God Works through Broken People

This past Sunday in my message, “Encountering a Broken World,” I mentioned how God works through broken people, referencing a list of examples from the Bible. A few people asked me to share that list with them, so here it is.

“For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven” (Nehemiah 1:4b). I guess you could say that when Nehemiah encountered a broken world, he turned toward it, and let himself be broken by that broken world. And being broken, Nehemiah turned toward God.

Thank God that again and again God uses broken people in His kingdom work. When you look through the Bible, you will see example after example:

• Abraham seemed too old
• Sarah was barren
• Isaac was broken by fear
• Jacob was a liar and a cheater
• Joseph was abused and sold into slavery by his brothers
• Job lost everything
• Moses had a speech problem and felt unusable by God
• Rahab was a prostitute
• Gideon was afraid to obey God
• Samson was an adulterer and a womanizer
• Naomi felt broken by grief and was a widow
• Boaz was alone and had no heir
• Ruth was a poor foreigner
• David was an adulterer and a murderer, and probably not that great of a father
• Elijah felt suicidal
• Jeremiah seemed too young
• Jonah ran away from God
• Martha worried too much
• The Samaritan Woman was divorced more than once
• Zacchaeus was too small and money hungry
• The disciples fell asleep when Jesus needed them most to pray
• Peter denied Christ three times
• Paul was a legalist who persecuted Christians before becoming one

What about you and me? How might God want to work in and through us and our broken lives?