The Power of One Real Man

This month we are going to celebrate Father’s Day and I thought what better way than to think about some of the ordinary men of the bible that did extraordinary things.

Sometimes in the church world today, we get caught up in believing that to serve God we must have a ministry or be involved in everything that the church does. THIS IS NOT TRUE…God can and does use everybody if we will let Him. I think of a couple of lines from a Casting Crowns song called “Nobody”, “Moses had stage fright and David brought a rock to a sword fight”.

The man that comes to mind for me is one of the 13 judges from the Old Testament.

It is not the one everybody would think about first, Samson.

For me, a perfect example of God using ordinary people is Shamgar. This man is only mentioned twice in the Bible, Judges 3:31 and Judges 5:6, but we are told he saved Israel. He lived in a period when Israel had judges, and everyone did what they wanted. He was a farmer who just wanted to get his produce to market but the roads were controlled by the Philistines. People were getting robbed, beaten, and killed on the roads at that time. Shamgar said “enough”! He didn’t wait until things were easy before he did something. He didn’t make any excuses, he did what God wanted him to do. Using an oxgoad, the Bible tells us he killed 600 Philistines and saved Israel. He did it one man at a time, using ordinary tools in an ordinary manner…but as Pastor tells us to read SLOW, he saved Israel. He didn’t start out with that in mind, he only wanted to get his crops to market but the result was that he changed a nation.

Today I ask myself, what ordinary thing that I have, can I use to make a change for the kingdom of God? My pedigree doesn’t determine my purpose.

Lord, today let me be like Shamgar doing my ordinary things but let me keep focused on You and watch ordinary become extraordinary!

Gary Elrod