The step from ordinary to extraordinary

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Dear Friends,

According to the Daily Telegraph the Cumberland Pencil Museum in Keswick rates very high as one of the ten worst days out in Britain. “It’s like OCTOBER, just too ordinary to be extraordinary in any way at all.” Clearly, here is one reviewer who doesn’t see the point in having a pencil museum! It’s biggest attraction is the World’s Longest Pencil coming in at 26 feet, which I think is pretty impressive but apparently it is so big it is useless because unless you have an equally enormous piece of paper and giant hands, you can’t even write with it, and even if you could, it would still be no good without an utterly massive desk to keep it in.

I don’t know about giant pencils but I have to say that I like the idea of something ordinary becoming extraordinary? Someone said, “The only difference between ordinary and extraordinary are the actions you decide to take.” And that is never more true than when we choose to put our ordinary lives into the hands of our most extraordinary God. Then, even when we are having to deal with difficult life issues, we might get to see that God not only works through miracles that are noticed by everyone, but that he also works much through the plain ordinary too. Indeed one might argue that God actually prefers to do His greatest works through the most unlikely people and unlikely tools. Being ordinary doesn’t disqualify us from God doing something very special through us. It actually qualifies you!

In (Exodus 3:1) God is preparing to do something that people will talk about throughout history – the miraculous rescue of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. It’s amazing what and who He uses. The story begins: “Moses was tending the flock of…his father-in-law…, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and he came to Horeb, (that’s what we know as Mt. Sinai) the mountain of God.” Horeb is just another mountain among many in this desert region. But when God chooses to make it a part of His plan, it’s not just another mountain any more. It’s now a mountain of God. The Bible says it was, “…there the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.”

A bush which was doubtless one of the many countless bushes out there in the desert, but God chooses that bush to be the platform for His awesome announcement about Israel’s rescue. Later when Moses questions whether he’s up to the job God is calling him to, God asks him what is in his hand, and Moses says, “A staff.” When he obeys God’s command to throw that stick down, it miraculously turns into a snake and back into a stick. As the story starts, it’s called the rod of Moses. Verses later, it says Moses “took the staff of God in his hand.”

Get the picture? An ordinary mountain becomes the mountain of God. An ordinary bush becomes the voice of God. An ordinary stick becomes the rod of God, and an ordinary man becomes the rescuer of God. An ordinary people become the people of God. And, an ordinary you can become the instrument of God to help change the lives of people all around because it’s not about you. It’s about the awesome God who’s using you. He loves to use ordinary people because everyone knows it’s got to be God!

It won’t be our ordinariness that disqualifies us from being part of a great work for God. It will be our unwillingness, or our unavailability, or our succumbing to our fears. Don’t miss what God wants to do through you. He does His most amazing things through the most ordinary material! As the apostle says, “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” So whilst not many of us were wise by human standards or greatly influential, nonetheless God chose the likes of us to do His work so we wouldn’t boast.

The godliest people I know are also the most down-to-earth. God is looking for ordinary people to use. God is not limited in any way by our education, economic status, race or social standing. Those are artificial limitations that only matter to the world, not to the Lord. The moment we say, “Lord here am I, send me,” something amazing will start to happen in our life because God can do extraordinary things using ordinary people. Even this OCTOBER could be more fruitful than we imagine if we give it to the Lord and let him make his point through the often derided and seemingly insignificant pencil that is our life.

Your Friend and Pastor

Shaun