God’s Selection Criteria

Imagine reading an advertisement for a job. In the person specification it asked for weak people, foolish people, despised people, those who think they are nothing. Would you apply?

God is looking for just such people.

In fact he isn’t looking for wise people. Nor really those who were of noble birth. He isn’t even after the powerful.

He is looking for the needy.

Because as we have been seeing in our recent series, he is the restorer of the broken, he loves to be known as the healer of the sick, and as we will look at in the next post in that series, the strengthener of the weak.

How do you find these words? Do they put you off? Do you like to think of yourself as successful, and ‘self-made’. God would say to you: come back to me when you know you are needy.

Our success is fleeting. It can be blown away in an instant. Even the best of us is weak and vulnerable. Any of us can fall. Any of us can get sick. Any of us could lose our job.

But God is eternal. All-powerful, all loving. If he sets his gaze on you, and determines to lift you up by his grace, then HE gets the glory. He gets the praise.

I was reminded of this verse today. Perhaps you needed to read it too:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

God promises us that in the middle of our struggles, even before he has saved us from them,