"Who am I?" or "Here am I!"

To an ordinary person, the task of discipling the nations can seem daunting.  The sheer size of the task seems overwhelming.  (It would take almost 222 years, at one person per second, just to greet the 7 billion people in the world, not counting the number that would be born during the process.)  Then you have to add in the challenges of language, culture, geography, and politics plus the opposition of spiritual enemies, religious systems, and human willfulness.  It all leaves a person who is cognizant of his own limitations of time, ability, and resources with the feeling of "who am I to take on such a task?"

A message I heard on the radio last night by Chip Ingram had an insight that can give us some encouragement.  He was preaching on the birth of the church on Pentecost.  The promise of power through the unction of the Holy Spirit is, of course, the only way common believers could have any hope of making a difference.  But Ingram had a further insight.  He pointed out that when God chose His spokesman for that historic day -- a once-in-eternity, make-or-break situation of incalculable importance -- He chose, in Ingram's words, "an uneducated failure."  Peter's lack of formal training would be noted by the Jewish religious leaders in Acts 4, where he and John were called "uneducated and untrained men" (v. 13).  And Peter was the one who in an act of cowardice had denied his connection to Jesus.  Who was he to step forward to tell the inquiring crowd about the Savior?

Indeed, who are we -- any of us -- to take on the task, that no one else has yet done, of taking the gospel to an unengaged unreached people group?  We are without a doubt inadequate for the effort.  But I am reminded of the words of a popular author and conference speaker of a generation ago, Ann Kiemel, who used to say, "I'm just an ordinary person, but I serve an extraordinary God."  It is not about us, but about Him.  None of us in ourselves is adequate.   Even the apostle Paul said, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves" before adding "but our sufficiency is from God" (2 Corinthians 3:5).  Mary realized her inability to be the mother of the Messiah, but the angel said, "With God nothing shall be impossible." If God touches our lives and empowers us like He did the prophet Isaiah, then we can as he did, "Here am I, send me!"

Let's pray that our sense of unworthiness or of inability will be replaced by the realization of God's worthiness and power.