Acts 3 tells the story of a day when Peter and John were headed to the temple to pray. When they arrived, they encountered a paralyzed man being carried by a few people. This man had never walked. He was paralyzed from the day he was born. In order to make his way in life, he had people carry him to the temple every day so that he could beg for money.
When he saw Peter and John, he asked them for money, but Peter had something else in mind.
“Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have, I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”
Peter then took the man by the hand and lifted him to his feet. Immediately, the man’s feet and ankles became strong, and he entered the temple walking, leaping and praising God!
The miracle created a huge stir. Everyone knew this man. They had seen him day after day begging at the temple gate. News spread quickly, and people came running to see what had happened. Peter took the opportunity to tell them about Jesus and encourage them to put their trust in Him, and thousands of people believed.
The religious leaders seized Peter and John and put them in jail overnight so that they could gather the other leaders to question them. The next day, Peter spoke boldly about Jesus to the leaders, who were astonished when they realized that Peter and John were uneducated, untrained men (Acts 4:13). The leaders didn’t want to antagonize the people, so they threatened Peter and John with further punishment if they didn’t stop preaching and then let them go. Peter and John rejoined the other believers and inspired them by sharing what God had done.
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I was reminded of this story today as I reflected about a situation in which I am providing spiritual direction to someone who is going through a crisis. I have never walked down the path my friend is walking. I’m totally unqualified to “direct” him anywhere. I am an uneducated, untrained man in this situation, and I feel wholly unequal to the task. It’s a clear case of “the blind leading the blind.”
That got me thinking about other situations in which God entrusts us with huge amounts of responsibility when we are woefully unprepared for it.
When Monica and I got married over 30 years ago, we had absolutely no idea what we were committing to. If we had known how hard marriage would be in the years ahead, we both would have run from the altar. We were far too self-centered to love and care for each other more than we cared about our own wants and needs.
When we took our first child home from the hospital just a few days after he was born, we asked ourselves why the doctors and nurses would let us leave. We knew we were unprepared and ill-equipped to raise a child, and we were terrified.
Over and over throughout our lives, God has given us authority and responsibility that we shouldn’t have been given. He has put us in charge in situations with “live ammunition training exercises,” in which real lives were at stake. The risks were extreme and unacceptable. The likelihood that we would hurt each other and others was 100 percent, and all those hurt people we have injured over the years would be justified in sending us their therapy bills.
God seems to be unconcerned about the risks. As far as I can tell, He prefers to put uneducated, untrained men and women in charge in His Kingdom. Since He knows the future, He can see the path of destruction that we will leave behind us as we fumble and stumble through life. If I’m completely honest, it seems downright irresponsible. Why would He allow us to make such a mess of things?
I think God give us unmerited responsibility for several reasons.
First, there is probably no better way of training us to live more like Jesus. Book study won’t grow us into Kingdom builders. We need high-stakes experiences and plenty of failure for the lessons to sink in. We need real consequences to motivate us to take our training seriously.
Second, God wants us to freely choose our actions. From the beginning of humanity, He gave humans the ability to choose between the right and the almost right and the likely wrong and the clearly wrong courses of action. If free will means anything, we have to be able to choose wrongly and make a mess.
Third, God wants us to depend on Him. He doesn’t expect us to try to do life in our own power or with our limited wisdom. His training program intentionally gives us more challenge than we can handle so that we will turn to Him for help.
Fourth, when God uses uneducated, untrained men and women to do extraordinary things, He gets the glory. Acts 4:13 tells us that when the religious leaders realized Peter and John were “typical peasants - uneducated, utterly ordinary fellows” (The Voice translation), “they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”
Finally, God knows that no matter how big a mess we make, He can redeem it. Even the damage we do to other people becomes instrumental in how God trains them to live in His Kingdom. Of course, this doesn’t excuse us acting selfishly or irresponsibly. We are called to love our neighbor to the best of our ability in every situation. But when we create chaos, God is available to anyone who asks and will heal and restore and transform what we have damaged.
So, I expect God to keep putting me into situations in which I am expected to lead even though I have no idea what I’m doing. He is going to keep sending me challenges that serve as tests of my character and tools for shaping me to be more like Jesus. As the saying goes, “God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called.” It's God's unexpected strategy to transform the world.
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