Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:07] Hi, everybody, and welcome to the weekday podcast. This is Chuck Allen, and I'm really glad you're with me today. Today I want to talk about something that runs entirely through the biblical narrative, something that might just allow us to change how we see our own story. Because God will loves an underdog. Have you ever noticed this? How the divine seems to have this preference for the unlikely hero, for the forgotten one, for the one nobody else chose?
[00:00:39] It's like there's this divine reversal built into the fabric of how God works in the world. You think about David. I mean, that's the easy one, right? Young shepherd boy, youngest of eight brothers, so insignificant that when Samuel came to Jesse's house to anoint the next king, they didn't even bother to invite David in from the fields. And yet, 1st Samuel 16 says, the Lord doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Isn't that fascinating that in a world obsessed with appearance, with credentials, with status, God's looking for something entirely different? Or consider Gideon. When the angel of the Lord appears to him in Judges six, Gideon is literally hiding in a winepress through threshing wheat so the Midianites won't see him and steal it. How does the angel greet him? He says, mighty hero, the Lord is with you. Can you imagine being called a mighty hero while you're hiding in fear? That's the audacity of God's vision. Seeing what could be when everyone else only sees what is. Or you think about Ruth, a widow, a foreigner, a Moabite woman in a society where Moabites were despised. Someone with absolutely no status, no power, and yet she becomes the great grandmother of King David. David. It enters the lineage of Jesus himself.
[00:02:01] See the pattern? I mean, it's everywhere. Paul captures this divine tendency perfectly. In First Corinthians, chapter one, beginning in verse 27, he says God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things.
[00:02:24] I love this. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important.
[00:02:36] What if. I mean, just what if the very thing you think that disqualifies you is the very thing that God wants to use?
[00:02:46] Think about Moses. Here's a guy with a speech impediment and tried to tell God he wasn't eloquent enough to be the people, to lead his people out of Egypt. Or Jeremiah, who protested, I'm too young. Or the disciples, Fishermen, tax collectors, Ordinary uneducated dudes who Jesus would choose to change the whole world.
[00:03:07] Even Jesus himself, born in a feeding trough, raised in Nazareth, a town so insignificant that Nathaniel famously said, can anything good come from Nazareth? The Messiah, the hope of Israel showing up in the most unexpected package. And isn't it just the most beautiful thing?
[00:03:24] Mary got this in her magnificent she says that she's singing about this divine pattern. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowy. He's filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. When was the last time you felt too small for your calling? Too broken for your purpose? Too unlikely for your dream? What if those feelings aren't disqualifications, but what if they're prerequisites?
[00:03:51] You see, when God uses the underdog, there's no mistaking where the power comes from. As Paul writes, we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us. I love how God seems to delight in working through the most unlikely, overlooked, and underestimated. There's something so hopeful about a God who specializes in underdogs.
[00:04:18] Maybe today you feel like an underdog. Maybe you feel overlooked or under qualified or out of your depth. If so, my friend, you're in excellent company. You're standing in a long tradition of folks that God has used to do extraordinary things. Because here's the beautiful truth. God doesn't call the qualified. God qualifies the called. And you, my friend, are called first to him. And the story of scripture whispers the truth over and over and over again. Your weakness is not an obstacle to God's purpose. It's an opportunity for God's power. This is Chuck Allen, and you've been listening to the Weekday Podcast. I trust that you'll find hope today in being the most unlikely of heroes in God's upside down kingdom. And I thank you so much for listening to today's Weekday podcast.
