jesus Christ, the history of God's work on earth is the story of His using the unqualified and the Twelve were no exception to that. Jesus took the unworthy, the unqualified and transformed them into mighty servants of spiritual power, turned the world upside-down, laid the foundation of the church upon which all these centuries have been built."John MacArthur