My mom has a coffee mug that a friend gave her that says “Jesus Knows Me, This I Love”. Up until recently, I’ve always thought it was a cute mug with a play on the children’s song.
As I am preparing to go on the World Race, I’ve been asking myself what I’m bringing to the table. Am I smart enough? Do I know enough about the Bible? Will I be able to speak publicly? Or even pray publicly? How do I respond to a question when I have no answer? In a sense, I feel unqualified/unworthy to go on a trip of this magnitude. Who am I to think I can do this? The answer I’ve found is simple… I can’t. But God can.
“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept hard evidence lack of qualification, and there’s no danger in that we will confuse gods work with our own or God’s glory with our own.” –Madeleine L’Engle
1 Samuel 16:7 says, “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.'”
This verse comes from the passage in 1 Samuel where God is telling Samuel to go to Bethlehem to Jesse’s house to find the new king of Israel. Samuel sees the sons of Jesse (except David) and immediately assumes that the chosen king is the eldest, Eliab. Samuel continues down the line until he’s rejected all of Jesse’s sons, except one. The youngest and smallest, David. God chose the youngest and perhaps most underwhelming of Jesse’s sons. I believe He did this to prove a point. Without God, David would accomplish little, if anything. But WITH God, David became the greatest king Israel had ever known.
God doesn’t care what I look like or what I’ve done. He cares about my willing heart. He knows my heart and He loves it.
